Ignorance, A Licence To Kill.

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Talk of gun licencing is another red herring. A distraction. Avoidance of what is broken.

Open Letter to the Editor, New Zealand Herald./Blair

Len Snee would be enjoying Xmas with his family today if we had resolved the tensions surrounding cannabis and placed it within New Zealand’s ‘restricted substances regulations’ where it’s sale and distribution, cultivation and age of consent could be really controlled. We create, by doing nothing to fix these policy anomalies, the very scenario that unravelled in Napier. Harm was inevitable. Somewhere, sometime, the policy of prohibition creates the amplification of any deviancy resulting in escalation of harms way beyond any attendant risks (even if overstated) associated with cannabis.

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For a country that rates top of the OECD for cannabis consumption, you would think at least someone in Parliament would connect the dots. The

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duplicity is corrupt. On this day, Mr Snee would have licked the gravy from his lips and excused himself from the table and gone on duty to police the mayhem created by that other drug we drink. The criminal sanction on cannabis is hazardous, its cure, worse than the disease. It has never killed anyone, but the rules sure have. “D-classify”. [see saferchoice.org]

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Tougher laws may make young taggers ‘heroes’

Friday, 20 June 2008,
Newmarket Business Association

Tougher laws around tagging just passed by parliament may in fact make tagging just that much more ‘cooler’ particularly among minors, claims one Auckland business district. MPs have voted to get tougher on taggers by supporting measures such as lifting the maximum fine for tagging from $200 to $2,000 and banning the sale of spray cans to people under 18.

“The legislation is a step in the right direction but the public needs to keep vigilant. These tougher laws could in fact bring on an unintended consequence – that is make taggers even bigger ‘heroes’ among their mates,” says Cameron Brewer head of the Newmarket Business Association..

Curious that the same logic “engine of malcontent” doesn’t apply to youth and cannabis. / Blair

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Sex and drug education – does it work?

02/08/2007 –

credit: Communitycare.co.uk – the website for social work and social care professionals

(this is remarkably close to the mildgreen hypothesis – creating in ever younger children the illusion that all their peers are doing it, and they cant b******y wait!. What is fundementally broken are the artificial redlines surrounding ‘age of consent’ issues. We need to enable and not mask self responsibility. /Blair)

Children as young as eight years old are taking drugs. Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe.

So how effective is our sex and drug education?

There are reports in the press this week that according to experts, children as young as six are being treated for addiction to cannabis and are presenting symptoms including paranoia, anxiety, depression and even schizophrenia.

It also emerged last September in Scotland that children aged 10-years-old were dealing drugs.

Dr Michael Fitzpatrick will suggest in Community Care next week that the rise of drug abuse among young children has coincided with the increase of drugs education.

He says: “Gordon Brown has endorsed the fashionable “drugs education”, particularly favouring its extension to primary schools. Here is another policy immune to the evidence of failure.

“Never mind that the spread of drugs education appears to coincide with a dramatic increase in drug taking by school students – the government believes that we need more of the same, extended to even younger children.”

At the same time, Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Europe despite numerous government initiatives designed to take the problem.

Given that children taking drugs are getting younger and Britain has the highest teenage pregnancy rate in Britain, is sex and drug education in Britain effective at educating children or does it merely fuel the curiosity of young people?

Dr Michael Fitzpatrick suggests: “Why not instead teach children something interesting and inspiring, that might give them the truly radical idea that culture and society have more to offer than drug-induced oblivion?”

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