Legalize Cannabis in Dunedin

The candidates who presented themselves for this year’s Dunedin Local body elections are really interesting. It seems that pandering to the green lobby has finally become perceived as popular, with nearly every candidate talking about environmental and social sustainability. People who believe that the best way to ensure Dunedin’s future with massive spending projects and subsidies to big business are clearly in the minority this time around, with most candidates preferring to advocate for economic growth based on sustainability. How do they plan to achieve this? Well from my reading of the debate, the general consensus seems to be that we need to attract creative young people to the city so that they may start business based on creativity and not resource exploitation, and we need to grow the tourism industry, but all without impacting on the environment. Sounds like a pretty daunting task, but what ideas have the candidates put forward for achieving this? The stadium ain’t gonna do it. The fashion show is great, but we’ll need more than that. We need something really audacious that will make us stand out from the crowd, something that will ‘put Dunedin on the map’ in the words of many candidates.

Let’s look at another city that has faced the challenge of economic stagnation and population decline, Invercargill. How did they manage to stave off the ruralization reaper? Well they have zero fees at their tertiary institution, they have a nice new stadium, and they have a velodrome. How did they get all this you may ask? Did they create a massive public debt for their city in the way that Dunedin’s civic leaders have recently done? No, because they have heaps of money from their Liquor Licensing Trust. Well why can’t we just do that here? Because for some strange reason we feel like we owe our entire existence as a city to the liquor merchants who openly parasitize us and then we clean up after them. And don’t forget, Invercargill has an entertaining and charismatic mayor who openly admits to having smoked massive amounts of cannabis.

This brings me to an idea that I had when thinking about creative ways to achieve what seem to be our collective goals of revitalizing the city… COMPLETELY LEGALIZE CANNABIS WITHIN THE DUNEDIN CITY BOUNDARY! What better way to simultaneously attract creative young people and boost tourist numbers without pouring money down the drain on some ‘think big’ style vanity project? In fact, it would hardly cost anything, but I won’t argue if the council wants to give me $5.8 million to do a feasibility study! But what about the central government you say? Isn’t it really up to them? Well let me remind you, in the past ten years we’ve had two select committees investigating cannabis, one under a National government and one under a Labour government. And guess what, BOTH OF THEM RECCOMENDED DECRIMINALISING CANNABIS!!! Why haven’t they done so? Because they are backstabbing little pussies who prefer to play the prejudice against ‘drug users’ card for political expediency, rather than carry out the duties for which they were elected and as mandated by the public! Remember Corngate and the last minute deal with United Future? So fuck the central government, they’ve been told in every imaginable way to do something, but they won’t. I think it’s time to show some kiwi ingenuity, and remember that ‘if you want something done right, you have to do it yourself’!

So next year we will be hosting the ‘First Annual Otago Cannabis Cup’ (cannabis tasting evening), to showcase students enjoying cannabis in a responsible manner and appreciating it for it’s quality and subtle flavours, rather than just getting wasted. Additionally we are now extending the 4:20 sessions to twice weekly, on Wednesday as well as Friday, and we plan to start cranking the BBQ. We would like to invite every cannabis smoker in Dunedin to come and take advantage of our regular event where you can know you will be safe and not have to fear arrest or persecution. We also plan to lobby the new city council to officially sanction our events and look to formally requesting that the police treat cannabis possession as the lowest enforcement priority within the city boundary.

Just look at the Dutch, they have had legal cannabis for decades and I don’t see their society crumbling. They have high education, low poverty and low crime, something that hopefully New Zealand aspires to. Amsterdam is a great city to visit, it’s clean, they have great public transport, and hundreds of thousands of creative young people from all over the globe that flock there as tourists to sample the finest greens. After all, the European name for our country means ‘New Holland’. Let’s embrace our Dutch history and get this party started!

Welcome to Dun-sterdam.