Student body now more aware of cannabis
By Campbell MacDiarmid

Last week the Otago branch of the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) set out to ‘overgrow Dunedin with cannabis truth’ during Cannabis Awareness
Week.

Otago NORML president Abe Gray says that the two highlights of the
week were Geoff Noller’s presentation of his PhD thesis ‘Hidden Voices:
Cannabis Use and Users in Dunedin,’ which examined the demographics of cannabis users in New Zealand; and Thursday evening’s round table forum which discussed whether cannabis prohibition was rational, particularly in comparison to alcohol. At least 200 people turned out for the discussion. The panel included Associate Minister of Health Jim Anderton, the Director of the New Zealand Drug Foundation Ross Bell, NORML New Zealand President Chris Fowlie, Green Party MP Nandor Tanczos, Otago Law Professor Kevin Dawkins, and WellTrust founder and former National and United MP Pauline Gardiner and was hosted by TVNZ investigative journalist John Sellwood.

Anderton was the only speaker to advocate maintaining the status quo with regard to the current classification of drugs system, ceding at the start of his address that he was unlikely to convince many of the audience to side with him. Anderton used the forum as an opportunity to make public new research by Business and Economic Research Ltd that put the social cost of illicit drugs at $1.3 billion a year, arguing that a significant proportion of this cost related to cannabis and this justified maintaining prohibition. Anderton did not say how much of the costs arose from prohibition itself and the study did not include the social cost of legal drugs.

Despite what was often a polarising discussion, the other speakers took nuanced positions which at time seemed lost on the audience, ranging from Gardiner’s cautious call for a two-year moratorium on cannabis prosecutions to calls for total decriminalisation, which met with the greatest audience approval.

Gray was pleased with how the week had been run and hoped that it would initiate more discussion regarding cannabis prohibition, if not immediate law change. “We did good, let’s hope it has some impact – it’s the maximum we could do. If this doesn’t get the ball rolling I don’t know what to do. We’ve tried lobbying politicians, we’ve tried protesting every week, we’ve even smoked out the police station the past two years…. But knowing that we have truth and logic on our side we’ll keep stepping it up until the law changes.”

Friday’s 4.20 session included a world record for hotboxing a bus – check critic.co.nz for the results. The week culminated in an international J-Day protest in the Octagon on Saturday.