Media Release

Media Release 23 April 2019
In a shock poll result, less than 20% (one in five) New Zealanders support legalisation of marijuana, but there is strong support for lifting restrictions for medical use (65%), according to an independent poll of 1,000 people by Curia Market Research. 7% support the law as it stands. There is also significant concerns about the mental health and societal costs of cannabis.

“This poll removes the smokescreen and confusion that drug advocates have created with the mixing of terms ‘medicinal’, ‘decriminalise’ and ‘legalise’. It is clear that Kiwis strongly support a compassionate response to those in real need with a cautious and researched approach around cannabis medicine, but when they thoughtfully consider the real implications of legalising recreational use, they completely reject the proposal – and rightly so,” says a spokesperson for the SayNopeToDope campaign.

Weakest support for legalising marijuana came from National voters (7%), NZ First voters (19%) and Labour voters (28%). Significantly, only 53% of Green voters supported legalisation.

The independent polling, commissioned by the SayNopeToDope Campaign also found:

• 85% think that cannabis use can damage the brains of young people under the age of 25.
• 81% think that drivers using cannabis are more likely to cause accidents.
• 63% think that cannabis users aged under 25 are less likely to get a job (only 20% think it makes no difference)
• 49% think that cannabis usage will increase if restrictions are reduced, 35% think usage would remain the same and 6% decrease.
• 22% think that tobacco companies are pushing for restrictions on cannabis to be lifted, 42% are unsure, and 36% disagree.

“Evidence shows that marijuana – which has skyrocketed in average potency over the past decades – is addictive and harmful to the human brain, especially when used by adolescents. In US states that have already legalised the drug, there has been an increase in drugged driving crashes, youth marijuana use, and costs that far outweigh tax revenues from marijuana. These states have seen a black market that continues to thrive, sustained marijuana arrest rates, and tobacco company investment in marijuana. Portugal has seen a rise in the prevalence of every illicit psychoactive substance (affected by the weight of cannabis use in those aged 15-74) in the last five years.”

“A sensible drug policy should recognise three pillars – similar to the successful approach towards SmokeFree NZ:

• supply reduction – target the dealers and suppliers
• demand reduction – promote a drug-free culture
• harm reduction – ensure addiction services & support are available for those who genuinely want to quit. The primary purpose is not to keep users using, but reduce and help them exit drug use.

A smart arrest policy can both provide a societal stamp of disapproval and provide an opportunity to intervene and stop the progression of use. Keeping marijuana illegal through an appropriate application of the laws that cater for ‘youthful indiscretions’ and which focus on supply and dealers is as much a public safety policy as it is a public health policy,” says a spokesperson for the SayNopeToDope campaign.

“But at a time when New Zealand’s mental health system is bursting at the seams, we should go no further and legitimise a mind-altering product which will simply add to social harm?”

The SayNopeToDope Campaign supports the rapid expansion of further quality research into the components of the marijuana plant for delivery via non-smoked forms, and the establishment of a programme that allows seriously ill and terminal patients (including children) to obtain other non-smoked components of marijuana approved and listed by the Ministry of Health via their doctor – with appropriate funding and pricing for patients. Neurologists, palliative care and pain specialists should have a key role in this process.

“Ultimately, the medical profession should be dictating the direction of this debate, not politicians, an anecdotal-wielding lobby, and marijuana advocates with a hidden agenda.”

The nationwide poll was carried out at the beginning of this month and has a margin of error of +/- 3.1%. READ THE FULL RESULTS

Media Release 10 February 2019
A billboard campaign is warning families and encouraging them to think deeply about the possible legalisation of marijuana, and to vote against the proposal in the 2020 referendum. The first billboard has been put up in Christchurch, with further billboards to be used around the country.

The SayNopeToDope Campaign has also released a 24-page Briefing for Families, and there are also 1-page Briefing Sheets on specific issues.

Topics covered include:

• what are the known health harms of marijuana?
• why is the referendum much more than just being able to ‘smoke a joint’?
• the problems with statements like “the war on drugs has failed” and “it’s a health issue, not a legal issue”
• what effect will legalisation have in the workplace, on road safety, with pregnant mums and young people, on family violence & child abuse, and will it really get rid of the ‘black market’ and gang involvement?
• is growing marijuana ‘green’?
• what’s the next step in this drug agenda?

“Evidence shows that marijuana – which has skyrocketed in average potency over the past decades – is addictive and harmful to the human brain, especially when used by adolescents. In US states that have already legalised the drug, there has been an increase in drugged driving crashes, youth marijuana use, and costs that far outweigh tax revenues from marijuana. These states have seen a black market that continues to thrive, sustained marijuana arrest rates, and tobacco company investment in marijuana. Portugal has seen a rise in the prevalence of alcohol and tobacco consumption and of every illicit psychoactive substance (affected by the weight of cannabis use in those aged 15-74) in the last five years,” says a spokesperson for the SayNopeToDope campaign.

“Families simply don’t want marijuana plants being grown next door by dope dealers in view of the children, tinnie houses on street corners and pot shops in local shopping areas, an increase in drugged driving, or marijuana being disguised as lollies and edibles as has happened overseas. Colorado, for example, has more marijuana businesses than McDonalds and Starbucks combined.”

“Legalising marijuana and the rise of Big Marijuana is the wrong path if we care about public health, public safety, and about our young people. There are too many health risks including the effect of marijuana on cognitive ability, cardiac function and psychosis.”

“It remains highly ironic that at the same time as we tear the labelling off cigarette packets, price them out of existence, and ban them from being smoked within breathing space of any living creature, supporters of marijuana are peddling the same myths that we believed for far too long about tobacco – that marijuana is harmless. But of course, a new business market is all very exciting – especially one based on addiction. Could our current mental health services cope? They can’t even cope now.”

www.SayNopeToDope.org.nz will inform families about the attempts to legalise marijuana, and to help them speak up in the public debate.
ENDS

DRUG FREE AUSTRALIA 30 January 2019
Drug Free Australia has been very concerned about the national pill testing push within Australia and New Zealand which has chiefly been led here by members of an organisation, Harm Reduction Australia.

Our concerns have pivoted on the fact that MDMA, which is a most sought-after substance at music festivals, has been the substance responsible for almost all deaths within Australia, rather than impurities in party pills or other illicit drugs in the pill which are unknown to the user.  To that end I am communicating with you as a New Zealand Parliamentarian.

We are urging you, as a parliamentarian who makes evidence-based decisions for the well-being of your nation’s individuals, to totally reject any further discussion on pill testing in New Zealand until such time as its advocates have demonstrated from available NZ Coroners’ reports that 

1. it is NOT the substance MDMA, or MDMA in a polydrug use context, which is chiefly responsible for the many NZ deaths
   OR 

1. that most of the deaths are alternately from MDMA consumed in amounts beyond what is considered normal for recreational use

In Australia we have previously made our view known to Australian politicians, a view which has been backed by strong evidence from the medical literature, and this has now led to many parliamentarians here no longer considering pill testing as an option.  In our communications we had asserted that MDMA is the sole drug responsible for many of the deaths, but has also contributed via polydrug use to many others.

We have cited the only Australian study on ecstasy-related deaths.  This studied 82 deaths over a five-year period (2001-2005)[i] where MDMA was the sole drug responsible for 23% of the deaths, with another 59% due to MDMA taken in combination with other licit and illicit drugs, totaling 82% of the 82 deaths.  Coroners’ reports in more recent years, as reported in the media, concur.  Of the five festival deaths in NSW this summer, ecstasy has been implicated as the cause in all five, according to Professor Andrew Dawson, as reported recently by the Daily Telegraph.

We have also alerted our politicians to the fact that most MDMA deaths are not overdoses.  As DanceSafe[ii], an American harm reduction group has persuasively outlined:

Overdosing means taking a higher than appropriate dose of a medicine or a drug. In other words, it simply means taking too much or taking a “dose” that is “over” the proper therapeutic or recreational amount. The association of the word “overdose” with “drug-related death” is primarily reflective of heroin and opiate-related deaths, where the majority of fatalities may, in fact, result of overdosing. However, MDMA-related deaths are rarely the result of an overdose, and calling them overdoses is dangerous and negligent. It sends the message that “you will be okay as long as you don’t take too much,” which is simply not true. In the vast majority of cases of MDMA-related deaths, where no other drugs were found in the person’s bloodstream, the deceased had taken a dose within the normal range for appropriate therapeutic or recreational use.[iii]

Even the USA’s Drug Policy Alliance, with whom all Australian and New Zealand pill testing advocates are ideologically aligned, asserts the same[iv], stating that most deaths are not overdoses.  Also, on this same issue we point to evidence in the medical literature, such as the British Journal of Anaesthesia[v] which records that:

Typically, after oral ingestion (75–150 mg), desired effects begin within 1 h and last 4–6 h. Blood levels in asymptomatic users and those with serious side-effects are often similar, suggesting that adverse reactions are likely to relate to the circumstances in which the drug is taken, and that there may also be an idiosyncratic component. A number of fatalities have been reported with blood levels of 0.1–2.1 mg litre⁻¹. However, a case of a deliberate overdose of MDMA in which the blood level reached 4.3 mg litre⁻¹ with no more than mild sinus tachycardia and a degree of somnolence has been reported. Another analytically documented overdose resulted in a plasma MDMA of 7.72 mg litre⁻¹, the highest recorded in a surviving patient, with just a ‘hangover’, tachycardia and hypertension.31 The highest level reported in association with multi-organ failure in a subsequent survivor was 7 mg litre⁻¹.

Some observations regarding MDMA deaths are that many are from taking a single pill, and can be described as more akin to an idiosyncratic individual allergic reaction to MDMA, making first-time ecstasy use more akin to playing Russian roulette[vi].  A group of friends can all ingest the same amount but only one might die.[vii]  This was precisely the case with Anna Wood, Australia’s fist ecstasy death in 1995.  She took the same pill as her three friends, but only she died.  (Tony Wood, her father, can be contacted through a spokesperson for the SayNopeToDope campaign)

We understand that it may seem somewhat confronting that Drug Free Australia is putting the onus of proof onto pill testing advocates themselves concerning the notion that party pill deaths are not mostly from using MDMA or are alternately from MDMA ‘overdoses’.  However, our reasoning is as follows . . .

1. 1. Advocates assert that pill testing is needed because impurities or unknown drugs in the pills cause deaths (which is rarely the case in our country and likely the same in yours)
   2. Advocates also assert that pill testing is needed because of unknown MDMA purity in party pills, suggesting that deaths are often from MDMA overdose (which is rarely the case in our country and likely the same in yours)
   3. The implicit conclusion from these first two pieces of misinformation is that pure MDMA is safe if ingested in normal recreational quantities (which is against all evidence)
   4. Drug Free Australia further contends that unless NZ advocates clearly and openly publicise that most deaths are tied to MDMA itself, they are personally responsible for the current spurious sense of security surrounding tested MDMA
   5. Drug Free Australia cannot think of a more sure way to widen demand for a dangerous substance via an entirely false sense of security for festival attendees, which will only cause an accelerated escalation in deaths.

We would like to see every NZ parliamentarian ask advocates for a list of names from coroners’ reports of all those deceased after taking party pills where the fatal impurity or other illicit drug in the pills was nominated by the Coroner.  For those found by the Coroner to have overdosed, a list containing the name of the deceased and the report’s estimate of the amount of MDMA ingested.  We suggest the New Zealand lists will be very short, and the list of MDMA deaths long.

I might just mention that Drug Free Australia does recognise that there have been three deaths here in Melbourne in January 2017 from party pills which were due to the drugs 4-FA and 25C-NBOMe.  These drugs were found in purported ecstasy pills, nevertheless these drugs would not have been identified by current pill testing equipment.[viii]  Drug Free Australia also asserts that most GHB overdoses are by users who know they are taking GHB, as was the case in Melbourne, for example, in February 2017.[ix]

Drug Free Australia urges a proactive political response from New Zealand Parliamentarians, which will save the lives of many of your young citizens.

Yours faithfully

Major Brian Watters AO [x]
President, Drug Free Australia
Chairman, Prime Minister’s Australian National Council on Drugs (ANCD) 1998-2005
Australia’s representative to the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board (INCB) 2004-2012

Letter provided to Family First NZ to pass on to Members of Parliament.

[i] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19604654 
[ii] https://dancesafe.org/ 
[iii] https://dancesafe.org/mdma-related-deaths-stop-calling-them-overdoses/ 
[iv] https://www.drugpolicy.org/sites/default/files/DPA_Fact_Sheet_MDMA.PDF 
[v]  https://academic.oup.com/bja/article/96/6/678/326917 
[vi] https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1111/j.1365-2044.1993.tb06813.x 
[vii] https://www.theguardian.com/society/2017/jul/22/friends-out-ecstasy-deaths-highest-level-pills 
[viii] https://www.vice.com/en_au/article/3dp5pk/leaked-police-memo-reveals-what-was-in-melbournes-deadly-batch-of-mdma 
[ix] https://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-02-19/electric-parade-festival-more-than-20-overdose-hospital/8283828 
[x] https://www.drugfree.org.au/index.php/major-brian-watters-ao-international-liaison-officer.html

TRAFFICKING, ORGANISED CRIME, CONSUMPTION, PSYCHOACTIVE SUBSTANCES ALL ON THE INCREASE
Media Release 21 January 2019
The SayNopeToDope Campaign says that it is significant that political parties in Portugal are now pushing for the legalisation of marijuana in their country because they wrongly believe it will combat current problems around organised crime, drug trafficking, increased consumption and the use of psychoactive substances.

“For years, and especially recently, we have heard that Portugal’s decriminalisation is the perfect model of marijuana legislation. But Portugal is simply taking the next step in the grand plan of drug normalisation – decriminalisation to legalisation – the same journey that the Drug Foundation and the Green Party with its referendum wants to take New Zealand down. And marijuana isn’t the only drug that they will want to liberalise. Availability and acceptability of drug use will all increase consumption which will be a health disaster,”says a spokesperson for the SayNopeToDope campaign.

But Portugal shows troubling results. The most recent statistics show that between 2012 and 2017 Lifetime Prevalence statistics for alcohol, tobacco and drugs for the general population (aged 15-64) have risen by 23%. There has been an increase from 8.3% in 2012, to 10.2% in 2016/17, in the prevalence of illegal psychoactive substance use.

The National Survey on the Use of Psychoactive Substances in the General Population in Portugal 2016/17, reports: “We have seen a rise in the prevalence of alcohol and tobacco consumption and of every illicit psychoactive substance (affected by the weight of cannabis use in those aged 15-74) between 2012 – 2016/17.” Last-12-months-use of any illicit substance has doubled between 2012 and 2017.

“It is also significant to note that Portugal recently voted down a bill proposing to legalise medicinal – including grow-your-own – cannabis, and opted for a more confined law allowing use of some medicinal cannabis,” says a spokesperson for the SayNopeToDope campaign.

“If Portugal has been such a success since 2001, why are countries not rushing to replicate their approach – and why are politicians within the country even now saying it has failed. It is clear that the claims of success in Portugal well exceed the reality.”

The Left Bloc (BE) and People-Animals-Nature (PAN) are proposing legalisation of cannabis for recreational use, with two bills tabled to the Portuguese parliament. According to statements made to the local media by Portugal’s Association of Studies on Cannabis, the regulation would draw “people off the street“, avoiding their using “a substance in a hazardous, unhealthy place, in contact with dangerous people related to drug trafficking, where there is absolutely no control over the quality and toxicity of the product,”. It would also constitute “a major step towards taking the business away from organised crime groups.” They say that the effect of decriminalisation has been to increase trafficking and consumption every year, which has been shown to have failed across the board.

“Claims that decriminalisation has reduced drug use and had no detrimental impact in Portugal significantly exceed the existing scientific basis.”
Gil Kerlikowske, Director, US Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) during Obama Administration

“[Portugal] still has high levels of problem drug use and HIV infection, and does not show specific developments in its drug situation that would clearly distinguish it from other European countries that have a different policy.”
UNODC (United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime): Cannabis A Short Review (2012)

To summarise:

• decriminalisation has increased drug use for all age-groups
• decriminalisation has seen sharp increases amongst high-school students
• Portugal’s drug use, other than for heroin, was initially lower than European averages
• while drug deaths in Portugal are much lower in Portugal due to heroin being smoked or snorted rather than injected, drug overdose mortality is currently increasing

Further reading: http://saynopetodope.org.nz/portugal/
ENDS