Govt urged to ease up on cannabis

Outlawing cannabis is wrong and the Government must change strict cannabis
laws, says a highpowered group of doctors and scientists.

The Drug Policy Forum Trust today released a discussion paper, offering four
new ways to control cannabis use.

It says freeing up the use of cannabis would have little adverse impact on
public health it could even be "mildly positive" because alcohol and
tobacco use would fall.

The group concluded that cannabis appeared to be harmless for about 90
percent of the people who used it, and that adverse effects were
"substantially" less severe than those associated with excessive alcohol and
tobacco use.

"We do not believe that cannabis is completely safe far from it" says the
paper. "However, the health effects of cannabis are largely irrelevant to
the problem of deciding which cannabis control policy to adopt.

"Indeed the more harmful we judge cannabis to be, the more important it is
to exercise control over its distribution. Such control cannot be exercised
in a prohibition environment, which in effect abdicates control to the black
market."

The paper urges the Government to take control of the problem.

Forum director David Hadorn, a former Ministry of Health policy analyst,
said while he expected the Government to try to push aside the paper, he
doubted it would be ignored.

Its conclusions have angered and excited people on both sides of the
cannabis debate.

Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party leader Michael Appleby, a Wellington
lawyer, said the party had long supported partial prohibition. He was
delighted with the paper.

He believed it would add momentum to the slow shift in attitudes towards
cannabis and hoped the Goverment would be "brave" enough to listen.

But cartoonist Tom Scott, author of an antidrug book which was slated
[criticized] by the forum, dismissed the conclusions as "bogus."

He said his primary concern was the teenagers whose lives were "wrecked" by
cannabis. A law change would do nothing to help them.

A spokeswoman for Justice Minister Doug Graham said no plans existed to
decriminalise cannabis. She had not seen the paper.

The forum, an independent group which says it is dedicated to raising the
level of debate about illicit drug use in New Zealand, formed its
conclusions after studying international and local research.

Its paper says in the past 25 years no "scholarly" body has endorsed
cannabis prohibition. It blames prohibition for creating a lucrative and
often violent black drugs market, for blocking effective education
programmes, increasing the appeal of cannabis to young people, creating
disrespect fot the law, breeding police corruption and oppressing young
people and racial minorities.

It rejects arguments that freeing up cannabis laws would increase the number
of people who use cannabis. It says any increase would be small and largely
limited to adults.

The group says it is imperative that effective education programmes be
developed in conjunction with any reform of the country's cannabis control
system.

It is calling for public submissions on the paper and says it will then make
a specific recommendation early next year.

Dr Hadorn released part of the paper at a public meeting yesterday and said
it was time scientists and professionals had the courage to speak up about
drugs and not allow "people who don't know what they are talking about to
drum up hysteria."

A copy of the paper is available on the New Zealand Drug Foundation Internet
website (http://www.nzdf.org.nz) as of today.

The forum trustees are Druis Barrett, Maori Women's Welfare League; Dr Robin
Briant, Auckland Hospital senior physician, Dr Peter Crampton, Health
Services Research Centre research fellow; Professor Fred Fastier, University
of Otago emeritus pharmacology; Amster Reedy, Maori scholar, Professor
Norman Sharpe, Auckland Medical School medicine department head; Helen Shaw,
educationalist; and Professor Warren Young, Victoria University professor of
law and assistant vicechancellor for research.

[Sidebar]

At a Glance

The Drug Policy Forum Trust's four alternative cannabis control systems:

* Total prohibition but with exceptions, as practice in Holland since 1976,
where the Government agrees not to enforce the law under defined circumstances.

* Prohibition but imposing civil penalties, such as fines, rather than
criminal penalties for minor offences, as operates in parts of Australia,
Europe and America.

* Partial prohibition which would legalise limited possession and
cultivation for personal use, but ban forprofit sale. This operates in
Alaska, Spain, and Italy.

* Regulation in which cannabis would be treated much like alcohol and
tobacco where growers would be license by a cannabis control board. Some
personal cultivation could be permitted. No country operates this system.

* The forum rules out the option of free availability as insufficiently
realistic to warrant discussion.