Hard News by Russell Brown

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Hard News: Those Men Again

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  • Steve Parks,

    Doh!
    Comparisons. Reasonable comparisons could be made...

    Wellington • Since May 2007 • 1165 posts Report Reply

  • BenWilson,

    I thought compressions worked just as well. Laws should be compressible, it shows pattern. Your drug laws should be able to be compressed down to "Everything should be allowed, and clearly labelled, and you shouldn't be in charge of anything dangerous if it impairs you". Having 4 different categories, with descriptions of exactly what active chemical and it's analogues, because a description of the effects would have to clearly either include alchohol, tobacco and coffee, or exclude everything with analogous effects, is hard to compress. It's piecemeal, random and shit.

    Auckland • Since Nov 2006 • 10657 posts Report Reply

  • Graeme Edgeler,

    Yikes! That's amazing Graeme - got a link?

    No.

    It's a stat I made up. Well, calculated.

    $21m was the proposed initial cost (the Auditor-General made them cut it back to $15m) of WFF advertising (I could find a link for this, but won't). There are approx 1.4m households in New Zealand (I don't have a link, but am confident - I rang up NZPost and they told me.

    $21m/1.4m is $15 per household - more than enough for an NZ Post overnight-courier-addressee's-signature-required-A4-CourierPost delivery.

    Wellington, New Zealand • Since Nov 2006 • 3215 posts Report Reply

  • Neil Morrison,

    Neil, could you please enlighten me as to which drugs are taken with the deliberate intent to drive less well?

    I took a shortcut. People take recreational drugs to alter their brain state and that (usually) entails producing a brain state less well adapted to driving. Usually, since people have pointed out that cocaine has been used to enhance the driving skills of formula one drivers. Personally I wouldn't buy that argument from boy racers who don't have quite the same skill set.

    Surely what matters is whether a particular drug taken by the potential driver is likely to cause adverse effects that would make the driver an unreasonable danger on the roads. What difference does it make whether the drug is prescriptive, non-prescriptive, legal or illegal?

    My understanding of the proposed legislation is that it is the degree of impairment that will be the most significant factor, whatever the nature of the drug.

    What I see as different is the intent. There's a difference between drinking alcohol and driving and taking prescription medication. In one case you are deliberately choosing to drive impaired. In the other case, if one follows the advice of the prescription but still wind up impaired, then that is inadvertent.

    What the Greens seem to be upset about is that people could get nabbed for dope. But that is a completely different issue. It's illegal and if you use then drive then you should suffer the consequences. I personally favor decriminalization but at the moment it's illegal. There's also an underlying feeling that pot heads consider being stoned to have no adverse effect on driving - my drug is superior to yours, sort of thing.

    Also, there may be a bit of medications coming from "Big Pharma" and so are suspect compared to "natural" drugs. Like how they don't want natural medicines regulated in the same way as regular ones.

    So on the one hand the Greens don't want a distinction (recreational and prescription drugs) and the other hand they do (natural vs. regular drugs). The thinking is the same in both cases.

    Since Nov 2006 • 932 posts Report Reply

  • JP Hansen,

    OT (but I bet it won't be off-topic in the next blog), but Banks is back as AKLs mayor. :-/

    Waitakere • Since Nov 2006 • 206 posts Report Reply

  • Kyle Matthews,

    $21m/1.4m is $15 per household - more than enough for an NZ Post overnight-courier-addressee's-signature-required-A4-CourierPost delivery.

    While not disagreeing with the original point about what is essentially taxpayer funded, under-handed, vote for the political party that bought you this policy advertising...

    I suspect you could come up with similar figures to this for many major companies advertising their products, who could just as easily advertise with a maildrop.

    There are reasons why companies use TV advertising above those methods however. I throw away anything in my mailbox that looks like advertising by default for example.

    Since Nov 2006 • 6243 posts Report Reply

  • Philip Worthington,

    I was intrigued to find out the source of the transcript. It looks to be the official Hansard which up till now has been provided only for the proceedings of the House & not Select Committees.

    Parliament's website has this to say on this development:

    "During 2007 some evidence and advice released by the Commerce Committee and the Justice and Electoral Committee will be available here. Selected papers from other select committees may also be published on this page."

    http://www.parliament.nz/en-NZ/SC/Papers/

    This is a great development in open democracy which I hope Parliament will extend to all select committee proceedings as happens in other countries

    Wellington • Since Oct 2007 • 1 posts Report Reply

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