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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Media’s Characterisation of Homegrow’s

Blair Anderson Says: September 8th, 2008 at 1:17 am

The media’s characterisation of “homegrow’s” guns and gangs is regrettably consistent with the experience in New Zealand, an island nation both self sufficient in pot and ranking higher than Jamaica in OECD consumption statistics. Clearly, this billion dollar business has some gray areas due for the large part to prohibition’s unintended consequences but it can also be described in other terms that commerce would envy. For all that turnover, just where are the security guards, locked safes, accountants, lawyers and plethora of other necessary personal?
Consider horse gambling? How much investment, capital and working, has to go into the billion dollar wealth creation (equal to the annual pot trade) for individuals, syndicates, clubs and taxation needs to all be met. Now line up the money counters, cleaners and everything in between.

Growing pot is one of the most efficient, friendly, trusting and benign industries ever. It’s vilification by the Police is laughable given the ROI we [taxpayers] get from their deficit funded efforts. The stupidity is civil society just cannot see drug policy in economic terms.

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