Posts by Ross Bell
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to BenWilson,
Purchase age restrictions, marketing controls, mandatory poisons centre helpline on labels, out of dairies. And soon, pre-market testing for harm, consumers will know what they're taking, standards for manufacturing. Lots.
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Pam Corkery not liking me on the facebook:
Gangs wouldn't touch this shit. Their networks are set up for the even more lucrative P. Synthetics aren't made here, and I can't see the likes of Bowden etc running the gauntlet of illegal importing, if it were banned. Synthetics are a crap high and it's only the legality that is selling it. I don't believe we should hide behind "prohibition doesn't work" in this case. In N/A our job is to support the addicts. I believe there's also an obligation by the Drug Foundation and legislators not to create more. And I also believe in the sovereignty of councils to be respected, and that they not be forced to facilitate the sales of legal highs. There's a lot of social factors to get right in New Zealand before moving into decriminalising drugs. Legal equals mandatory for the mainly teen market buying this crap. Push synthetics underground and the appeal would go.
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its easier than admitting the often annoying marijuana legalisation advocates were essentially correct.
Changing the law around cannabis might indeed go a long way to significantly reducing demand for the fake stuff. But it's arguable whether it will do anything for demand for the speedy legals highs (the first, BZP, was no cannabis substitute). Regardless cannabis law reform, we still need controls over new psychoactive substances and this law is a goodie.
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Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Russell Brown,
The PM struck me as equivocal on this this morning (forever the optimist, me) "I think that's a fair question."
http://www.3news.co.nz/PM-Legalising-cannabis-wont-kill-legal-highs/tabid/1607/articleID/340980/Default.aspx -
Hard News: Sorting out our thinking on drugs, in reply to Russell Brown,
Yes, a long way away. This is the biggest problem with the law - the delay in getting the supporting regulations in place. The Ministry of Health blames lack of capacity, but I struggle with that. Regulation-making powers were on the cards very early in this process and drafting could have started as the bill made its way through Parliament.
And it's not as if they were starting from scratch: there were regs being drafted way back when Jim Anderton did the Restricted Substances category. And even before that we saw some draft regs that Chen Palmer :) had started on behalf of the industry (which were quite good).
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Another great post Russell, and good timing. I'm increasingly getting frustrated (can you tell?) by people failing to get schooled on the new law and by their short memories about previous attempts to bans these products.
It's like all the silliness around "herbal highs" going back a decade hadn't happened and that we're dealing with a new phenomenon. (Just think what life would be like if Jim Anderton allowed his Restricted Substances regulations to work).
Politicians are being odd on this too: The minister who saw the law through parliament (Todd McClay) is calling for a ban; and while Labour's Iain Lees-Galloway is wanting the full range of regulations in place now, his caucus colleague Trevor Mallard is saying if the vote was held today, Parliament wouldn't pass the law - so we need some consistency from them.
Peter Dunne is doing a great job in defending the law, and he got some help from the PM on this morning's TV3 news.
(we might need to borrow your OIAs for August Matters of Substance).
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And the first thing to be sold online was? weed
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Speaker: The changing world of drug policy, in reply to George Darroch,
Hi George - we had a crack at that here: The Wellington Declaration
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Apropos new year's eve: I recall TVNZ ran a live music show to countdown midnight. T'was about early 1980s. On this particular show (mid-1980s), everyone got really pissed and Andrew Fagan and Karen Hay (host of RWP at the time) pashed. I think they did NYE music video shows in subsequent years.