Pubdate: Sat, 4 Jul 2009 Source: Hawke's Bay Today (New Zealand) Copyright: 2009 APN News & Media Ltd Contact: http://hbtoday.co.nz/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2947 Author: Doug Laing Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/opinion.htm (Opinion) IT'S TIME TO GET SERIOUS ON CANNABIS THE haste with which Parliament booted out the Green Party's Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Bill this week was a sign of the apathy, and hypocrisy, in the debate over the insidious weed. Or, more to the point, the lack of debate. Given that the Greens had been puffing away at this for three years, this was a grand opportunity to finally debate this issue in full, and blow cannabis off the scene altogether. Simply, cannabis - or more specifically the misuse of it - is a chronically dangerous blight on our society, and it is high time we moved to knock it on the head. The whole cannabis issue has been seriously clouded by the argument over whether it should be legalised, ignoring the argument that by an overwhelming weight of evidence it should be made even more illegal than it is. Or should that be more illegal than what the legislation says, for what has happened is that the acceptance-of or lack of strident opposition to cannabis has, by some form of default, legitimised it. At least, it seems more legal than both alcohol and smoking tobacco. As one example, it's not uncommon for people to be fined $400 for breaching liquor bans, by having on their person as little as a part-bottle or can, but the going-rate for a joint in your pocket is somewhere less than $200. You lose your driving licence almost automatically and get fined hundreds of dollars for driving with too much alcohol in your system. Yet, if you smell of dope when you're stopped at a checkpoint, but don't have any of the offensive material on you or in the vehicle, and haven't been drinking, apart from being searched, you're pretty-much free, man. And we all know about tobacco smokers. Those horrible people who we've kicked out into the rain because of their selfish disrespect for the health of anyone else by puffing all that passive smoke around the place. Yet dope-smoking seems to be treated as simply something that some people do. Perhaps it's more acceptable just because they make the choice to go out in the rain. Odd decisions like "choosing" to smoke in the rain are, however, a minor consequence of cannabis use, for it is painfully obvious to those who work at the back-end of life's problems that cannabis is extremely dangerous, particularly in the wrong hands. For example, a senior police officer is reported this weekend in Hawke's Bay Today confirming what a lot of people already know. Vast numbers of burglaries are being committed in Hawke's Bay by young people solely to pay for dope - ahead, even, of their daily bread. They will pinch your $2000 laptop, and trade it for a $20 tinnie, and maybe chuck-in your digital camera so the dealer will wipe the $60 off the tick-list. Young people, many themselves victimised by common cannabis use by parents and others at home, are becoming a lost generation in a cloud of cannabis smoke, which is either a symptom of or a cause of their problems, depending on your take - a word I use in both the English and Maori sense. Two months ago Napier was pitched into absolute horror, when a man shot the police officers who came to search his home, because it was being used for dealing cannabis. The shooting would not have happened if people weren't dealing dope, if people weren't buying it, if people weren't using it. It is all very well to blame, but the debate on what to do about it has to consider the history of cannabis use in this country. Who introduced it here? It was, after all, once upon a time, almost exclusive to the academia and surfies. Universities of the 1960s were awash with it, apparently, and the odd VW Combi had more smoke coming out the window than the exhaust. Its heaviest use in 2009 is at the other end of the spectrum, often habitually toked from dawn to dusk to fill in the day for the unemployed and relatively helpless. But an interesting thing happened the other day, and a few boys were given the boot from a well-performing school, for smoking cannabis. Happens in every school, someone said. But shouldn't society be getting its heads out of the clouds, and doing something about it? - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake