There’s no shortage of slang for this drug, but it’s a drug not often talked about. When it is, evidence is often discarded in lieu of myth, misconception and polarized positions.
I awoke this morning to a flurry of colourful and fantastic insights for my story on cannabis. By the time I made it to my desk, all those wonderful ideas had dissolved like smoke in the wind.
The current high levels of use and the level of black market activity indicate that the current prohibition regime is not effective in limiting cannabis use. Prohibition results in high conviction rates for a relatively minor offence, inhibiting people’s education, travel and employment opportunities. Prohibition makes targeting education, prevention, harm minimisation and treatment measures difficult because users fear prosecution.
The next 12 months will not be fruitful for those wanting a serious policy debate about possible changes to our cannabis laws, but there may be an opening for such a debate during the 2008–11 Parliament.
New Zealand’s response to an apparent increase in drivers under the influence of cannabis seems likely to be more legislation and new penalties. But is this good policy, based on solid evidence? It might be, but Geoff Noller argues that the issues and evidence are complex and require much more discussion before we act.
The Law Commission’s current review of the Misuse of Drugs Act is a rare opportunity for New Zealand to drag its drug laws into the 21st century. Around the world, several other countries have also recently re-examined their drug laws. In this feature, Sanji Gunasekara reviews the global state of drug law reform and finds that, while there is a trend towards more public health-focused legislation, sometimes it is a case of one step forward, two steps back.
In the late 1990s, there was an increasing push within Australia to decriminalise cannabis and to provide legal access to heroin for those dependent on it. Political circumstances did not permit this, but Australia did adopt an Illicit Drug Diversion Initiative (IDDI), a national agreement to divert illicit drug users away from the police and courts. This has enabled a vast expansion of diversionary opportunities for illicit drug users in Australia. Caitlin Hughes looks at the nature of Australia’s diversion programme and its impacts to date.
Despite cannabis being the most widely used illicit drug worldwide, it is rarely the focus of international drug policy control discussions. In light of this, The Beckley Foundation has released a report claiming prohibition is doing more harm than good and calling for urgent discussions on cannabis policy. If the ‘War on Drugs’ must continue, Rob Zorn asks, is it time we removed cannabis as one of its targets?
CAYAD worker Denis O’Reilly has spent a lot of time around either alcohol or drugs in one way or another. In this short life story, he muses on the confused nature of our attitudes towards legal and illicit drugs.
In an ideal world, public policies towards cannabis would be informed by both evidence on the personal harms it causes and social and economic evaluations of the costs and benefits of alternative policies in minimising these harms. A paucity of both types of evidence is a major challenge to the development of such “evidence-based” policies towards cannabis use.
