Posts by Shay Lambert
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Opps - sorry Sacha. The drugs have obviously impaired my judgment :)
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Reform done properly does seem to offer opportunities to educate and enforce non-usage amongst under 18s and to remove the dealer connections with more harmful substances.
Like she said.
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Now you are sounding paranoid
Oh spare it! Where in my posts have I laid out a belief in a great pothead conspiracy to recruit and corrupt NZ youth?
Norml is a collection of enthusiasts as much as a lobby group, so excuse me if I call bullshit on how they frame their arguments - I'd probably feel the same way if the Auckland Car Club was leading the debate on the country's transport infrastructure.
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It was about 8 or 9 in the evenings: the environment was relaxed and mellow.
And once again you are demonstrating why I dislike the way in which your organisation frames this debate - it's like using the atmosphere at a wine club evening as a rationale for why alcohol laws should be even more liberal.
Whether it's your intention or not, you minimise the harm potential of your drug of choice - why is this a problem? As discussed at great length in this thread, the real people at risk from the adverse effects of cannabis use are teenagers - a group who also tend to particularly attuned to the types of arguments you put forward. I knew many enthusiastic 16-year-old supporters of Norml when I was a teenager.
So by all means, let's have sensible debate about our drug laws and move toward some form of legalisation for cannabis, and probably one or two other recreational drugs while we're at it. But can we please have a little less focus on the utopian paradise that would exist if only more people smoked pot.
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You must be arguing with someone else, as I didn't advocate a war on drugs. Harm reduction does seem like a good basis to modify our drug laws and figure out which should and shouldn't be legalised.
Which is quite different from how the pro-legalisation lobby presents its argument, which is why I'm starting to sound like some sort of anti-fun puritan in response...
We've got data on that puppy. In the decades of extremely restrictive licensing laws in New Zealand, we became pretty much the world's champion home brewers.
Geez, the laws weren't that restrictive before the drinking age was lowered/ supermarket sales started etc- I don't recall visiting gang pads to buy crates of home brew just because all the wholesalers closed at 8...
But there is plenty of evidence that loosening the licensing laws has had the effect of more young people drinking more. Sophisticated cafe society my arse.
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What do you mean by "decriminalisation'?
Fine. Some form of legalisation then. My problem isn't with the idea of cannabis being decriminalised. My problem is with the way in which you have presented your argument - painting a picture of cannabis as a benign drug by constantly comparing it to alcohol and tobacco.
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I would love to know whether anyone has looked at this seriously. If there is a connection, then we could set the health and drug policy lobbyists on to increasing human happiness by creating a more humane society as the prevention for binging.
According to this table the Danes have one of the highest rates of alcohol consumption, but if I recall correctly they keep coming out on top in the happiness tables.
Maybe instead of binging on the weekends they keep themselves in a nice mellow alcohol haze all week.
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I'm not starry-eyed about it, but given New Zealand's very high rates of use under current policy, it's hard to see that use would increase very greatly under a different policy.
Yep, decriminalisation is worth a shot because prohibition has been a failiure. Using Amsterdam as an example, however, conjures up images of a cafe-culture utopia for potheads that I don't think is very helpful in the New Zealand context.
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We need to have some kind of regulation, based on harm reduction, but criminal sanctions against the end user shouldn't be in the mix.
Like he said.
I smoked cannabis as a teenager and it didn't do me any lasting harm - but looking back I can now recognise it did have a more negative than positive effect on my life at the time (as did alcohol). And dope caused or contributed to serious problems for other people I have known.
Cannabis isn't a benign drug and that's what irritates me about the pro-legalisation lobby - all the talk is of how it's not as harmful as alcohol. They are both harmful and we should be trying to get people to use less of both. Putting it any other way is just splitting hairs.
I'm not letting the alcohol industry off the hook either. I like a drink and like the convenience of being able to pick up a bottle of wine with my shopping, but even I can see that allowing supermarket sales has been a disaster from a social harm point of view.
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Why? What makes you so sure things won't happen this way? Why the deep level of mistrust and fear around cannabis?
Hang on a minute, how did we get there?!? Your straw man looks like it's coming together nicely, but it's got nothing to do with my dislike for your arguments.
As I've said, at least twice in this thread, I support decriminalisation. From a harm minimisation view point, it has merit - in drugs education, for example - and it would free up the courts and the police to catch bad arses which would be a good thing.
What do you think is the worst thing that would happen
More people will smoke more dope.
Given I've already addressed why I don't think legalisation will lead to a reduction in alcohol consumption, perhaps you could explain to me what the social benefits of that would be (and "I like getting stoned" isn't a social benefit).