cannabisnews.com: Aust Trip To Review Drug Laws





Aust Trip To Review Drug Laws
Posted by FoM on January 21, 2000 at 12:13:46 PT
Wellington
Source: The Press Online
The Government has begun work reviewing the legal status of cannabis, with Justice Minister Phil Goff and Health Minister Annette King on a fact-finding mission to Australia. Mr Goff and Mrs King met State police and health officials in Adelaide on Tuesday to examine the long-standing South Australian practice of issuing instant fines for minor cannabis offences. 
Mrs King said the idea had merit, but considerable work had to be done before considering whether it could be introduced in New Zealand. The Labour-Alliance coalition supports the view of Parliament's health select committee, which recommended in December 1998, after an eight-month inquiry and 70 submissions, that the legal status of cannabis be reviewed. Mrs King said that since the mid-1980s South Australia had treated possession of small amounts of cannabis for personal use as an offence attracting a fine between $50 and $150 rather than a crime dealt by the courts. The approach was also used to educate people about the health risks of the drug. "I think there is some merit in it. I think that it is worthwhile us getting more information on and putting it into the discussion." Australia was a good place to study alternative approaches to cannabis, as its states had different laws, Mrs King said. "They (South Australia) have probably done better than they have in Western Australia where there's been a total prohibition," Mrs King said. "They're certainly not showing any more cannabis use in South Australia." Later in the year, drug laws would be on the agenda at a conference of New Zealand and Australian health ministers, she said. Prime Minister Helen Clark favours the South Australian approach, and while Deputy Prime Minister Jim Anderton is personally cautious about relaxing cannabis laws, his Alliance party backs a review of its criminal status. NZPA Saturday, January 22, 2000 New Zealand News from The Press 
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Comment #1 posted by kaptinemo on January 21, 2000 at 16:57:28 PT
The cost of a law
One of the reasons the Kiwis are are going to check out the Aussie's way of doing things (aside from a not-so-playful jab at the US's ONDCP trying to tell them to toe the 'party line') about cannabis is because of money. Or the lack of it.Here in the States, we have an enormous Federal bureaucracy. That bureaucracy is funded because we wind up *giving* (at the threat of imprisonment if we don't) the lion's share of our taxes to it. Starve the bureaucrcay, and you limit it's ability to make mischief in your life. And, yes, it *is* that simple.It all comes down to how much largesse there is to draw from to power the mischief-makers. The Aussies and Kiwis just don't have that much. So their government, despite the almost universal desire for every government to have total control of their populace, literally can't *afford* to do dumb things like ours does. They remain to a large extant respectful of their populations will. (As opposed to the shocking attempt by the likes of Bob Barr and his ilk to deny democracy to the residents of Washington DC when they voted for MMJ by refusing to allow the vote tally.)We won't see that kind of respect here, anytime soon. The Feds are just too fat and sassy... and want to stay that way. And if they have to kill innocent people in one of their botched raids on the wrong house? Hey, don't worry.Somebody will pay for it. That somebody is us. We pay for this travesty. Every day.
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