WHEN THE SMOKE CLEARS

A group of prominent New Zealand scientists and professionals say that it's
high time cannabis was treated the same way as alcohol and tobacco.

David Hadorn keeps his stash in full view on the sideboard. "I've graduated
to the hard stuff," he admits. His preferred recreational drug is one you
wouldn't want your kids to get hold of. Used inappropriately, it's
addictive, causes liver and brain damage, is linked with violence. The
social and health costs associated with its use are horrendous. Even if it
can be proved that most people use the drug in moderation, the chances of
any modern government legalising it are fairly small. It's fortunate, then,
that the question of legalisation is not likely to arise. Hadorn's stash
of wine and brandy is strictly legit. Alcohol, after all, has been around
so long, and is so ubiquitous, that the only way to control it is to
regulate its sale.

The fact that he can have a cellar full of his favourite drug, while others
end up with a criminal record for possessing small quantities of relatively
harmless cannabis, is one of those social conundrums that Hadorn finds
impossible to leave alone. As director of the Drug Policy Forum Trust, a
group of scientists and professionals who want rationality to govern our
drug laws, he spends all his spare time trying to convince politicians, the
media, and community groups that drug users are not criminals. "Drug use,
drug abuse and drug related harms are health and education issues," he
says. "They're not legitimately law enforcement issues. When you inject a
policeman into what is fundamentally a health issue, you inevitably make
the problem worse."

Hadorn is not some ageing hippie who wants to turn on the world. He's a
medical doctor and highly experienced health researcher, who is currently
chief advisor to the Health Funding Authority. The trust includes some of
the most respected names in medical science in New Zealand. The first step
towards a sensible drugs policy, they argue in a soon-to be released
report, is to regulate the use of cannabis in the same way as alcohol and
tobacco.

Wee Robbie Burns' special on cannabis bullets may a pipedream, but Hadorn
is convinced there is a mood for change in New Zealand. That optimism has
been shored up recently by the leaked 15-year WHO study on cannabis which
confirmed that cannabis is safer than alcohol and tobacco.

The findings of that report have also been echoed by a new book *Marijuana
Myths, Marijuana Facts* by two distinguished American scholars, Professors
Lynn Zimmer and John P Morgan. The book reviews all the scientific evidence
of the past 100 years and finds little to support anti-cannabis
campaigners' claims. You could say the jury has now returned and pronounced
its verdict: cannabis is not guilty as charged.

The issue, however, is not much about the harm to health as the effects
cannabis may have on teenagers. No one much cares, for instance, whether
politicians swap their single malt whiskies for joints in Bellamy's (it
might improve behaviour in the House). But many parents worry that their
kids will gain greater access to cannabis and lose all drive and ambition.

Hadorn believes that those fears are unfounded. The same arguments, he
points out, were trotted out when it became legal for wine to be sold in
supermarkets. The same scaremongering occurred over homosexual law reform.
"People said 'if you do this, society will fall apart. Kids will be
seduced.' Of course that hasn't happened."

So what would he say if his own teenagers started experimenting with
cannabis? "I'd tell them 'If you're going to use it, you have to be
careful. Use it after you've got your homework done or at weekends, and
only if your grades are staying up.'"

Hadorn says it's a myth that cannabis destroys the ability to do school
work, particularly in older teens. Although he eschews anecdotal evidence
as a basis for the campaign, "you can maintain a straight-A average and
still use cannabis for relaxation and social purposes or stress relief,
which it happens to be very good for." The belief that cannabis acts as a
gateway to other drugs is also incorrect, he says. In the Netherlands where
cannabis use has been liberalised, fewer teenagers have tried hard drugs
than is the case in countries, like the US, with harsh prohibition
policies. By making it easier for young people to obtain cannabis, the
Dutch argue, they are not exposed to a criminal subculture pushing harder
drugs; the connection between the two types of drugs is broken.

Regulating the use of cannabis may be a rational evidence-based alternative
to a policy of total prohibition which even anti-drug campaigners will
admit is not working, but how likely is to happen?

Hadorn points to New Zealand's heritage as a social laboratory; its
reputation for social pioneering. "If people were just given the facts
instead of the silly outdated myths propagated by people who speak out on
the issue" He has high hopes that PM Jenny Shipley, a hardliner on cannabis
reform, will be open to evidence-based policy as she was as Minister of
Health.

But even if the Government was prepared to risk the political fallout by
considering cannabis reform, it would face huge pressure from the US to
abort any liberalisation.. As Hadorn, an American, says of his home
country: "The US is the home of modern day cannabis hysteria and
prohibition and has twisted the arms of other countries to go along with
it." For example, he says, the Reuters story about the suppressed WHO
report on cannabis, which featured prominently in New Zealand newspapers,
was suppressed by US media. (A scan of major American newspapers on the
Internet seem to confirm this.)

Last year the Sydney Morning Herald reported how Australia was prevented
from undertaking drug reform by a veiled US threat to close down the highly
profitable and legal opium industry in Tasmania. As the newspaper
commented: "Australians talk most of the time as though this country can
decide the fate of their own narcotics law. This is a delusion. As a good
citizen of the world and a loyal supporter of the United States we have
signed international treaties which pledge Australians to stick to the
prohibition strategy." Those same treaties can be used by the US to try to
bully New Zealand into line over cannabis reform in the same way that
pressure was applied over the nuclear-free issue.

However, Hadorn believes that cannabis law reform is inevitable. Even if
cannabis had the negative effects on large numbers of people that
campaigners claim, "it makes it an even stronger case to see it as a health
and education problem. You don't do anything by driving it underground."
Except make it more attractive. "It's a dishonest, embarrassing, unhealthy
situation," says Hadorn. "What encourages people to experiment is when they
know they are not being told the truth and the only way they can find out
is to try it for themselves."