Letter to the Editor,
Ashburton Guardian.
25th December, 2005
Dear Sir/Madam,
Cannabis not criminogenic.
Residents of Mid-Canterbury have good reason to be suspicious of cannabis cultivation being ‘often linked to organised criminal activity’ by Police (“Watching out for cannabis patches” Ashburton Guardian, 21 Dec).
The Commissioner for Police was brought to account by the 1998 National Party lead “cannabis and mental health’ Health Select committee for asserting the same ‘causation’ to violence and crime. NZ’s failure to heed the Committee’s recommendation to review the appropriateness of cannabis law sees Police [continuing to] pander to fears where there should be none. They are promoting the illusion to support enforcement measures that cannabis cultivators are ‘involved in theft and burglary’ and that this is created by the pharmacology of cannabis.
The need to grow in the country, even the incentive to grow on other peoples land, to disguise plants or even act suspiciously is a function of the very prohibitory practice, making a mockery of the Police’s annual rural public safety and crime prevention ‘mail drop’.
Canterbury’s most dangerous herb, responsible for social mayhem, road carnage, crime, ill health and disproportionate advertising revenues is fermented barley. Although cultivated in a legal framework, a significant number of young ‘barley’ users go on to become judges and jailers, even rural police men and woman.
Promoters of this culture are given knighthood’s. Entire fields of this dangerous precursor are often overlooked, disguised to appear to the untrained eye as the innocuous wheat. But not everything is as it seems. Were barley made illegal, most every kid, rural and urban could identify ‘at 100 yds’ potency, yield and probable harvest date. Entire web pages would be dedicated to culture of barley…
The herb Cannabis is not criminogenic, whereas the prohibitory ‘policy base’ is. It appears, absent the political will to resolve the tensions that surround NZ’s hypocritical drug policy that for Canterbury rural residents at least, the roads to and from the barley fields continue to be paved with good intentions.
Blair Anderson
Director, Educators For Sensible Drug Policy. http://www.efsdp.org
** NotaBene :Emergent rural sector ‘drug threats’ in Canterbury similarly rewarded with all manner of business awards is the european ‘Grape’ of which some cultivars when processed and ritually consumed have been found to been associated with ‘bank rate’ psychosis and reading ‘Metro’.
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