Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: New Drug Harm Index, new problems, in reply to Sacha,
It's an artefact of how it began. There was no way alcohol harm was going to be included under a National government.
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Hard News: Public Address Word of the…, in reply to Lindsay Vette,
Lindsay, I've removed your fourth suggestion - read the rules above. You're also supposed to make each nomination in a separate comment, but I guess I can let you off with that.
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Hard News: The Drugs Meetup, in reply to Geoff Noller,
Russell thank you for this “as usual” excellent summation of an important event / set of issues. I agree generally with your summation of Nick Russell’s comment; the MoH’s obsession with a pharmaceutical model is throttling the nascent development of the availability of medicinal cannabis and the associated regulations, strategies, structures, scheme etc.
I interviewed a patient today for whom the current scheme is actually really working. But now Tilray 25, his prescribed product, is being withheld over a very technical issue with labelling and no one seems inclined to ensure patients get continuity of the only prescribable product in its class.
Then I explained why his current CBD product might disappear too ...
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Hard News: The Drugs Meetup, in reply to Nick Russell,
I can’t help but notice how closely the Ministry of Health’s scheme for medicinal cannabis seems to resemble the same Ministry’s scheme for administrating the Psychoactive Substances Act.
There are certainly some similarities – notably the establishment of a transitional scheme that the system can't get past because product approval is too hard. But the PSA had the problem of trying to regulate substances that were poorly-understood and generally dangerous. With medicinal cannabis, the problem is trying to fit a relatively harmless substance into a pharmaceutical regime where it has no history.
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Hard News: The Drugs Meetup, in reply to ,
I think you’re being a bit harsh on Andrew Little. He can’t just go rouge, he has to listen to his caucus.
Nah. Little's been way out ahead of his caucus on this – Kris Faafoi, his replacement as Minister of Justice has already said he'd vote for a decriminalisation member's bill. Ardern did recently slightly endorse his referendum argument, but that seemed more about saving face for him. Otherwise, no one else in government is saying what he says – that the referendum on cannabis legalisation means the government now can't do any reform at all.
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Chloe Swarbrick’s letter to Health minister Andrew (in two parts):
https://d3nd7i493f0o21.cloudfront.net/assets/chloep1.jpg
https://d3nd7i493f0o21.cloudfront.net/assets/chloep2.jpg
And the minister’s reply:
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Speaker: New Zealand’s far-right hate…, in reply to Carl Bromley,
I know Lee Williams well, i know Kyle Chapman well, and the picture you paint and how you portray and villify these people is very different, and warped from what i personally experience.
So what are they like when they're not being creepy racists and bigots? Do tell.
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Speaker: New Zealand’s far-right hate…, in reply to John Farrell,
Carl Bromley….this Carl Bromley?
Looks that way. Apparently he preaches unabashed disingenuousness.
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Hard News: Cannabis: Who owns Say Nope…, in reply to Worik,
MakeItLegal have filed a return.
Sent it to the wrong address (sigh!) so it is late going up
Not up yet but will be shortly, it is for $104,000(ish)
Ah. And oops!
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Hard News: Cannabis: Who owns Say Nope…, in reply to Marta Rychert,
Thanks for the response, Marta. Much appreciated.
(SAM and Family First – who are behind the “Nope to Dope”; note we refer to “Nope to Dope” as anti-reform group not a “registered campaigner”)
True, but I'm not even sure Say Nope to Dope is a group as such, so much as a brand passed around between the two closely-related promoters.
That Make It legal figure of $96,000 is interesting – I knew they were in the tens of thousands, but not that close to having to file a return.