CANNABIS BAN POINTLESS - EXPERTS

Attempting to control cannabis use by making it illegal is a costly and
futile exercise that breeds corruption and more crime.

That's the view of Peter Cohen, director of the Centre for Drug Research at
the University of Amsterdam, and Alex Wodak, director of the alcohol and
drug service at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital and president of the
Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation.

Drs Cohen and Wodak today gave submissions, at the invitation of the
Coalition for Cannabis Law Reform, to Parliament's health select committee
on the last day of hearings into the legal status of cannabis in New
Zealand. The committee received more than 400 submissions and started
hearings on May 30.

Dr Cohen told The Evening Post yesterday that society had to accept that
people would make different choices.

"What is good for people and what is bad for people may change over time.
For instance, we had a time when divorce was considered bad for people and
we tried to express those values by legislation."

Dr Wodak said the Western world had experienced between 50 and 75 years of
cannabis prohibition. It was easy to identify problems with cannabis use,
such as crime.

"That's the cost side and we also know that there are often serious
problems with widespread police corruption, but on the benefit side it is
very difficult to identify benefits.

"It does not seem to reduce demand and it does not seem to reduce supply,
but what it does do is hand over a significant part of the economy - 1
percent of Australian GDP - to criminals and corrupt police."

Dr Cohen said cannabis use was surrounded with myths. The harm that
cannabis was alleged to do to people from indigenous groups was due to the
criminality of its possession rather than the drug itself. Dr Wodak said
Australia tried prohibiting Aborigines from using alcohol from 1837 to 1975
and it was a total failure.

Dr Cohen said cannabis use had increased slowly in the Netherlands, where
it was legalised 30 years ago, but no faster than in neighbouring
countries. Even in Sweden, which rigorously enforced anti-cannabis laws,
cannabis consumption had increased. Dr Wodak said cannabis should be
regulated and taxed.

"The cannabis industry is a significant component of the economy. In
Australia, it is three-quarters the size of the beer industry and two times
the size of the wine industry."

Legalisation would also allow those who believed they were using too much
cannabis to seek treatment. Taxes could be used to fund prevention
programmes in the same way that alcohol taxes funded the Alcohol Liquor
Advisory Council.

Dr Cohen said a government's role was to minimise harm.

"People make their own choices and you have to respect these choices and it
does not matter that I think cannabis is good or bad . . . Do not ask me if
it is a good choice to use cannabis. I would say that people have to decide
it for themselves."

Dr Wodak said all the evidence pointed to far more harm being caused to
society from alcohol and tobacco.

Dr Cohen said most people, including up to half of New Zealanders who had
tried the drug, were light users.

"Most people do not like heavy use because it makes them too stoned. They
do not like heavy use of caffeine because it makes them jittery and they do
not like heavy use of alcohol because it makes them drunk. Most people have
a lifestyle in which occasional use fits and heavy use does not."