Brash and cannabis UPDATED

I voted for ACT, once, in 2006.  It has disappointed me consistently since.

In 2006 I suggested to Rodney Hide to invite Don Brash to stand in 2008.  Well Don is standing now, without Rodney.

In 2005 I suggested Rodney Hide campaign in that election on legalising cannabis.  I was ignored.  Now Don is doing it.

The arguments in favour of it then are still valid now:

"ACT needs to be more than the party of Business Roundtable economics - sound though that is.

It needs to sell freedom...

Why?

Because there is nothing more fundamentally liberal, than asserting that adults own their own bodies, and have the right to ingest a substance on their own private property without the state criminalising them for it...

The Economist called for this two years ago - hardly a newspaper of the lunatic fringe."

As I said then, this move changes the political landscape.  A position monopolised by leftwing authoritarians (the Greens) is now taken by a party that has long purported to believe in freedom.   ACT can advocate for a change in cannabis laws based on principle as well as pragmatism.

It may risk a loss of conservative votes, but they will go to National anyway.  Brash can minimise it by being himself.  Hardly a dope-head, he can argue, convincingly, that the status quo has failed and that the problems of cannabis are better addressed by:

- Employers retaining the right to require testing under employment contracts;

- Drug testing as part of road safety legislation;

- Strict enforcement of laws against supplying to minors;

- Encouragement of educational and health measures warning of the health risks.

Don Brash in recent weeks has come out in favour of replacing the RMA with a property rights based approach, including putting such rights in the Bill of Right, ending Auckland's experiment with US style "new-urbanism", which is about restricting the supply of housing that people want, to encourage people to buy the housing the planners want, to use the transport they are making everyone else pay for.

These are great leaps forward for ACT in terms of being a party that believes in individual rights and individual freedoms.   I look forward to more!

UPDATED:  Unsurprisingly, ACT's replacement for Rodney Hide -John Banks - is having none of it.  It raises the obvious point, that for ACT to return to Parliament and actually be in favour of freedom, it is far better for North Shore voters to elect Don Brash and for Epsom voters to not vote for John Banks.   If ACT is going to have a purge of its anti-freedom factors then the man who left Auckland with huge public debt, and who voted against the legalising of consensual adult homosexual acts is hardly going to be any help.

Greens think smokers are just so stupid and pathetic

Nothing shows the Green Party up for the authoritarian control freaks they are than this press release with this statement:

We need to get smokes out of our homes and out of our shops,” Green Party Co-leader Metiria Turei said. 

So blatantly collectivist, so blatantly uninterested in personal responsibility, choice and property rights.  

Who is this "we" Metiria?  Why do I have to do anything as a non-smoker?  Why should I have anything to do with what other adults do in their homes and their shops?

What are "our homes" and "our shops"?  They are NOT your homes or shops.  YOUR homes and shops are the ones you own, not everyone elses.  Property rights still exist in New Zealand.  It is not some grand socialist uber-state where everyone is responsible for everyone else.  

"Too often the focus is on punishing smokers and not controlling the industry that profits from the drug"  Oh and the Greens want smokers to have the right to smoke on their own property or to allow smoking on their own property, including restaurants and bars?  No. The Greens like punishing smokers too.

She has taken upon herself the role of Big Mother, given that Cindy "Stalin" Kiro no longer has he position:

"Mrs Turei said her main focus was on caring for New Zealand’s babies and children.

“This means giving our wahine, our mothers, all the support they need to quit and to stay smoke free."

New Zealand's babies and children?  They don't belong to the state, or the nation or country or whatever collective entity you want to ascribe to them.  They belong to their parents and guardians.  NOT you.  They are not "our wahine, our mothers".   After all, over 90% don't even vote for you.  

Feel free to give them support Metiria.  Through your own efforts and money.   However, you should stop treating smokers as stupid, pathetic and incompetent children who need you to protect them from their own actions.  How patronising and disgusting it is to think of yourself as better placed to make their decisions for them.

The only people who can get tobacco out of their homes and shops are the people who own them.  Feel free to try to convince them, but get the hell out of the way if they tell you where to go.   Yet the problem with the Greens is that they don't believe in peace, they don't believe in non-violence.  They warmly embrace the violence of Nanny State taking people's money, telling them what to do in their shops, and treating them like children.

I say this as someone who personally loathes tobacco, hates the smell of it and who has seen people I love suffer the consequences of smoking.   However, as much as I would not shed a tear if tobacco became a thing of the past, I find far more threatening the finger wagging patronising petty fascism behind the Greens treating people like they are children.

It makes one want to light up.

UPDATE:  Meanwhile the Netherlands has taken a step towards freedom according to the Daily Telegraph.  The new coalition government, which includes the Party for Freedom (the much maligned party of Geert Wilders who is more a libertarian than anything else despite the braindead media thinking he is aligned to neo-fascists) has abolished the smoking ban for owner-operator pubs.  In other words pubs with no staff.  It is a small step, but it shouldn't be debated.  It is simple.  It is private property.  If you own a pub, then you can decided if you or your patrons smoke there.   It doesn't matter what anyone else thinks.  If you don't like it, don't go there.

French sexualise smoking some more

The Independent reports on the scandal in France of anti-smoking ads.

It was designed to make smoking look bad.

What it does is make it look like a sexual act of submission. It implies that smoking is like giving fellatio, which isn't exactly an uncommon act among teenagers.

In other words, it has linked it to a taboo that is likely to make it even MORE appealing.

The images (ones including men are here) could spark mimicking, so that a girl smoking might be seen as teasing sexually - imagery that I'd have thought would be exactly the opposite of what was the goal.

The bureaucrats for whom freedom is unknown

I have said before that I despise smoking, I don’t like the smell and I hate walking behind smokers and don’t like walking through them outside buildings. So you might think I’d welcome what the Auckland Regional Public Health Service is calling for as reported in the NZ Herald.

ARPHS (why not say ARS) calls for what is effectively a ban on smoking anywhere but in one’s own home, which looks to me quite simply as the sort of nanny state authoritarian bullying that I thought was voted out in the last election. However, it would be a fair bet that those who “work” for that organisation are unlikely to have much philosophical truck with personal freedom.

The thought process appears alarmingly simple:

People smoke - it is bad for them - it's already illegal to allow smoking at places of employment, retail outlets and on public transport, so let's make it illegal everywhere else, except the home (that would be seen as too far).

Banning something that is bad for people is good. The very idea that perhaps it is morally wrong to do this appears to have not crossed their minds, after all it's for the "greater good" (as is the justification for all limitations on personal freedom). Fascists? Well, they wouldn't think so, they just think they are acting for the interests of others. However, they are treating the public as children. It's only one step removed from treating tobacco like an illegal drug.

So what should the response be to this?

Should it be to ask whether a study has been made as to the health benefits to non-smokers of the measures proposed? If not, why not? Why not come clean about what “public good” there allegedly is, or is there really none at all? I suspect the health benefits to non-smokers are virtually undetectable, after all the emissions from motor vehicles are in greater volumes and significantly more toxic (smokers don't die from a lung full of tobacco smoke, but you wont last long intentionally inhaling petrol exhaust).

Should it be to ask to what extent these measures are likely to reduce smoking? If not, why not? How about noting how effective these measures are at reducing illegal drug use?

Why are you not simply being honest about wanting to criminalise smoking other than in the private home? Or does that just show you up for what you are, as petty fascists wanting to change behaviour by force rather than persuasion?

Or, how about simply asking why the hell they think it is their business what adults do with their bodies on their own property or in public spaces?

Clearly the public health bureaucrats have no clue what private property means, and what private property rights mean, for long ago they surrendered the idea that you can decide whether or not to allow otherwise legal acts on your property.

However, they also seek to control public space. To have people prosecuted for smoking as a way of reducing the propensity to smoke. The idea that there are adults who voluntarily choose to smoke because they like it would bewilder them all.

How can people LIKE harming themselves? Well the joyless do-gooders who think they know best for everyone else can't grasp that not everything everyone does is “good” for them. Some people drink to excess, some people eat to excess and don’t exercise. Some people have unsafe sex. Some people take illegal drugs. Some people participate in dangerous sports.

The proportion of smokers who do not know it is bad for their health will be very low, so it isn't about that. Tobacco smoking has addictive qualities, but plenty give up smoking and the state has used other people's money for some years subsidising methods to do this. So the conclusion is that people smoke because they enjoy it.

People have freedom to choose to smoke or not smoke. Those who do should have that right on their own property or with the permission of property owners. Those who do not like it should prohibit it on their own property and not enter places where it occurs. Public (as in local and central government owned) locations should be places where people can peacefully go about their activities without initiating force against others, that includes smoking.

The only appropriate response to this proposal is incredulity.

It demonstrates the profound need for all policy proposals to government to be subject to a test of whether it enhances or detracts from individual liberty, and whether it represents the initiation of force or defending citizens from initiations of force or fraud. Such a simple test would see such proposals dumped in the inbox of the Labour, Green and Maori Parties who think that individuals are a means to an end, not an end in themselves.

While we're at it, abolishing the Auckland Regional Public Health Service would make a modest contribution to reducing the budget deficit.

Tell the truth on drugs and get fired

This is exactly what happened to Britain with the Chairman of the Home Office's Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs, Professor David Nutt. He has been followed by Dr Les King also a member of the Advisory Council.

Professor Nutt said that cannabis has had its classification, for legal purposes, "upgraded" to Class B status for political reasons. He was removed because his comments were seen as political and unacceptable.

He claimed alcohol can be more dangerous than cannabis or ecstasy, which of course goes "off message" with the view the government wishes to express - simply that drugs must be worse, hence they are illegal. The truth is more than those who want to ban harmful substances know it is far too difficult and publicly unacceptable to ban alcohol, so demonise those that are banned as being worse.

Of course all drugs, including alcohol, can have serious health effects and affect brain functioning. There can be no doubt of the danger, but it appears that having an honest rational debate about this is beyond the capability of the British government.

Lauren Booth in the Mail on Sunday has a tale of her own life that outlines perhaps why all of this doesn't seem to wash with some of the public, for as a child her parents smoked weed and would drink, the effects were different:

"Because in my home, as in far too many others, the question wasn’t what was legal and what wasn’t, nor what was cool or what was not. It was this: laughing adults, stoned on illegal weed or violent, frightening ones, drunk on legal lager?

She rightfully calls for a more informed debate on why people do become addicted to substances, but this step just takes things backwards".

Rudman's narrow thinking on drugs

Brian Rudman bemoans opiates as a "deadly scourge" effectively calling for the eradication of opium plants in Afghanistan. He doesn't have a suggestion as to what Afghan farmers should do instead, doesn't consider how this will shift production elsewhere, and doesn't even think that the criminalisation of opium creates many of the problems inherent in the trade. After all, opiates are used for medication, such as morphine.

He says "no one" is fighting it, which is patent nonsense, I guess he missed this. Although the futility of it is clear, since the Afghan government and so many in Afghanistan are reliant on the trade.

The UN Office on Drugs and Crime, which has a vested interest in retaining the status quo, is his main source of information, and of course it is going to play up the threat. Nowhere are the questions asked:
- Is the main reason it is so profitable because it is illegal?
- Are some of the reasons it is so deadly because it is illegal?
- Is the criminal involvement in the trade because it is illegal?
- Will the elimination of opium in Afghanistan end the trade and supply of heroin?

Where does Rudman get this "fact " from, for example "It is triggering the spread of HIV at an unprecedented rate"? Really? So are the reports that in Africa the location with the highest prevalence of HIV, it is about sexual transmission NOT opiate use just nonsense?

Or is it that he has a terribly old fashioned view on the war on drugs, in that the decades of continued failure have passed him by?

Obama Administration does something small but good

CNN reports that the US Justice Department has told federal prosecutors to pursue drug traffickers but NOT patients and caregivers in the 14 states that have legalised medical marijuana.

"It will not be a priority to use federal resources to prosecute patients with serious illnesses or their caregivers who are complying with state laws on medical marijuana," said Attorney General Eric Holder.

Furthermore

The Justice Department guidance said it would not be a wise use of federal resources to go after "individuals with cancer or other serious illnesses who use marijuana as part of a recommended treatment regimen consistent with applicable state law."

Of course, indeed it is the only humane approach.

Besides recognising the competency of states in deciding this sort of thing, it is a slight lessening of the rabid war on drugs that every previous administration, for decades has fought unsuccessfully.

The states where medical marijuana use is legal are Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Maryland, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont and Washington.

Let's be clear this is not legalisation, or decriminalisation, and drug users in those states wont be immune from Federal criminal action, but it does mean attention is withdrawn from a segment that simply comprises sick people using marijuana for relief. By what measure does the Federal Government have any right to interfere with this?

So dare I say it, a step for freedom from the Obama Administration.

It's not easy stopping P

There is little that need be said about the crackdown on P purchasers and suppliers that hasn’t been said before. Many users of P may be nihilistic and destroying themselves, and causing heartache for those who love them or depend on them, but criminalising them and the suppliers of what they seek will not change that.

Legalising P is the long term answer, but in advance of that much else needs to be done, in order that people become responsible for their own actions, and suppliers having to consider product liability. However, as there are already links on this I’d like to suggest something else that is more important, and nothing directly to do with politics.

Culture.

Most people take illicit drugs because they make them feel better, feel good. It is for pleasure. That, in itself, is not necessarily bad. However, it is clear that excessive use is about something else, escaping reality.

Whilst escaping reality is seen as a legitimate way to cope with overwhelming emotions, it is hardly a solution. Regular use of P helps people escape reality, with the logical consequences of abandoning reason – self destruction.

The decline through the 1950s to 1970s of the Christian-oriented basis for how many people saw life and existence saw holes filled with a range of philosophies. One of those was a nihilistic approach to life “there is no point”, “nothing means anything” etc. A destructive attitude that sees the only point to life the immediate satisfaction of pleasure, with the inevitable need for more of the same, greater, faster, longer, bigger, until ultimately you wake up from it all needing to eat, wash and find money so you have somewhere to live and pay for all of it. Whereas people once found solace in religion to cope with grief, relationship stresses, anxieties and the trials of life, some found solace in escaping it all.

None of this is new of course. Alcohol has a long history of supplying such escapism, but P has a completely different level of intensity. The problems attributed to both have the same source – philosophy.

The answer is to have a personal philosophy of embracing life, applying reason and enjoying existence for what it is. Enjoying your potential in whatever fields you get passionate for, whether business, the arts, sport, science, travel, social activities or anything else. For reality can be a pleasure of the senses, and a reason to live. The point to your life being to live it, enjoy it and share it if you wish with whoever shares your vision and values. The only limits being reality and respecting the same rights in others.

If the dominant cultural meme was like this, the prevalence of escaping reality would reduce, and then people would focus on assisting loved ones or others who needed help through difficult times. Criminalising those seeking to escape reality is likely to increase their willingness to escape reality. Making people responsible for their actions, through the health care system, welfare reform, criminal justice system and reform of ACC/tort law would be a step along the way to addressing it. These are all ways drug users escape the reality of any consequences of their actions (and indeed everyone else).

It is clear the status quo has both failed and is immoral. National is perpetuating it in the vain hope it will make a substantive difference, when the main effect will be to inconvenience people with cold and flu symptoms, and to harass tourists bringing in now restricted medications.

Meanwhile, guess how many pharmacies will have such medications in short supply by the end of the week?

Police create market opportunity

Closing down one supplier, puts up the price, and a new opportunity emerges.

Someone will be celebrating this, it wont be the customers, who will pay more, but the competition.

So what good has been done?

So, if you're in Queenstown, have you found the Police very responsive to thefts, burglaries, car conversions and vandalism?

Drinkers' licences - a joke?

Here's an idea:

"One possible solution could be an entitlement card that people would carry and swipe when every time they buy Alcohol or Tobacco and record their usage. Is that too radical? I don't think so. For a long time the Government have controlled motorists with a system of licences where people enjoy the right and freedom to drive - as long as they conform to certain rules.

With the card, people who got into trouble for, say, minor crimes or drunk and disorderly conduct in public would receive a fixed penalty notice and 3 points on their entitlement card with points disappearing over time for in the same way works on driving licences.

More serious offences would result in endorsements on the entitlement card and the cardholder would not be able to purchase alcohol, tobacco or other drugs available for sale through the entitlement card scheme."

This comes from a Labour Party Parliamentary candidate, John Cowan on a British Labour Party blog.

I kid you not.

This lot rightfully call the BNP fascists, but methinks the proverbial pot is calling the kettle.

I'd like to think this nonsense will just be dismissed, but experience tells us it gets embraced by statists, who think it's a great idea.

Pop at "Beware Mad Socialists" says it is justified by the "cost to the NHS" and says "The 'cost to the NHS' is used by totalitarian socialists to justify many of their evil plans. If the NHS doesn't want to treat people, they should simply give people their money back and let them sort out their own medical care - private health companies would be delighted to sell people the care they really want."

Ration cards for what you consume.

Of course, then it could help with obesity couldn't it? You wouldn't get more points to buy chocolate if you didn't get points from going to the gym. You wouldn't get more points to buy petrol if you didn't get points from catching the train. You could all be good boys and girls and do what we say, rather than do what you want - as if YOU know what's good for you.

You think I'm kidding don't you? It is like Not PC's recent post on NZ in Print, one jokes about calorie taxes, and then someone thinks it is a great idea. In fact, Google "calorie tax" or "drinkers' licences" and discover how many are jokes and how many think it is worth considering.

Hat Tip: Old Holborn

Nanny State Beer

No. Really!

The Daily Telegraph reports "A brewer criticised for making what it claimed is Britain's strongest beer has unveiled an ale with a 1.1 per cent alcohol content, which it has called Nanny State."

Sales Director of Brewdog said "the new beer had such a low-alcohol content that the Government did not class it as a beer and it was not subject to beer duty.

There is more on the Brewdog blog. Including how Alcohol Focus Scotland doesn't think it is funny because it"proves that once again this company is failing to acknowledge the seriousness of the alcohol problem facing Scotland". Joyless little Nanny State worshippers who don't understand people don't like being told what to do.

Of course the test will be in the tasting, time to compare Nanny State to Tokyo (the highest alcohol content beer) methinks. By the way Tokyo includes hops from New Zealand.

John Key questions more sin tax

Yes, what a shift from Nanny Helen!?!

According to Stuff, the Prime Minister John Key on NewsTalk ZB said:

"I think you've got to be very careful you don't get in a situation where you simply whack up the price of booze and everybody gets affected because some, particularly young people, are going out on benders," he said.

"Because they (the Labour government) did that with the sherry tax and all that did was stop grandma having a sherry at night as opposed to the real purpose. . . I am not saying we have a closed mind to this issue, we will look at solutions.

"It is a problem, alcohol abuse, but not everybody drinking is abusing alcohol."

Yes - don't punish everyone for the bad behaviour of a minority. We no longer have a Headmistress running the country, but someone who actually believes that it is ok that many people drink alcohol responsibly, and that it is NOT ok to just tax them more because some people behave criminally while drunk.

This will amazingly confuse many bureaucrats. It is OK some people drink alcohol? Not everyone who drinks should be punished for it? Who would've thought?

Bad boys and girls

I heard Geoffrey Palmer, ever the old school prefect, on RNZ (via wifi radio) last night talking earnestly about how people drank too much and how there needed to be steps to address it. The Law Commission is arguing for a higher drinking age, for higher taxes on alcohol and shorter opening hours. A bit like keeping the whole class behind after school because a few kids did something wrong. The NZ Herald reports further on this.

Will de Cleene correctly slams this, as raising the drinking age makes alcohol MORE of a forbidden fruit than it is, and all the measures combined just raise the black market opportunities, including increased theft of alcohol.

Yes, some people commit crimes when they are drunk - that is a matter for the criminal justice system. Yes there is legitimate concern about people who drink so much they barely function or act in ways dangerous to themselves and others. However, that isn't because alcohol is available, it is cultural and particular to certain individuals.

You might ask yourself why so many people want to escape reality. Could it be because far too many people talk as if something isn't what it is? Could it be because so many live lives of quiet desperation and intoxication is an escape from them loathing reality?

UPDATE: Blair Mulholland puts it rather succinctly "Why should the government stop restricting alcohol sales? Because alcohol is fun. Because people enjoy it, most of the time responsibly. Because I like it and want to buy it. That should really be all the argument anybody ever needs."

Newspeak at the Standard

Let's say I have a shop, and I have a product on display. You want me to hide it, I choose not to do so. Have I changed the situation? No. YOU wanted the change and didn't convince me. Right?

No - not according to The Standard's Ministry of Truth. Apparently the government's refusal to ban tobacco displays in shops is going to make it EASIER for kids to get tobacco than at present, which funnily enough is that shops can have tobacco displays.

Like has been allowed the entire term of the government The Standard has glowingly loved.

Not only that, but the government WANTS kids to smoke. The reason given by Health Minister Tony Ryall was the lack of evidence that such a ban would be effective, but The Standard prefers a Parliamentary select committee (which face it is just MPs expressing opinions, NOT experts) to a Minister taking advice from officials.

You can see how the folks at The Standard could get a job overseas, such as at the Korean Central News Agency, which is a daily factory of twisted Orwellian fiction.

Of course I'd simply say that it is nobody else's business how a shop displays products that it is selling legally. If you don't want your kids to go to the shop, don't take them or tell them not to. Unless, of course, you have the kids sick of being told what to do by you, or are really dumb and will start smoking because of a product display, despite you warning of the health risks.

The filthy war on drugs

Will de Cleene blogs on the case of a 92 year old woman killed by the Atlanta Police during a botched drugs raid. So what happened?

- An officer got a "no knock" warrant to enter this woman's house, in other words smash in to the house, based on evidence that he falsified, following a fake tipoff;
- The officers smashed their way into the house, the elderly woman shot her own gun off as a warning shot, because she thought she was suffering a home invasion;
- They then sprayed her with bullets, and left her to die;
- Marijuana was then planted in her basement, to cover up what they did.

Another victim of the war on drugs, a victim of the maniacal attempts at performance quotas for Police to catch "criminals".

However, I guess it's ok to most people, as long as she isn't your mother, grandmother, wife, sister or friend.

Legalise Cannabis?

Well if you believe adults should be able to peacefully consume cannabis on their own property, then your choice is rather simple.

The Green Party has abandoned pursuing this, partly because Nandor Tanczos has gone on to do other things, but also because it didn't really fit the ban/regulate/compel agenda of the party, and more importantly talking about it frightened middle class voters who thought the Greens approved of smoking cannabis. A vote for the Greens to get cannabis decriminalised or legalised is a wasted vote.

The Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party has been on a long path to nowhere. It is completely dormant between elections. In 1996, it got 1.66% of the vote, in 1999 1.1%, in 2002 0.64% and in 2005 0.25%. As a one issue party it will never cross the 5% threshold, and has frittered away its support year after year. It also doesn't care about responsibility, doesn't care about healthcare or the right to ban cannabis users from private property. Ticking the leaf will mean nothing other than you only care about cannabis.

Libertarianz would legalise cannabis, and other drugs safer than alcohol, for sale and adult consumption on private property. It would also ensure users of such drugs would be responsible for paying for their own private health consequences, and while such consumption would be a right, it would be the right of private property owners to ban it on their own property, and for employers to insist employees do not enter their premises under the influence of the drug. Legalisation does not mean approval or disapproval, it is simply not the business of the state to tell you what you must or must not ingest.

So I urge those who regard the cannabis laws to be oppressive, those who see the current laws as being an abject failure, and those who believe they should choose what they ingest (but also be responsible for the consequences of consumption), to vote Libertarianz. Odds are that Libertarianz will beat the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party this time round, given the trends of both parties, and a vote for the Greens on this point will be wasted. The Greens failed to make a change in the past 9 years of government that they effectively endorsed.

UK acts Nanny on alcohol

According to the Sunday Telegraph the British government is looking to address alcohol abuse in the UK not by requiring those who have accidents due to their own alcohol misuse to face the medical bill, no - by regulating how businesses can sell alcohol.

A government draft code of conduct, which could be made into law includes:
- Requiring wine to be sold in glasses that identify exactly the volumes sold;
- Banning promotions of free drinks to women;
- Restrictions on free samples;
- Bans on promotions that link drinking to "social, sexual, physical, mental, financial or sporting performance";
- Bans on drinking games that relate to speed and volume of drinking.

Yes, Nanny would rather penalise everyone, limit everyone, punish everyone - like children in a school yard, than target those who abuse, those who cost others. No.

There are bigger reasons why so many Brits drink far too much - it wont be fixed by regulation - it is cultural.

A cop wants a ban

Wonder if Sue Kedgley would be interested? A paid journalist has reported how a single cop in Southland has called for absinthe to be banned. (One man is a "call" for something you see not much news in Southland obviously?) Why? Because some fool teenager over indulged.

He was underage, so he presumably got access to alcohol illegally anyway. Nevermind that, Sergeant John Harris wants to take away the fun from others who KNOW how to consume absinthe. I can understand his desire to protect the ignorant, but cars kill people every day, people do stupid things every day - banning those things which gives others great positive utility in order to protect the foolish IS the definition of Nanny State. Sergeant Harris has good intentions, but he'd be better off focusing on young teens who wander the streets at night drunk and vulnerable, rather than using Sue Kedgley's favourite word.

Teenage soft drug use - so bad?

In this age of fear and incessant orders in the media about how to behave, the article from India Knight in the Sunday Times today challenges one taboo that no mainstream politician dare touch.

Drug use and teenagers.

The mainstream media today is confused about teenagers. On the one hand they are to be cosseted and protected from the evils of alcohol, tobacco, drugs and sex, gentle fragile beings they are, on the other hand they need discipline, they need to learn what's"right from wrong", and they need to learn the consequences of their actions. Coincidentally the media loves them, for being where the fashion industry seeks when it wishes to portray beauty, where the music industry finds image and style to throw onto the soporific soma it calls music. As it so wishes, the media treats teenagers as a group (not individuals) who we need protection from and who need protection, who are reviled and feared, but also (secretly) desired and worshipped.

India Knight's article taps into your desire to protect them, by telling her own story about drugs as a teenager.

Before you type your outraged comment about "not understanding the devastation drugs can cause" etc etc, let me make it clear. Despite my position that drugs should be legalised for adults (but only along with some radical changes to tort law/ACC, state health provision and clarification of private property and contractual rights), I do not believe they should be legal for children, and that supply to minors should remain an offence.

So what does Knight say? Well you should read for yourself. However here are some choice quotes to get you thinking:

"I know we’re all supposed to tremble in our boots at the evil of recreational drug-taking but experimenting with drugs just seems to me normal – banal, really. Teenage binge-drinking is another story, because soft drugs don’t cause you to get cirrhosis when you’re still in your early twenties, or render you so out of it that you get raped, or leave the streets of Britain awash with vomit"

"By the time I went to university I had grown bored with the druggy scene and had evolved enough to get over the sense that drugs were exciting and naughty"

"All of which makes me think that a bit of teenage soft drug-taking is, for the vast majority, simply a rite of passage. Just as having underage sex doesn’t turn you into a nymphomaniac, so underage drug-taking tends, in the vast majority of cases, not to turn you into a tragic junkie"

"A clean-living friend recently spent a weekend partying (without artificial help) in Ibiza and couldn’t help noting that although every person he came across was on ecstasy, they were all smiling, kind, polite, courteous and friendly.

Compare and contrast, he said, with trying to walk through central London on a Friday night, when every other person is loud, obscene, aggressive and trying to start a fight and there’s always some poor sod on the night bus with a bleeding face, to say nothing of crumpled girls who are either crying or comatose with drink. “I know which I prefer,” he said, and so do I."

Now I know some die from drug use, and I know some have permanent damage from drug use, which of course is the same for alcohol, and the same for driving, adventure sports, diving and other activities. However, has prohibition made dying from drug use more or less likely? Is it more or less likely that drugs obtained in a criminal environment will be tainted or diluted by poisionous third substances? Is it more or less likely than teenagers will confess to parents about drug use if it is criminal? Is it more of less likely than teenagers will approach Police or go to hospitals if they fear being arrested rather than looked after if drug use goes wrong?

People will take drugs. Drugs if used too much, too regularly or inappropriately (e.g. with alcohol, other medication) are dangerous. People with dire lives due to inadequate, negligent or downright abusive parenting will be prone to drugs, alcohol, crime and reckless hedonism generally. Turning your back against drugs isn't going to make them go away. Those who call for zero-tolerance rarely mean what they say - they wouldn't have the Police raid every teenage party they could sniff out, and then use the means of intelligence and surveillance available to hunt down those who might use, so they could then execute search warrants on teenagers' bedrooms. Carefree liberalism also ignores the truth that drugs can be very dangerous.

That's why there needs to be a dialogue about change, part of that change is taking this out of the criminal justice system, but it is also about not treating all drug use as devastatingly destructive. Many young people use drugs, as they use sex, responsibly and without serious long term consequences. It is called experimentation and learning about life - but the lines between abstinence, responsible experimentation and reckless hedonism scare parents, understandably so. That fear is the reason to talk about it.

OH and while you're at it, read Barbara Ellen's column in the Observer "A little bit of sex education never hurt anyone". Her quote to stir up the middle classes must be:

"There is a point in your child's life when trying to stop them 'knowing stuff' is a bit like trying to put out a bush fire with a water pistol. And, short of dressing your kids in Amish gear, educating them in an underground cell at home, perhaps strangling them when they hit 13 or, indeed, guarding them like Cerberus at the mouth of Hades, there's not an awful lot one can do about it."

So what IS the cost of drugs?

The NZ Herald is reporting a study conducted called the Drug Harm Index. It reports it was "designed by economists to help police decide where drugs do the most harm and enable them to use resources more efficiently."

On the face of it the report claims a $1.3 billion "social" cost for drugs. That, of course raises some big issues:

- How many of those costs are costs of prohibition? If prohibition ended, how many would go up, how many would go down or disappear?
- How many of these costs could be born by those using if the incentives were in place to do so? These wouldn't be "social" costs, they would be internalised. Indeed how many of these costs ARE internal?
- What are the benefits? People spend money on drugs not for nothing, but because they gain value in it. The value is not dissimilar to the value from drinking, eating a dessert, sex or the like. You see people take drugs because they feel good isn't it missing part of the equation to ignore that?

Now I don't think that long term drug use is a particular clever thing to do. It can be highly destructive and damaging, much as consistently high levels of alcohol consumption can be too. However, it is important to consider drugs dispassionately. It's not me to judge what another adult ingests, as long as it doesn't harm anyone else. So let's look at least at some points reported:

- "373,310 people used cannabis, but only 17 per cent of these were frequent users". It may suggest that the bulk of users are getting about their life reasonably well. At least no worse than the regular drinker. However if we enforced the law strictly, that would be equal to the population of Christchurch being in prison. That's what winning the war on drugs would mean.

- "Nearly 23,000 people used crystal methamphetamine (36 per cent of them often)" compared with 81,890 using MDMA and 38,890 using cocaine. Suggests the "P epidemic" isn't quite that, although it is undoubtedly the most destructive of the drugs listed.

- Drug use is related to absences at work, which is hardly surprising. However, this IS a matter between the user and the employer, and if the employer has the legal right to dismiss someone for excessive absences then the issue can be addressed. However, you wouldn't arrest a drug user purely for not turning up at work enough would you?

- 16% of the prison population is occupied by "drug related crimes", although it is unclear whether this is drug crimes per se. $108.7 million per annum to keep them there. However, this isn't a cost of drug use - it is a cost of drug prohibition. Add the $374 million court, community sentence and home detention costs also to drug prohibition, not drug use.

- 2292 patients admitted to hospital for drug related reasons, costing $6.76 million p.a. Hardly noticeable in a health budget of $11 billion p.a. The Ministry of Health says that the annual cost of alcohol related hospitalisations is $74 million p.a. Of course, if drug users had to pay for hospital costs it wouldn't be a social cost anymore.

- 1920 drug related deaths (including associated with homicide and road accidents). That statistic itself sounds like a wide catchment. Does it include people murdered in the criminalised drug sector? Curiously ALAC's website claims in 2000 that 1040 deaths were attributable to alcohol, but 980 were PREVENTED by alcohol, although the deaths were more likely to be premature and the deaths avoided older (presumably the preventive effect of red wine on heart disease and the like). Back to drugs, how many drug related deaths could have been avoided had it been easy to present information on safer use of MDMA and other drugs, for example? How many drug related deaths could have been avoided had drugs not been "fortified" by a range of substances to make them "go a bit further" for dealers - a consequence of prohibition.

- "While stimulants contributed 41 per cent of the total costs, figures showed that in 2006, police and Customs seized 33,480kg of cannabis compared with only 155kg of stimulants." It demonstrates the law enforcement agencies concentrate on the high volume easy catches, not the low volumes harder drugs. What does that say about incentives to target "catching people" rather than harm?

So the story is mixed. Yes drugs undoubtedly cost in productivity, and cost more in less tangible ways socially as their misuse can be highly destructive to motivation, character and attitude to life. However, is that a reason to lock up 1578 people? Are their wider education, cultural and philosophical reasons why this happens?

Yes drugs send people to hospital, but at a fraction of the rate of alcohol. We also don't know whether drugs have any positive health effect - some cancer patients report cannabis soothing their pain. We also don't know what other positive effects they have on people, relieving stress for example. Yes there are sceptics, but I'd like to see someone dispassionately investigating this. The cost of drugs is only half of the equation, what value are there on the benefits? I don't have any idea whether this would be smaller or larger than the costs, but surely we should ask both before coming to a conclusion.

Finally, the cost of the criminal justice system is not a cost of drug use, it is the cost of drug prohibition. That is also worthy of a study. The cost of prohibition includes all of those imprisonment and court costs, and Police costs. It also includes the higher price users pay, and an element of the health costs by reducing quality. Finally, if a cost of drug use is reduced productivity, a cost of prohibition is the cost to individuals of being incarcerated and forever having a drug conviction in their records. The cost in time can be calculated, the cost in lost earnings over life, and reduced opportunities to travel. The benefits would be worth calculating too - what do we save from prohibition?

Now none of this is about developing an economists answer to a question of individual freedom, but it is useful in identifying the consequences of policies and getting some order of magnitude. It is telling in itself that the health costs of drug use are quite low.