Kia ora all,
Voting has already opened overseas, and starts today here in New Zealand. The most up-in-the-air vote looks to be the referendum on the Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill. I endorse a Yes vote and urge people to vote Yes, not No.
I have lots of usual Yes voter reasons for a Yes vote - inequity in criminal justice, personal choice, economic benefits -, but I acknowledge that Yes and No voters have many different priorities, and we are often talking at a crossroads. I want to try to speak to the concerns of voters more against than for.
I've noted down a lot of answers to concerns I’ve heard from anti-cannabis perspectives, and am happy to address concerns from voters not convinced of a Yes vote yet, but it’d be a long post if I sent them all here, so I just wanted to stress two things.
One: A No vote is still a choice. If you vote No, you are choosing the world right now as better than change for an alternative. That means people will still be buying weed off of dealers, like they do now. That means we have no solution to the rise of THC potency. That means that police and judges will still be spending their time responding to and penalising drug crimes, rather than far more severe issues like violent crimes that go under-resourced. That means, in a world where we’re going to have less than 5% of Kiwis smoking tobacco in half a decade, we say it’s good enough to have consistently higher rates of smoking marijuana.
Two: A No vote is not inherently the safe choice if you haven’t made up your mind. It’s fine to acknowledge that you don’t know enough - there’s a lot of info to sift through out there - but there’s so many reasons that shouldn’t translate to a No vote. A No vote is unsafe for people being arrested and charged right now. A No vote is unsafe for people using weed too often who don't have well-funded rehab programs. A No vote is unsafe for first-timers who are unaware of how potent the substance is they're trying.
The Yes campaign has done some hard mahi. They have consulted the many international examples out there. They have compared cannabis to other drugs like tobacco and alcohol to figure out how to avoid pitfalls with how those are used and regulated. They have brought together people who are fans of marijuana, and people who hate it and believe this is our best shot to finally deal with the drug.
The No campaign wants to scare you by predicting a future of widespread, sometimes high-potency marijuana consumption that already exists. Of course, plenty of its members are sincere in their beliefs - fearful for family and for communities. Nonetheless, it’s pretty obvious that a No for weed is in the interest of the alcohol industry. It doesn’t make sense to rebut that a vote for Yes is a vote for recreational cannabis interests, because that business sector doesn’t exist yet.
The alcohol industry is well-established here, and because they have created much looser laws around alcohol than the Cannabis Legalisation and Control Act would be, alcohol is doing more widespread and severe damage than pot. On the other hand, a much tighter control regime means that another legal drug, tobacco, is nearing extinction in this country. What I want to ask of No voters is that you consider what you’re afraid of about a Yes vote; you ask if the subject of your concern exists right now, while marijuana is illegal (and plenty of Kiwis defy that law); and you examine the arguments for the Bill to see if they exist to address your concerns and use the legalisation of marijuana to solve problems.
Ngā mihi.
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