NewsHub 30 September 2020
Our additional comment: Yet another poll pointing in the right direction.
Vote NO

Smoking a joint looks set to remain a criminal offence with the latest Newshub Reid-Research poll showing a majority of voters will vote ‘no’ in the referendum, but the referendum on euthanasia looks set to pass.

New Zealanders will be asked in the upcoming election whether they support the proposed Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill.

The proposed Bill outlines a way for the Government to regulate cannabis. Its main purpose is to reduce cannabis-related harm to individuals, families, whānau and communities.

The bill intends to restrict young people’s access to cannabis, eliminate the illegal supply of cannabis and ensure only New Zealanders aged 20 and over are able to possess or consume the drug in limited circumstances. It would also control the production and supply of cannabis, including controlling the potency and contents of licensed cannabis and cannabis products.

Our Newshub Reid-Research poll asked: “Do you support the proposed Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill?”

• 50.5 percent said ‘no’
• 37.9 percent said ‘yes’
• 10.9 percent ‘didn’t know’
• 0.8 percent won’t vote

Support is most likely to come from Green voters (85.5 percent yes), followed by Labour supporters (45.9 percent yes) with National voters likely to be strongly opposed (71.6 percent no).
READ MORE: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/09/nz-election-2020-new-poll-shows-recreational-cannabis-likely-to-remain-a-criminal-offence.html

New poll: Kiwis back euthanasia, support for legalising cannabis going up in smoke
NZ Herald 30 September 2020
Personal use of cannabis is likely to remain illegal according to latest poll numbers, as support for the bill continues to slip before the approaching referendum.

The latest Newshub Reid-Research poll showed just 37.9 per cent of responders saying they will vote yes to the proposition.

In just over two weeks, voters will have their say over a potential legal cannabis market; which would allow for special bars for consumption, special outlets and sales and strict rules for home-grown cannabis.

New Zealanders will be asked in the upcoming election whether they support the proposed Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill.
READ MORE: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12369350

NZ Herald 30 September 2020
Our additional comment: An Auckland landlord has been left with a $400,000 repair bill after their million dollar rental’s occupants ran a cannabis growing operation that sparked a major fire. Yet the tenants will now contribute just $800 to directly help with the insurer’s repair costs

An Auckland landlord has been left with a $400,000 repair bill after their million dollar rental’s occupants ran a cannabis growing operation that sparked a major fire.

Yet the tenants will now contribute just $800 to directly help with the insurer’s repair costs, a recent Tenancy Tribunal decision showed.

The tenants will, however, have to fork out another $22,000 to cover unpaid rent and other minor expenses incurred by the property owner.

Tenant Hiep Tuan Luu told the tribunal hearing he didn’t know the home was being used to grow cannabis because he hadn’t been living there.

Instead, he had been illegally sub-letting it to a friend.

That ultimately led to the Flat Bush home – which has a $1.1 million council valuation – catching alight on November 30 last year.
READ MORE: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12369110

TVNZ One News 30 September 2020
Our additional comment: “The Salvation Army has seen the consequences of liberalising gambling and liquor legislation and the insurmountable difficulty in dialling back the legislation once negative consequences emerge. Cannabis is not the benign substance that many people would have us believe – cannabis can have significantly harmful effects related to addiction, mental illness and motivation and we see this in our addiction treatment services.”

The Salvation Army says it does not support the legalisation of cannabis in New Zealand, ahead of the upcoming referendum, but does believe decriminalising casual use would be beneficial.

NewsTalk ZB 29 September 2020
Family First Comment: The yes camp has never really had anything more than the most spurious of ideas that it should be legalised simply because a lot of people do it. And in that, never really understanding just how stupid that concept is. If you can find enough people doing anything against law, is that good enough to legalise it? 
Texting while driving, drinking while driving, hitting other people when you lose your temper, stealing other people’s possessions whether by fraud or robbery, there’s plenty of it about, so let’s change the law?

NewsHub 29 September 2020
Our additional comment: “We try to help people not develop cannabis addiction, so giving them access to much more than they could hope to use in a day does nothing to help people with problem behaviour,” – SayNopeToDope’s Aaron Ironside.

Opponents to cannabis legalisation say the amount people could buy each day would make those with heavy addictions worse.

The Bill that has been put forward is a guide for how legalisation might work and suggests a daily purchase limit of 14 grams dried cannabis or the equivalent of that.

Aaron Ironside, who leads the Say Nope to Dope campaign, said that limit would make it easy for heavy users to keep up their habit.

“We try to help people not develop cannabis addiction, so giving them access to much more than they could hope to use in a day does nothing to help people with problem behaviour,” Ironside said.

The drug is far more restricted in Uruguay than it would be if legalised here, or compared to other countries with legalised recreational cannabis use.

But does that mean Uruguay is preventing heavy cannabis use that Ironside is concerned about? No.

“I think that’s the whole point of why we oppose this Bill,” Ironside said.

“It is the pretence of control, and ultimately trying to control it through these artificial mechanisms does nothing to actually help people with problematic behaviour.

“The answer is in strengthening our health and education approach. That doesn’t require you to set up a cannabis shop.”

They say 14 grams would usually last between two to four weeks, while some less regular users could take six months to get through that much.

Ironside compared the purchase of 14 grams of cannabis to being able to buy three bottles of vodka in one day.
READ MORE: https://www.newshub.co.nz/home/politics/2020/09/nz-election-2020-cannabis-legalisation-opponents-say-proposed-limit-could-make-addictions-worse.html

NZ Herald 28 September 2020
Family First Comment: “Does it make sense to sell cannabis to adults to raise tax money to fund programmes that teach teenagers not to do what the adults are doing.”

With New Zealand just weeks away from heading to the polls, Kiwis will be faced with a rather big decision – should cannabis be legalised?

While it sounds like a straightforward question, there are a lot of elements that people are unsure about when it comes to the cannabis referendum.

Instead of going into the October 17 decision with a hazy mind, Jono and Ben have run through the ins and outs of what is involved in the referendum.

They posed a list of questions, all of which have been answered and help you in your decision ahead of the referendum, and spoken to representatives from both the yes and no camps.

However, mental health professional Aaron Ironside told Jono and Ben he’s concerned youth will be more exposed to cannabis.

He says the current laws and guidelines already address the criminality and medicinal element and questions whether the referendum brings any added benefits.

“A mental health professional what I see is the effects of addiction, the effects of psychosis.

Unfortunately, the most vulnerable people for cannabis are young people. The question is does this law do anything to help them? It doesn’t. It locks them out of the legal shops, what it does do is people will be growing cannabis in their back yard, making cannabis that little bit easier to get hold of, as if it needed to be easier.

“And when the shop won’t let you buy from them you’re forced to go back to the tinny house, to the black market.”

“Does it make sense to sell cannabis to adults to raise tax money to fund programmes that teach teenagers not to do what the adults are doing.

“This is not about medicinal, that’s already legal, and the criminal problem is already being addressed because we changed the misuse of drugs act so now it’s written into law that you are not to get a conviction for personal use. You’re to be treated as a health concern.

“So the two big issues most of us are worried about, medicinal and criminality, have already been dealt with, so we don’t need a new law. One that will create new problems, won’t make the black market go away, but will expose young people to marijuana.”
READ MORE: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/entertainment/news/article.cfm?c_id=1501119&objectid=12368530

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NZ Herald 27 September 2020
Our additional comment: Yes!“Five classes at the North Shore’s high-decile Westlake Girls’ High School have all voted overwhelmingly against legalising cannabis in their practice voting – 82 per cent against in two Year 9 classes, 63 per cent against in a Year 11 class and 59 per cent against in two Year 13 classes”💥👍

A practice voting exercise at an Auckland high school suggests that Kiwi teenagers may be surprisingly conservative on cannabis, even though they are backing Labour politically.

Five classes at the North Shore’s high-decile Westlake Girls’ High School have all voted overwhelmingly against legalising cannabis in their practice voting – 82 per cent against in two Year 9 classes, 63 per cent against in a Year 11 class and 59 per cent against in two Year 13 classes.”

I don’t think cannabis is good,” she said. “It will mean our generation being addicted, which isn’t going to end up well.”

One of the websites told fellow Year 9 student Lauren O’Loughlin to vote for the Māori Party, but she chose the Greens – yet she also opposed legalising cannabis.

“You could get addicted and then you could get bankrupt and it’s not good,” she said.

“I’m the type of person who doesn’t like drugs. I’m more of an ethical person,” she said.”
READ MORE: https://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=12368049 

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TVNZ One News 25 September 2020
Our additional comment: Unfortunately for Chris, he made all the wrong choices as a result of a difficult upbringing. “I was 16, got top of the form at Wellington Boys College, started smoking cannabis heavily and I went from the very top of the year to the next year I got very last,” he said.

Let’s not make bad choices even easier. Vote NO.

For more than two decades, Chris O’Riley was trapped in a web of addiction and abuse.

College of Psychiatrists of Ireland 24 January 2019
Family First Comment: Cannabis is the main drug responsible for patients being seen within the child and adolescent addiction service, accounting for 80% of all cases. “Modern weed is grown in such a way as to maximise the THC concentration and as a consequence it seems to minimise the amount of CBD in it, so the chemical make-up is completely different to what was around 10 to 15 years ago,” Dr Smyth maintained.

More than 40,000 Irish people are addicted to cannabis in Ireland yet societal attitudes towards the drug are softening.  Around a decade ago, cannabis would have been the main drug in just 30 per cent of presentations, according to Dr Bobby Smyth, a child and adolescent psychiatrist specialising in addiction in Dublin.

Cannabis is the main drug responsible for patients being seen within the child and adolescent addiction service, accounting for 80 per cent of all cases.

Between 2006 and 2009 cannabis referrals related to hash and tended to cause “low level concerns”. “Objectively, their lives weren’t massively affected by their drug use,” Dr Smyth told the Medical Independent. But this began to change over subsequent years as the chemical make-up of the drug altered to become more addictive and harmful.

“We began meeting young people whose lives were consumed by the use of cannabis. It moved from hash to what would generally be known as weed; ‘herbal cannabis’ would be the medical term,” Dr Smyth related. “They were reporting quantities of use and a pervasiveness of use that seemed completely different to previously.”

The departure of hash and the arrival of weed has meant “we are dealing with a completely different drug”, Dr Smyth said. The chemical constituents of hash and weed are broadly similar, but the two key cannabinoids that doctors pay attention to are known as THC and CBD, Dr Smyth explained.

THC is the cannabinoid that causes the negative intoxication, addictive and paranoid effects, while CBD can potentially offer medicinal value for people with epilepsy, for example.
READ MORE: https://www.irishpsychiatry.ie/blog/a-warning-on-the-failure-to-take-cannabis-use-seriously/

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TVNZ One News 26 September 2020
Our additional comment: Only 35% said they supported the bill, a drop from 40% at June’s poll, 39% in February’s poll and 43% in November, 2019’s poll. The amount of people who did not support the bill has risen to 53% – up from 49% in June and 51% in February.