Dear "A Voter".
It is the experience of this third time Mayoral candidate that it is media the governs the issues here in the local body hustings.
Ranging from ignoring, the prerogative to the down right dishonest reporting of this core issue. Pretenders to Community Safety and SAFER STREETS pander to the 40 year dogma of prohibition propaganda get the mind-share yet the local bodies are the ones left to not only pick up the burden of insecurity created by this misplaced policy, they also licence premises to sell alcohol and govern through other planning where tobacco can and cant be sold. It IS a local election issue.
Only yesterday one of our social scientists gave a analysis of the TWO longest running longitudinal and multidisciplinary studies that examine cannabis and outcomes. These are the same studies that feed into the reclassification of cannabis to Class B in the UK after the Royal College of Psychiatry and others failed to observe the clear evidence that the psychosis young people are experiencing is BECAUSE of the law. The alienation, mistrust and rejection of social mores indeed an entire matrix of dysfunction last longest on those at greatest risk. The clear targeting of young, male, ethnic minority and those who may have already transgressed (as there go by the grace go many of us) are caught with minor cannabis possession and enter the criminal gateway/spiral.
Yet, Alcohol gets a free reign.
I urge readers to consider a legislative framework recently passed into law in NZ (thus UN compliant) but remaining for the moment an empty vessel, that Professor Nutt referred to in his presentation here in Christchurch as "beautiful" and where cannabis should be placed. Similar to the UK bill in 2001 Class D initiative, we have added a classification to the Misuse of Drugs Act for recreational psychoactive 'soft' drug use, that equitably manages sale, packaging, labeling, place of sale, advertising and age of consent (R18).
Show this to your local constituency and ask... why not? If nothing else it will inform and encourage civic debate.
I wish Wales well in its deliberations on this vexing issue and encourage all and sundry to consider... if we want to protect youth we must give licence to adult use. We must remove the double standards and impediments to credible health promotion (Ottawa Charter stuff) and strike this anomalous prohibitive law that serves us all poorly from the books.
I wish Wales well in its deliberations on this vexing issue and encourage all and sundry to consider... if we want to protect youth we must give licence to adult use. We must remove the double standards and impediments to credible health promotion (Ottawa Charter stuff) and strike this anomalous prohibitive law that serves us all poorly from the books.
--
Blair Anderson ‹(•¿•)›
Social Ecologist 'at large'
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com
http://blairformayor.blogspot.com
http://blair4mayor.com
http://efsdp.org
ph nz (643) 389 4065 nz cell 027 265 7219
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