LAND OF THE POT CLOUD

Cannabis has become part of ordinary Kiwi life. We lead the world in both
usage and in drug arrests and convictions.

Next year the Law Commission will review the 33-year-old Misuse of Drugs
Act. JOHN McCRONE considers the public debate.

Two youths in baseball caps and work boots are in earnest discussion with
the shop assistant about the $195 bottles of liquid fertiliser.

It's a kitset system, they are told. You need the Growzilla to get the
lush vegetative growth, then the Budzilla to blow up the flower heads like
footballs.

The central Christchurch hydroponics shop clearly caters for every scale
of grower from the home hobbyist to the industrial. You can buy a boxed
four-pot starter set, plus lights and reflectors, for about $700. Red-mite
spray and other essentials would add another $100 or so to the bill. For
the somewhat more ambitious, there are the indoor zip-sided tents and
"hide it in a wardrobe" vented kits.

For the professionals, the shop floor has sections devoted to motorised
lighting tracks, heat pads, cooling fans, cloning equipment, ducting pipe
and carbon filters for odour removal. The last of these are the size of
hulking gas cylinders.

Hey, don't I recognise some of this gear from a photo of a recent police
bust - a suburban home turned into a metal halide-lit marijuana factory?

It is a bit surreal. Last year, this shop was selling camping gear. Now it
is one of 15 branches of the flourishing Switched On Gardener chain. You
may have seen them advertising on TV.

New Zealand plainly has a very liberal attitude towards cannabis these
days, even if our head shops still coyly market their bongs as "vases",
and vaporiser machines - for those who worry about lung cancer - have to
be sold disassembled in kitset form.

Open a copy of NORML News, the magazine put out by the National
Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and you can read a report
from the fifth annual Auckland cannabis cup.

Bud porn they call it, these photos of plump and fluffy sinsemilla heads
lined up on the judging table. Growers bring their best product and are
judged for taste, smell, look and, of course, effect. There are separate
trophies for indoor and outdoor grown. This year's champion AK-47 is a
dusty mauve, the Mother's Finest a more conventional brown and green.

And what about the Friday 4.20pm pot-smoking sessions that have been
springing up around the country?

Dunedin students have established these afternoon public toking clubs as a
campus fixture. Christchurch has not been quite so successful. The weekly
get-together at a shed in Hagley Park, up by the Riccarton Rd roundabout,
was shifted to a more after work-friendly hour of 5.20pm, but has been
lucky if it attracted more than five enthusiasts.

But, yes, you would have to say good, old uptight New Zealand now has a
very different attitude to the electric puha, the wacky baccy. If there
are laws for the everyday user, officialdom seems to be turning a blind
eye. Except you would be wrong.

New Zealand does lead the world in cannabis use. We way outstrip other
famous ganja culture countries like Jamaica and the Netherlands, says
substance-use researcher Geoff Noller, of Dunedin.

A 2008 World Health Organisation (WHO) study of 17 countries found that 42
per cent of New Zealanders have tried it. And among the young, it is now
truly ubiquitous. Some 27 per cent of under 15s, and 62 per cent of under
21s, have had a taste of the devil's weed.

Even a fellow rabid user, the United States, manages only 20 per cent and
54 per cent by comparison. For youth users, the Netherlands is down there
at 7 per cent and 35 per cent.

Yet New Zealand also leads the world in drug arrests and convictions.