I agree Tom, as I see it, any legislation that might impact how confident patients might feel about openly discussing all aspects…

They have been run as a commercial broadcaster for many years, so if any organisation showers them with cash they will broadcast pretty much anything. Even Density Church at one stage.

to me, but fair point in general

Sorta. I certainly wouldn’t reject decriminalisation – which means a bunch of different things anyway – as an incremental step. I frequently come back to civil unions > marriage equality as a comparison.

The intriguing thing is that…

Graves is basically channelling pro-prohibition campaigner…

He's openly in favour of decriminalization?

What would Key and others like Peter Dunne…

The Irony is, we can grow for trials in NZ, but once those trials…

RNZ Insight: Labour-Hire Companies – Exploitation or Opportunity?

__Workplace Relations Minister Michael Woodhouse declined Insight's request for an interview about labour-hire companies.

A spokesperson from his office said the minister felt it wasn't…

So venturing back to Graeme’s question from another angle. Two key differences between the official endorsement of discretionary enforcement of the smacking law and the official endorsement of discretionary enforcement of cannabis use and possession laws are that firstly, one instance grants police the opportunity…

Even better to be Pakeha. Will leave macron bonus for others but any ethnicity deserves Caps.

I guess my question would be, how coherent can support of an incoherent legislative approach truly be? The first issue with Mr Little’s position is that as Ian pointed out over the page:

Key doesn’t get to govern based on…

One needn’t step too far out onto a limb to posit that the majority support shown for growing small amounts for personal use is in part fueled by people wanting that kiwi mainstay – the tinny house –…

where there has been no change is from our politicians, if anything since Nandor left office and the whole synthetic cannabis…

I hope so, in this case, but I'm not optimistic. It's been a hostage to nonsense and arbitrariness since forever. I can fully see people high up making it their only personal contribution, ever, to have frustrated the progress of cannabis reform.…

I'm not sure if that is true. I'd have thought the opposite. I'd like it to be true, but on evidential grounds (:-)) I believe it to be false. It's much, much harder…

In that context, the list of "no-one wants a business selling X at the end of their street" has a lot of values of X, from aeroplanes, buses and coal to…

Broadly boggling how any political party came to accept consistent messaging as a 'nice to have' rather than a core competency.

J.K's drug of choice, unlike cannabis, is actually physically addictive.

Key was the one interviewed all over…

It’s by the by, I presented the possibility of making our own centre smoke free in anticipation of any suggestion that doing so…

But maybe the elders of your town prefer the challenged to be nicely stoned inside the community centre than wandering the streets annoying…

The Ministry of Health reports that 400,000 New Zealanders used cannabis in the past year. Stats NZ put…

This from Ministry of Justice: Last year, 0.28% of cannabis users were convicted for possession and/or use as their most serious offence.

If he's worried about sending…

I read that as being quite clever – how better to get the govt looking at drug policy or at least the results of a poll like this than using their preferred…

If you know the police disapprove of something legal, and if…

It seems apt to ask "what were they smoking"? That's actually very creative in a perverse sort of way.

That would be useful as an example of perverse incentives in public policy.

Albeit I originally meant "policing…

Ah, gotcha.

Although if you include the harm from making it illegal and policing it, that pushes it much higher (but somehow the legal side of…

No argument there. I'm not suggesting that cannabis is harmless, just that if you…

My point is more that from a "we should ban smoking" perspective, making it legal to smoke something new doesn't make sense.

Well, there are harms from cannabis – but they’re all easier to address when the law isn’t in the way. Māori aren’t only…

I don't think anyone's suggesting compulsion (although maybe if the government thought that it could substitute weed for medical services, it'd legalise it in a flash).

I think you're also seeing an issue that divides The Greens. Some supporters are old school anti-smokers who wouldn't smoke anything…

Maybe the Conservatives, whose only distinguishing feature from National (in my view) seems to be a focus on morality, but if they got over 5% that would not…

“It was an old political truth that any changes to drug law was a poisoned chalice, but this poll well and truly busts that myth. There’s a message here for politicians: they no longer need to fear talking…