Legal dope: be careful what you wish for
Smokers of cannabis have every reason to hope their drug may be decriminalised by the new Government. The Labour Party and the Greens have agreed to “have a referendum on legalising the personal use of cannabis at, or by, the 2020 general election”. They have also agreed to “ensure drug use is treated as a health issue”. So one way or another, this drug looks likely to be brought out of the shadows and officially accepted.
But if this is what its enthusiasts have long desired, they should be careful what they wish for.
On Wednesday we carried a report from the Washington Post on the experience of cannabis growers in California, where its cultivation was legalised just over a year ago. There, producers have found themselves on a treadmill of regulations and compliance procedures they did not expect, though suppliers of alcohol and pharmaceuticals everywhere could have warned them.
When any drug becomes legal, state authorities become responsible for its effects on public health and its safe use. New Zealand had a taste of what that means when some synthetic cannabis products were legally sanctioned here briefly a few years ago. Though they had existed in a legal limbo for some years, once they were approved, the outcry at their ill-effects on users, and from communities where outlets were permitted, caused the National Government to think again.
The criminal law is a clear declaration of official disapproval of a drug even if enforcement of the law against it rates low in police priorities. To treat its use as a health issue instead amounts to only partial legalisation. Enforcing proposed limits on its legal cultivation and sale could occupy more police time than a law observed largely in the breach.
California’s state, county and city authorities have taken the past year to draw up regulatory regimes for licensing and sale and their rules can vary widely. San Diego requires outlets to be at least 304m from parks and childcare centres; Los Angeles requires them to have video surveillance. New Zealand’s city and district councils would probably be given discretion to decide where and how many cannabis outlets would be permitted.
In California small-time growers of cannabis for medical patients have been put off by the additional licensing requirements for the recreational market. Legalisation is likely to transform the industry into one dominated by large suppliers with the scale required to afford the regulatory costs, as is the case in the alcohol, tobacco and pharmaceutical industries.
The New Zealand Drug Foundation, a proponent of decriminalising personal use but not commercial supply, advocates restricting the number of plants anyone could grow with a licence and preventing licensed outlets from advertising. Online sales would be permitted but on one website operated by a “non-profit” under contract to the Government.
Is that practical? If not, a referendum vote for “legalisation” could leave New Zealand worse off, with a Government and its regulatory bodies trying to treat cannabis as a health issue while an illegal market continues to meet a demand that state control simply cannot satisfy.