Posts by Russell Brown
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Hard News: The korero we've been waiting…, in reply to Joe Boden,
They are planning on planning (along with MoH). However, I'm not sure that they are entirely confident that a fully formed plan will be available within the very tight time frame.
That's alarming. I'd formed the impression that they were making reasonable progress.
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Hard News: Music: Milk & Honey, in reply to andin,
Im wondering has he ever been to a music festival as a punter.
Probably never. That's partly what annoyed me about him sounding off on Twitter – this is the music community attending to its own business and the very last thing it needs is to be inflicted with ignorant trolls.
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Hard News: Music: Milk & Honey, in reply to Glenn Pearce,
Big shout out to the organisers and volunteers of Girls Rock! Camp, my daughter attended this year and loved it. I don’t think I’ll be getting my garage back anytime soon.
Ha ha – that's great! And yes, the women behind Girls Rock Camp are awesome.
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Hard News: Always asking the wrong…, in reply to Shaun Lott,
But revenue collection is surely a consequence rather than an aim of the legislation?
I think so too. But it's also a consequence of shifting the trade away from the black market, which seems to be what's not happening in California.
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Seventy five scholars and clinicians have signed a letter condemning the “junk science” in ‘Tell Your Children’, Alex Berenson’s alarmist new book about cannabis.
Family First has been bragging that it's bringing Berenson to New Zealand.
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This is the study that Chloe mentioned was forthcoming: a big meta-analysis that finds that tougher policies do not deter young people from using cannabis.
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Sigh …
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Hard News: We have to rethink the annual…, in reply to Simon Lyall,
I think you are way too dismissive of Sandra's post. You have to remember that less than 20% of adults use cannabis annually. Many of the rest of them will largely have negative associations with it.
I realise it's not the point you're making, but I do actually empathise with Sandra on the element of trespass. I get how that would feel violating.
The solution, of course, would be to remove the need for clandestine growing on other people's property by letting people grow a couple of plants at home.
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Hard News: We have to rethink the annual…, in reply to Simon Lyall,
I now understand some of the posts here may be influenced by posts over there.
Heh. You're saying people are under the influence of cannabispolicydebate?
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Hard News: We have to rethink the annual…, in reply to Joe Boden,
My reading of that is the amendment is that it requires the Police to justify using prosecution, which in a sense is de facto decriminalization (which you already know I’m in favor of).
Yep, it is, for all drugs. I was astonished that the Parliamentary National Party banged on about the very limited statutory defence in the new medicinal cannabis being “decriminalisation by stealth”, but had very little to say about a measure that actually did fit that description.
But I’m very conscious that the undesirable trends in North American youth cannabis use that various people have highlighted largely took hold under regimes of decriminalisation and/or permissive medicinal regulation. And that they've slowed, halted or reversed under legalisation,
Canada has now legalised with the express aim of addressing problems with youth use and I think there’s decent evidence that half-pie measures are the wrong way in the case of cannabis.
I don’t think a Uruguay-style government monopoly will work in New Zealand. That came out of two factors: the first being that Uruguay already had (but has partially abandoned) a state monopoly on liquor supply; and the second being that the existing black market was full of shitty weed from Paraguay, so even the government weed was attractive.
I’m interested to see if there’s a sustainable path to Small Cannabis, basically.
