Why we’ll win the drug law war
About three weeks ago, a slim majority voted against a proposed law to legalise and control cannabis. Prohibitionists have taken this to mean all potential for drug law reform must be vacuum-sealed and swept under the carpet.
Others have lamented that this very niche, specific draft law was simply not the perfect version they wanted. More still are wondering where on earth this so-close, ‘‘non-binding’’ referendum result leaves us in an area of law so scary to so many politicians.
As the Green Party’s freshly reappointed drug law reform spokesperson, and someone who dedicated the past few years to negotiating this law and then campaigning for it, here’s my take: we lost the battle, but we will win the war.
Cannabis might be the most ubiquitous illicit substance in this country, with 80 per cent of New Zealanders having used it by the time they’re 21, and up to half amillion using it regularly, but it’s only one small stitch in an immense fabric of failing drug laws.
The conversation sparked by the legal regulation debate forced even the ardent prohibitionists to shift their frame of reference out of the criminal system into one of rehabilitation. It’s now mainstream to recognise that a substance is one thing, and our legal response to it can either increase or decrease that harm.
Three years ago, Aotearoa New Zealand was in an entirely different headspace. The conversations I was having on breakfast television and talkback radio were light years behind the comprehension of nuance, complexity and reality we’re at today. To finally get political movement on cannabis when we were negotiating to form a government with Labour after the 2017 election, the Greens suggested that we take it out of the hands of politicians and into the public sphere.
By the time the ink was drying on the confidence and supply agreement, which included a commitment to a referendum on cannabis, the synthetics crisis was rearing its ugly head, claiming the lives of over 50 New Zealanders. Our outgoing prime minister had declared the drugs and deaths amatter of ‘‘personal responsibility’’, and on behalf of the Greens, I began calling for a decriminalisation of all drugs; to treat this as a health issue.
We didn’t get there, but we did manage to negotiate a radical change to section 7 of the archaic Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, requiring police to consider the public interest and therapeutic approaches before prosecuting for possession of small quantities of drugs.
In the months following, news broke of young people dying in New South Wales, having taken dodgy drugs at music festivals. I worked with NGO Know Your Stuff to call for legalisation of drug-checking services in Aotearoa – something recommended by NSW’s chief coroner to prevent further unnecessary deaths – sowe never needed to face such a tragedy.
Again, change was shut down by politicking: this time, NZ First. We wrapped up Parliament mid-2020 with me delivering a 6000-strong petition demanding action ahead of the 2020-21 summer festival season, and a health select committee report is due in the comingweeks.
Having worked closely with outgoing police minister Stuart Nash on legal regulation of drugchecking services, there’s some really lowhanging fruit for our new Government to tick off this side of Christmas. But where does that leave everything else, especially cannabis?
When I was 7, the Law Commission delivered a 2001 report calling, by any other name, for the decriminalisation of drugs: to repeal and replace the Misuse of Drugs Act. In the past two years, another two far more transformational reports – He Ara Oranga/Mental Health and Addiction Inquiry, andTuruki! Turuki!/Safe and Effective Justice Review – have been delivered to Labour Party ministers, for health and justice respectively. The latter is so bold as to suggest legal regulation of all drugs.
Nobody, from fundamentalist opposition through to Labourministers, can seriously suggest that a narrow loss for one specific, niche law on cannabis shuts down dialogue on how we tackle all drug harm, from alcohol to methamphetamine. Such a referendum result does not erase the detailed expert reports that politicians commissioned to help build a mandate for change.
They’ve got that mandate as elected representatives; as people who campaigned to improve lives, reduce the prison population and improvemental health; as decision-makers responsible to heed the science, let alone the science they asked for.
It’s leadership. It’s time to repeal and replace the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, lest we keep messily and unsatisfactorily carving out bits here for medicinal cannabis, there for drugchecking, here for hemp products, there for synthetics and methamphetamine harm.
The referendum debate highlighted amajor area of consensus: New Zealanders want drugs treated as a health issue, and there’s work to do on the how. That’s not coming off the agenda.