‘Our drug laws do not work’
Being the public face of cannabis reform has been Jamie Dombroski’s reality for years.
As a candidate for the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party, he has stood in the New Plymouth electorate in the last two general elections.
He said it’s the only issue he believed in with every fibre of his being.
‘‘I saw a problem and thought I could sit here and b.... about it or do something about it.’’
He intends to put his hand up again in September and believes New Zealand needs to re-consider its long-held position on the way cannabis is viewed in society.
‘‘Originally it was all about freedom, but now for me it’s about fixing society.’’
Dombroski said cannabis had always been a part of his life and he recalled trying it for the first time as a 16-year-old.
‘‘I was pretty young when I noticed other people dabbling with it,’’ he said.
He described alcohol as his ‘‘first drug’’ but as he was under 18 of years, he found it quite hard to get his hands on it, whereas cannabis was more plentiful in supply.
After starting off as an occasional dope smoker, Dombroski ’’really got into it’’ and by his early 20s was smoking cannabis every day.
‘‘I was using it as a way to escape from the reality of my life,’’ he said.
‘‘It was all about trying switch my mind off.’’
Dombroski said the drug provided him with health benefits as well, which included relief from muscle pain and stomach ailments, including nausea.
‘‘For me it was available and it worked, so why not?,’’ he said.
Dombroski suffers from depression, a condition which at times has kept him house-bound.
Now on prescribed medication and in therapy, the 31-year-old to smokes cannabis about five times a year.
‘‘Every so often I would think ‘I could go to jail for this’,’’ he said.
However, Dombroski said he did not believe the current cannabis laws mattered to the majority of people who used the drug.
‘‘Cannabis use is illegal but people still do it. The penalties don’t mean anything.’’
People caught in possession of the class C drug can incur maxi- mum penalties of three months jail and/or a $500 fine.
Dombroski said the time is right for cannabis laws to loosen, beginning with the decriminalisation of the drug.
He said he knew from his personal experience about how financially stretched the mental health system was, so the potential tax take the government could get from the sale of cannabis, if it became legal, provided one avenue to inject cash into the service.
This, along with increased education, would be more worthwhile to assist people who might have drug dependency issues, rather than leaving it up to the justice system to deal with, he said.
‘‘Instead of addressing the problem, we are locking up the problem,’’ he said.
‘‘It’s about reforming the law, that’s the key part. It’s broken, prohibition has never worked.’’