Posts by Joe Boden
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Hard News: These things we must now change, in reply to Ian Williamson,
Is there any information about why Friday 15th March? Was this atrocity intended to bury the climate action coverage? Could the murderer have been manged by the enemies of climate action, Mercer & Putin's cyber armies, or am I way of track?
The Police would have been quite busy with the Climate March, so that may have had something to do with it.
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Hard News: The korero we've been waiting…, in reply to Russell Brown,
That's alarming. I'd formed the impression that they were making reasonable progress.
Things looked a little better to me after I attended the summer school event in Wellington last week, but there is definitely some cause for concern.
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Hard News: The korero we've been waiting…, in reply to Sacha,
Seriously, is MOJ planning on not planning? Who let them think that's acceptable?
They are planning on planning (along with MoH). However, I'm not sure that they are entirely confident that a fully formed plan will be available within the very tight time frame.
We've got about 18 months before the election, so the plan will have to be fully formed and in place within a year or so from now in order for the electorate to be fully informed.
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Notably, an even greater proportion of respondents – 78% – want to be voting in 2020 on a law already passed by Parliament.
Doug Sellman, Simon Adamson and I met with MoJ about this a couple of weeks ago. We flatly told them that going into the referendum without a fully-formed plan would be a disaster. I'll continue to harp on this for the forseeable future.
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Hard News: We have to rethink the annual…, in reply to andin,
So experts in many fields, I would think, made a recommendation which they thought would benefit our society as a whole was just ignored because some business men didnt like it. As it would affect their industries "bottom line"?
Now that, is some arseoholic thinking, right there.A lot of policy analysts were taken along for the ride by business, also. In 2011 I spoke to a group of policy analysts at the request of the Health Promotion Agency, and I told them flatly that the Alcohol Reform Bill would do almost no good because there were no reforms in it. They were not very pleased with my presentation that day.
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Hard News: We have to rethink the annual…, in reply to andin,
An entirely reasonable idea, I just wonder how the liquor industry would like it. Not much I imagine with their work hat on, maybe a bit more with their caring parent hat on. A fragmented society breeds fragmented people hmmm.
I was just looking at the figures in the post. The Stuff article reads 10000 plants while the police info request reads 9000 plants taken. But hey whats a 1000 plants between police report and blazing headline.
The Law Commission recommended increasing the minimum age of purchase for alcohol to 20 years in 2010. This was roundly ignored during the discussions around "Alcohol Law Reform" in 2011, primarily due to industry pressure (I believe).
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Hard News: We have to rethink the annual…, in reply to Russell Brown,
There's a forthcoming amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act which will explicitly guide police discretion away from prosecution where a health-based response would be more appropriate, or where prosecution would not be in the public interest. It's a pretty big deal.
My reading of that is the amendment is that it requires the Police to justify using prosecution, which in a sense is de facto decriminalization (which you already know I'm in favor of).
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Hard News: We have to rethink the annual…, in reply to Nick Russell,
Hence my concern about giving the Police more discretion. On the whole I think it would be better if they had less.
When you give the Police full discretion, they tend to continue arresting those of us with higher levels of skin pigmentation...
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Hard News: Cannabis reform is a serious…, in reply to Russell Brown,
I was recently interviewed for Patrick Gower's upcoming documentary about cannabis in New Zealand (in which I state that I would support a highly regulated legal regime!). His producer was telling me about some other interviewees who are already involved in growing, and they seem to be gearing up to be making some big money. It could just be wishful thinking... time will tell, I guess.
I wish I could be more optimistic, but if we look at what came out of Alcohol law reform, the only substantive thing we got was a private member's bill that reduced the allowable BAC to 0.05... and that was a total fluke.
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Hard News: Cannabis reform is a serious…, in reply to ,
I've been invited to have a discussion with some folks from the MoJ who are spearheading the development of the referendum, so I'm hoping to be able press our points with them in person.
A two-stage referendum sounds like a good idea, even if it is run at the same time. Hypothetical: Question 1: change or no change? Question 2: If change, rank choice for options for change. If there is a majority in favor of change on Q1, then the rank choice result for Q2 will indicate which direction we will go in.