Voting YES

I’m in favour of putting better controls on the nation’s second most popular drug after booze.

I’m in favour of taking money away from the black market and putting it into healthcare. 

I’m in favour of a better saner arrangement than the way things are now. 

I’m not in favour of just leaving things to go on the way they are. That would mean no controls on potency. That would mean little protection for young people. That would mean little access to treatment for people with a problem. That would mean perpetuating a regime that typically sees people on the prosperous side of town getting a slap on the wrist for minor drug offences while Maori and poor people are stopped, searched, arrested, and convicted.

People who tell me I’m getting this wrong tell me it’ll be bad for our kids; that if we legalise it, the kids will use it more. I understand the anxiety, but we’re not going first here. We have the experience of other jurisdictions to reassure us. Nowhere it’s been legalised have young people proceeded to use it more.Their rate of use has either stayed stable or declined. If you regulate, you can direct young people toward safer ways to consume it. If you regulate, you can make the whole scene less thrilling and enticing.

I do see a hazard in a black market targeting underage buyers and I recognise the hazard that gangs deprived of the cannabis market might try to supplant it with heavier drugs. But the proposed bill carries with it very tough punishments for those who sell or supply cannabis to young people. That looks like a better arrangement than the way things are now. Meanwhile, a NO vote means the current policies remain, and the current problems remain.

So I’m voting YES to:

a legal age for consumption; cannabis sold at licensed stores; access to the health services people may need; an end to injustices; and hundreds of millions of dollars in new taxes providing the funding for health and education programmes.

The consumption will go on, whatever we do or don't do.  Legalisation will simply be making things saner, fairer, and safer. That feels like a better way to go.