Posts by Pete George
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Whale Oil has just posted: http://www.whaleoil.co.nz/2014/04/colorados-predicted-crime-wave-legalisation/
I commented there and the same applies here:
But there seems to be no political will to address it apart from the ALCP. The Greens seen lukewarm at best, it doesn't fit with their marketing strategy. Cunliffe says Labour won't decriminalise. No sign of anything from National on it. Winston and the rest aren't likely to do anything.
So we have momentum around the world, we have growing acknowledgement that things aren't working here as they are but no sign of any change.
Would this be a good issue to be driven non-partisan by the blogosphere?
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There's not much sign of a will on the surface for trying to address the cannabis anomalies.
Greens have had medicinal use of cannabis in their members bill mix in the past but Russel Norman stated recently that cannabis won't be a priority for them this election.
But I doubt that decriminalisation will be one of the top ten. But, that’s up to the party to decide, but I doubt that will be.
Cunliffe was quoted on this recently:
“They can put on the table what they want to put on the table, but Labour’s policy is not to decriminalise cannabis,” says Mr Cunliffe.
I can't see how it will be addressed unless it manages to get into Parliament via a members bill. I've just searched "proposed members' bills" and there's nothing under cannabis or marijuana.
Searching under Bills only comes up with Metiria Turei's Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Bill that didn't get past it's first reading in 2009.
Now "“It won’t be one of our major priorities, but it is our policy and we’re not ashamed of that,” she says.
It's unlikely any of the National, NZ First, ACT, Maori or Mana parties will push it.
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I asked Peter Dunne some questions related to this recently.
1. You recently attended a United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs Meeting, Vienna, Austria and spoke about New Psychoactive Substances. What reaction did you get in Vienna about New Zealand's Psychoactive Substances Act?
The response was positive and interested. I had separate meetings with the European Union, the Dutch, the British, the Americans the Australians and the head of the UN Commission where our legislation was the major topic. All are watching to learn from us, most we believe we are on the right track.
2. Are you happy with how the implementation of the Act is progressing?
I am very frustrated by the lack of response from local government. Only 5 of 71 Councils have so far prepared their local policies. Their tardiness is the major reason for the current public controversy.
3. Was the relationship between cannabis use and synthetic substitutes discussed, especially the effects of cannabis being illegal encouraging drug users to use legal but unknown drugs?
There was not much discussion about cannabis in Vienna, other than general confirmation that there should be no legal relaxation.
4. How are other countries dealing with the cannabis/legal high issues?
Many are applying bans, although all acknowledge that they are ineffective and merely drive things underground. That is why most are looking at what we are doing. In general, they seem to be about we were 2 to 3 years ago in this debate.
5. Is anything being done in New Zealand or being considered to being done about the claimed anomaly between far better known and claimed less harmful cannabis use remaining illegal while synthetic drugs are given approval to be sold.
In a word, no.
6. What are the chances of New Zealand's laws relating to cannabis being reviewed in the next three years.
Zero I think.
7. Now your Psychotic Substances Act has been successfully introduced and is being implemented do you have any plans for or do you want to try and address cannabis or any other recreational psychotic drug issues?
It is my personal view that is possible that in the future the regulated market approach could be applied to cannabis, but that is not a priority. In any case, all the pharmacological and toxicologist and international advice I receive strongly suggests cannabis would fail the low risk test.
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"I suspect that various folk that collect polls (e.g. David Farrar?) may already have the data"
@dpfdpf Apr 2 "I have all the public poll data back to 1974. I should point out I didn't start collecting them in 1974 though, as I was just 7 :-)"
Some are having another whinge about polls at The Standard. Does anyone know if there's been any polling done on whether people want polls?
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Hard News: Gower Speaks, in reply to Russell Brown,
Good offer Russell. What would be good is a person (or preferable persons) available to post (here or a specialist site?) an expert analysis of every poll. Encourage anyone to promote this information as a reference alongside any poll comments/posts. Get the information out there for anyone who's interested and promote it to journalists to improve their working knowledge of poll analysis.
One thing I'm targeting is promoting and linking to quality information in any forum I see discussion on a topic where I know a source of detail or expert opinion.
A strength of a maturing traditional/social media is the interchange of information and promotion of informed discussion.
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I don't think sub 1% parties should be discounted. It makes a difference whether they are wobbling from 0-0.5 or wavering from 0.5 to 1. Small parties can move late in an election and it could make quite a difference whether Mana, ACT or UF look possible for picking up a list seat off the party vote.
Gavin White says in his latest post:
"Here's another angle on this - again assuming that they (Internet Party) don't win an electorate, has a party ever increased its vote from below 1% at the beginning of election year to over 5% by election day? In our first poll of 2002, United Future polled 0.3%, and they were below 1% in every poll that year until the election campaign, where they polled 6.7% in the actual election."
http://sayit.co.nz/blog/what-chance-do-internet-party-and-conservatives-really-haveAnd noting the appearance of the Internet Party (under 1%) and tracking their progress is of interest.
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Hard News: Gower Speaks, in reply to steve black,
steve, JonathanN has used the Colmar results which had 7% for NZ First, not the 4.9% they got with Reid Research.
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Hard News: Gower Speaks, in reply to Peter Calder,
Peter, I may not have expressed that clearly but with a sample size of 1000 the margin is +/- 3.1 at 50% (with 95% accuracy) so that's 46.9-53.1 with a one in twenty chance of being outside that range.
And it's +/-1.34 at 4.9% which is the example I gave except 1.4 is slightly inaccurate (I calculated that elsewhere and may have got something wrong) but the point I made remains.
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Hard News: Gower Speaks, in reply to Sacha,
This is what you want?
National 45.9% +/- 3.1%
Labour 31.2% +/- 2.9%
Greens 11.2% +/- 2.0%
NZ First 4.9% +/- 1.3%
Maori 1.5% +/- 0.8%
Mana 1.1% +/- 0.6%
United Future 0.1% +/- 0.2%
Act 1.1% +/- 0.6%
Conservative 1.1% +/- 0.8%
Internet 0.4% +/- 0.4% -
Hard News: Gower Speaks, in reply to Sacha,
That page isn't great for me either. The basics are here:
http://yournz.org/2014/03/30/polls-one-news-colmar-and-3-newsreid-research/