Canvassing for Opinion - aka "Blairs Brain on Cannabis"

Water deserves a bigger democratic bucket, MildGreens says

2026-10-19T22:38:15.335+13:00

A 5% MMP threshold is a seat-allocation rule, not a sound test of whose water policy deserves public scrutiny.

The MildGreens is calling for a more inclusive format following Greenpeace Aotearoa’s Monday nights pre-election freshwater symposium, after concerns that access for political participants was tied to the 5% party-vote threshold under MMP.

Greenpeace’s freshwater campaigning has helped make the public-interest case for protecting rivers, aquifers and drinking water. Its testing, research-based advocacy and community organising can generate an environmental dividend well beyond conservation: healthier ecosystems, safer water, reduced costs and anxiety for households, and stronger long-term resilience for communities and farming regions.

That public value is best served by a civic conversation broad enough to scrutinise the full range of policy choices, and the people considering their vote allocation based on them.

“Clean water is too consequential to make the threshold for parliamentary representation the threshold for being heard,” says Blair Anderson, ALCP Christchurch Central candidate and MildGreens spokesperson.

“The 5% rule determines how a party can qualify for list seats under MMP; it is not a test of whether a candidate is legally entitled to stand, whether their policy is relevant, or whether voters should be able to question them.”

The Electoral Commission explains that a party can qualify for seats through either 5% of the party vote or an electorate seat. It also confirms that independent candidates and candidates for registered parties can stand for electorate seats. The MMP threshold therefore serves a specific electoral function; using it to screen participants in a public-interest debate is a separate editorial choice, not a requirement of MMP.

MildGreens recognises that organisers have limited time and must make practical decisions about format. The concern is not that every candidate must receive an equal-length platform at a single event. It is that a single threshold can exclude emerging parties, independent or local candidates, and perspectives with direct experience of the issue before the public has had a chance to assess their proposals.

The Initiative’s own public policy work—principally in health, drug policy and human rights rather than freshwater science—argues for evaluating policy by its effects on people and communities, using evidence, rights and Te Tiriti o Waitangi as part of the frame. That perspective is relevant to water: the environmental dividend of Greenpeace’s core mission includes social outcomes, and decisions about water affect health, livelihood, identity, access and intergenerational wellbeing as well as ecological condition.

“Greenpeace’s strongest contribution is not only putting pollution on the agenda; it is helping people see why clean water is a shared public good,” the ALCP spokesperson said. “A ‘civics of water’ event should model that principle. It should invite scrutiny of the water policies that matter, while making participation rules transparent and open enough to hear more than the already-established voices.” "To pretend otherwise is an insult to an open democracy; I expect better from Greenpeace!".

MildGreens proposes that the organisers retain a structured leaders’ discussion if useful, while also offering every registered party and duly nominated electorate candidate a consistent route to participate, even if, for example, via a published questionnaire, written policy responses, an open audience question period, or a supplementary forum for candidates who do not meet a polling threshold. The criteria should be published in advance and should distinguish party representation from candidate participation.

Greenpeace’s advocacy, research and community engagement can help build a constituency for cleaner water. A fairer participation design would strengthen that work by making the public forum itself more consistent with the inclusive, evidence-led and community-centred outcomes the campaigners seek and the hustings must deliver.

Blair Anderson, candidate Christchurch Central, ALCP List #7.
021823647

Cannabis Prosecutions Up: Are the Police On Drugs?

2026-10-19T17:31:23.315+13:00

Back in 2019 Police were told to treat cannabis, where possible 'by means other than arrest', but they have a 'better story'. Of course, that better story would never include that the Assistant Commissioner of Police told the statutorily empowered Health Select Committee who were conducting an evidential inquiry on Cannabis and the Law, that "NZ Police had no objection to decriminalisation".

Now that wasn't their 'first evidential brief', that was several weeks before when they testified to the same committee that cannabis caused crime. Based on previous testimony from the writer and others, the committee had heard that cannabis is not criminogenic, whereas prohibition is. The committee instructed Police to come back and validate their assertion. They clearly had difficulty with that original 'better story' and so were compelled to do some truthing.....and came up with a much better story.

The trouble is, they forgot it.

I am here to tell you, it deserved 'telling'. Media didn't think it important enough for you to know, now, if you didn't know before, here it is.... now demanding a please explain ', for if the police had no objection, why didn't we hear that prior to the referendum.

So.... I am here to make this known. My first opportunity in Christchurch Central to confront stalwart (3x) National candidate and former Police Officer. He has been apprised of Canada and more!. I don't think he was listening.... so off to do it again in public. At the Piano.

That is... if they even let me in! I was not invited 'as a candidate', I had to apply to be in the audience.... sound familiar? Same Venue, the Piano at 7.00pm, Tonight.

It is about water..... I am about to wet the appetite for great debate.

Blair Anderson http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

Just Say No, the UN Conventions and Us!

2026-10-15T13:07:53.173+13:00

MildGreens salutes the countries and states that moved beyond “Just Say No” and the UN conventions — and tells New Zealand to bring back the “Class D” drug law Professor David Nutt called the world’s best

Two dozen US states, eight countries and two territories now regulate what the 1961 Single Convention says must stay criminal. New Zealand invented the “Class D” — created in 2005, completed by Order in Council in October 2008, and praised by Professor David Nutt at Otago’s Christchurch School of Medicine — then repealed it. The margin that stopped reform in 2020 was 67,662 votes: fewer votes than the population of Palmerston North. Advance voting opens Monday 26 October.

[Christchurch, NZ.] — 15 October 2026

MildGreens today endorses every country, state and territory that has moved beyond “Just Say No” and the UN drug conventions — and advises New Zealand, which begins voting this month, to adopt the “Class D” solution: a regulated holding class for drugs of low or uncertain harm.

“New Zealand wrote the world’s best drug law and then repealed it before the evidence could accumulate,” said Blair Anderson, ALCP Candidate for Christchurch Central and policy advocate at the MildGreens Initiative. “In 2005 this country became the first in the developed world to regulate a recreational psychoactive substance, BZP party pills, instead of banning it: 18-and-over purchase, no advertising, no free samples. In October 2008, a month before that year’s general election, the Clark government made the Restricted Substances Regulations by Order in Council, adding labelling, packaging, place-of-sale and advertising controls. That same season, Professor David Nutt stood up at the University of Otago’s Christchurch School of Medicine and told the room that New Zealand had the world’s best drug law. Britain’s drug advisers then proposed a holding class modelled on it and Professor Nutt went home and urged his own country to copy it. Five years later we repealed our own regulations and went back to arresting people. It is time to dig the idea up.”

The jurisdictions MildGreens endorses today:

Full national adult-use markets: Canada (legal nationwide since October 2018), Uruguay (the world’s first, in 2013, supplied through pharmacies and clubs for residents), and the 24 US states plus the District of Columbia that have legalised adult use since Colorado and Washington led in 2012 — most recently with retail markets opening in Minnesota and Delaware in 2025.

Legal possession and home cultivation: Malta (2021, the first in the EU), Luxembourg (2023), Germany (2024 — 25 grams in public, 50 at home, three plants, non-profit clubs), Czechia (1 January 2026 — adults 21 and over), South Africa (private possession and cultivation under the 2024 Cannabis for Private Purposes Act), Georgia (private use), and the territories of Guam and the US Virgin Islands.

Regulated-sale pilots: the Netherlands and Switzerland, whose supervised adult-use trials are producing the evidence the rest of Europe keeps asking for.

Decriminalisation as the floor, not the ceiling: Portugal (no criminal penalties for personal possession since 2001) and the Australian Capital Territory.

“Prohibition has had sixty-five years. The conventions that carry it have had sixty,” Anderson said. “Since 2012 alone, two American states have become 24 plus the District of Columbia; Uruguay and Canada built national markets; and in April the United States itself moved medical cannabis to Schedule III, explicitly to satisfy its obligations under the Single Convention. The UN’s International Narcotics Control Board still insists that legalisation ‘contravenes’ the 1961 treaty. The world has moved on regardless. New Zealand has not.”

What a Class D would look like

MildGreens is urging New Zealand to rebuild the model it pioneered and then abandoned: a new, lowest-risk class under a Misuse of Drugs Act that the Law Commission recommended replacing in 2011 and no government has.

Under a Class D, low-risk substances — starting with cannabis — could be sold to adults only, from licensed outlets, under potency and quantity limits, with health warnings and mandatory sales reporting, and with no criminal record attached to purchase, possession or home cultivation. The data would decide what stays in the class, what graduates to full legal regulation, and what moves up. Nothing about the model is radical: it is the regime New Zealand applied to BZP party pills from 2005, completed by the Restricted Substances Regulations 2008, and described by Professor Nutt himself as the “‘class D’ approach adopted by New Zealand several years ago to deal with BZP with some success” — where drugs “were allowed to be sold in limited quantities to adults, with appropriate warnings of health risks and advice on safe use.” It is also the logic behind the “world-leading” Psychoactive Substances Act 2013, which this country passed 119 votes to one and then strangled before a single product could be approved.

Why this election

The 2020 referendum failed by 67,662 votes: 50.7 per cent to 48.4 per cent. One vote in 43 — fewer votes than the population of Palmerston North. “That was the difference between a country that regulates cannabis and a country that still arrests adults over a plant,” the ALCP reform advocate said. “It was lost in an environment where the two largest parties either campaigned against reform or refused to defend it. Six years on, the Netherlands runs legal trials, Germany runs clubs, Czechia runs home grows — and New Zealand runs saliva tests for drivers who are not impaired, while the black market, as Massey University researchers reported this year, has never been cheaper or easier to access.”

MildGreens is not telling anyone how to vote. It is asking every voter to put one question to every candidate: Will you back a Class D?

“Enrol by Sunday 25 October — this year, you cannot enrol at a voting place. Advance voting opens Monday 26 October. Polls close on election day, Saturday 7 November,” [SPOKESPERSON NAME] said. “Whoever forms the next government will get a choice: keep enforcing 1961, or do what Canada, Germany, Czechia, Uruguay, South Africa, 24 American states and the District of Columbia have already done. The jurisdictions we endorse today are not the outliers any more. We are.”

MildGreens calls on:

New Zealand’s political parties to commit to repealing and replacing the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, as the Law Commission recommended in 2011, and to creating a Class D under a health-administered act.

New Zealand voters to enrol by Sunday 25 October, cast an advance or election-day vote, and ask every candidate the Class D question before they do.

Legalising jurisdictions to build markets that are equitable as well as legal — licensing small and legacy producers, defending home cultivation, mandating product testing, and reinvesting revenue in the communities most harmed by prohibition.

The UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, the World Health Organisation and the INCB to modernise the 1961, 1971 and 1988 conventions, so member states can regulate low-risk substances without being branded treaty-breakers for doing what their voters asked.

ENDS

Blair Anderson http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

Drug testing welfare recipients reveals Nat's character!

2026-10-10T22:54:27.643+13:00

Drug testing welfare recipients raises serious human rights and social justice concerns that need our attention.

Mandatory testing invades privacy and bodily autonomy, creating a two-tier system where only those in poverty must prove their fitness. This unfairly targets marginalised communities and assumes guilt based on poverty alone.

Research shows these programs are costly and ineffective, with low positive drug test rates that don’t justify the expense. Worse, removing benefits pushes vulnerable people deeper into poverty, without addressing the root causes like trauma, mental illness, or addiction.

We believe in supporting people with dignity; providing help, not punishment.

It’s time to focus on real solutions that build trust, increase access to treatment, and uplift our communities.

Let’s start a conversation about how we can create a more compassionate, fair, and effective social support system.

Share your thoughts below! #HumanRights #SupportNotSurveillance #MildGreens 'at large'

http://blairformayor.blogspot.com

http://facebook.com/mildgreens
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com
http://efsdp.org

Christchurch, New Zealand
nz cell 021 823647

Central to Today's Issues, ALCP Candidate for Christchurch Central.

2026-10-10T19:13:45.744+13:00

Who would believe Christchurch would change so much in a lifetime.... someone asked me one 'canvassing for opinion' event I attended "What connections did I have with Christchurch?"

I have many replies to that question. This one was central to today's issues.

I lived in the byzantyme dome; my technology consulting office of "Techno Junk and Grey Matter" was on the second-floor corner. I wrote the 'software' solution for inbound tourism there. And "Chill", NZ's first cool stores administration system that understood first in, first out.... Oh, yes, that was Woolworths.
Oh, and the world's first 'Double Glazing Production System', responsible for greening zillions of megawatts all over Canterbury.

I put Canterbury and New Zealand's first BBS on the Internet, "Plains BBS", NZ's first publically accessable internet capable node. An average image today would take a month of Sundays on 'dial-up ', but, it was pioneering online word processing via messages into lists of interest that changed everything.....

Up the cast iron spiral stairway, the internals of the dome provided a venue for the Worlds First 1:1 and 2:2 'Hackysack' Battles... solo was exhibition standard; anyone trialling/training, > ton of hacks got shouted 'greasies' over by Warner's Bar.

https://www.canterburystories.nz/collections/photohunt/2020/ccl-cs-17604

ALCP Candidate for Christchurch Central,

Oh, yes... I was the first contracted consultant for Canterbury Development Corporation.
Oh, and put Aoraki Corporation on the Internet.

But the media think it's much more important that you know I have a forty-year-old cannabis conviction.

Blair Anderson http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

Cannabis study lands in the country that legalises the more violent drug

2026-10-06T23:54:08.538+13:00

For immediate release — 07 October 2026
Cannabis study lands in the country that legalises the more violent drug

If violence belongs in the drug conversation, then the evidence points first at alcohol — and New Zealand is loosening alcohol rules in the same term it keeps cannabis users in court.

Christchurch — MildGreens today welcomed a major King's College London review linking cannabis use to violence, and called for it to be read with the same rigour applied to the far larger, better-evidenced violence and self-harm record of alcohol.

The review, published in Psychological Medicine on 24 September, pooled 63 studies and more than 265,000 people. It found cannabis users about twice as likely to have committed a violent act in the general population (OR 2.05), about 2.5 times as likely among psychiatric patients, and about 1.5 times as likely to be victims of violence, and an association stronger for women.

MildGreens accepts those findings. Cannabis is not harmless, and no advocate should pretend otherwise.

But the same numbers that make the finding worth reporting also limit what it can carry. When the studies followed people over time, the design that can speak to cause and effect, the association fell to an odds ratio of 1.17. Studies that measured a single moment in time produced 2.37. Most studies were also conducted before today's high-potency cannabis became common, and the authors are explicit that their work shows an association, not causation, noting that cannabis use travels alongside alcohol use, other drug use and hard social circumstances.

"The authors are careful. The headlines were not," said Blair Anderson, Christchurch Central Candidate for the ALCP, and spokesperson for MildGreens.

"An odds ratio of 1.17 in the studies that can actually speak to time order is not a picture of a drug driving a violence epidemic. And when an independent expert, Professor Simon Moore of Cardiff University's Violence Research Group, notes that the review didn't measure where, with whom or in what circumstances cannabis was used and that illegal markets put users in contact with people and places where violence is likelier, then prohibition isn't a bystander to this debate. It's a suspect."

Against that, consider the drug New Zealand actually regulates by licensing, advertising, supermarket shelves and sponsorship.

Alcohol is the top-scoring substance for harm to others in the Lancet's multicriteria drug-harm analysis (46 of 100 for harm to others; 72 overall, the highest ever recorded for any drug), with cannabis at 20 overall. Comparable rankings in Australia, the EU and New Zealand have all put alcohol first. Cross-national emergency department research attributes 43% of violence-related injuries to drinking in the hours before the event and about 39% when the victim's and perpetrator's drinking are both counted. In Aotearoa, alcohol is known to be involved in around two in five violent interpersonal offences, one in three family violence incidents, and, on police estimates, about half of serious violent crime.

The self-harm comparison is starker still. A 17-country case-crossover study across 38 emergency departments found that every drink in the six hours before a suicide attempt raised the risk by around 30%, and that roughly 35% of serious suicide attempts were attributable to acute alcohol, around one in five suicides in the United States carry an alcohol-attributable fraction. The World Health Organisation attributes 2.6 million deaths a year to alcohol, including 700,000 injury deaths spanning road crashes, violence and self-harm. NZIER's Ministry of Health-commissioned work puts alcohol's annual cost to New Zealand at $9.1 billion.

Cannabis research, by contrast, finds elevated odds of suicidal thinking and attempts in young users that shrink substantially with adjustment for depression, and no comparable population-attributable toll.

Thirty years of prohibition in New Zealand has not produced a credible body of evidence that cannabis rivals alcohol as a driver of violence or self-harm; it has produced 675,000 past-year users, 225,000 weekly users, a market where 85% of users say cannabis is easy to get, and a black market whose price fell >11% in seven years.

And while cannabis users are studied for their contribution to violence, the 2026 Parliamentary term has brought a Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Improving Alcohol Regulation) Amendment Bill and a Ministry for Regulation review that removes annual licence fees, simplifies alcohol applications and extends renewal periods, with the Associate Justice Minister saying regulators should "stop treating hospitality businesses who want to sell alcohol like common criminals."

"The inconsistency is the story," said Blair Anderson. "If this review means New Zealand should add violence to its public health messages about cannabis, then the same lens must be turned on the product we hand out at every office function and sell in supermarkets. What we have instead is a country easing the rules on the substance most strongly implicated in family harm, sexual assault, homicide and self-harm, while still prosecuting people over a plant that is easier to buy than ever. That is not evidence-based policy in either direction."

MildGreens' position:

Proportionality. Violence prevention in New Zealand should be aimed where the attributable burden is largest. Alcohol is that target, alongside trauma, poverty and inequity — not cannabis users.
Regulate, don't criminalise. The review's own blind spot — unmeasured context and illegal-market exposure — is an argument for a regulated legal market with potency limits, age restrictions, plain packaging, sales controls and public health monitoring, not a return to enforcement that generates the very contexts studies are measuring.
No new stigma. Mental health services should ask about cannabis, as the authors recommend — and about alcohol, trauma and violence exposure. Patients should not be turned into suspects.
Research in New Zealand, for New Zealand. Most evidence predates high-potency products, and none of it is local. If New Zealand wants to know how cannabis and violence interact here, it has to fund the data, monitor outcomes transparently, and publish what it finds, including findings that don't suit anyone's existing position.
Same evidence standard, both drugs. Any further loosening of alcohol rules should require the same public health justification Parliament demands of cannabis reform.

MildGreens thanks the King's College London team for adding to the evidence base, and reiterates its founding position: prohibition is the policy that generates crime, harm and violence, and it should be replaced with honest, evidence-based regulation — applied consistently to every drug.

And that deserved to be in the TVOne Leaders Debate.....

Ends

About MildGreens

MildGreens is a New Zealand drug policy reform and harm reduction advocacy group, active since the early 2000s. A founding member is Blair Anderson, who has campaigned for evidence-based cannabis law reform in Canterbury, nationally and internationally. MildGreens advocates for non-punitive, health-centred drug policy and for proportionate regulation based on comparative harm.

Media contact: Blair Anderson · 021823647 · mildgreens@gmail.com · mildgreens.blogspot.com

Note to editors — the numbers behind this release

Measure	Alcohol	Cannabis
Overall harm score (Lancet 2010 MCDA, UK)	72 (highest of 20 drugs)	20
Harm to others score	46 (highest of all drugs)	Low (single figures)
Violence-related injuries attributable	39–43% (cross-national ED studies)	Not estimated; association OR 1.17–2.05
Attributable burden of self-harm	~35% of serious suicide attempts; ~1 in 5 suicides (US)	No comparable attributable fraction established; adjusted odds ratios modest
Deaths attributable	2.6 million/year globally (WHO, 2019)	No comparable mortality
NZ annual cost	$9.1 billion (NZIER, 2024)	Not estimated on the same basis

Key sources

Trotta G, Rodriguez V, Marino P, et al. Cannabis use is associated with increased risk of violence: a systematic review and meta-analysis. Psychological Medicine 2026;56:e296. DOI 10.1017/S0033291726105856
Science Media Centre (UK) expert reaction, 29 September 2026 — Prof Simon Moore, Cardiff University
Nutt DJ, King LA, Phillips LD. Drug harms in the UK: a multicriteria decision analysis. The Lancet 2010;376:1558–65
Cherpitel CJ, Ye Y, Bond J. Attributable risk of injury associated with alcohol use. Am J Public Health 2005;95:266–72
Cherpitel CJ et al. Attribution of alcohol to violence-related injury. J Stud Alcohol Drugs 2012
Case-crossover dose-response study of acute alcohol and suicide attempt, 38 EDs, 17 countries (PMC5303186)
US National Violent Death Reporting System, alcohol-attributable fractions for suicide, 2021
World Health Organization, Global status report on alcohol and health, June 2024
NZIER, Costs of alcohol harms in New Zealand, report for the Ministry of Health, June 2024
NZ Health Survey 2023/24 and NZ Drug Trends Survey 2024, via NZ Drug Foundation, Drug Use in Aotearoa 2023/24
Sale and Supply of Alcohol (Improving Alcohol Regulation) Amendment Bill, introduced 16 March 2026

Placeholders in [BRACKETS] must be completed before distribution. See the accompanying briefing note for caveats, alternative headlines and lines that require a specific citation.

Blair Anderson http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

Fwd: Petition: Cost/Benefit analysis of cannabis prohibition

2026-10-06T23:32:06.045+13:00

re: Petition: Cost/Benefit analysis of cannabis prohibition

Worth a repeat for its call, twenty-one years ago.....noting we had a referendum, supposedly informed by experts, yet..... NO COST/BENEFIT study of prohibition (current policy) for which ANY decision could be made, despite it having been BUDGETED FOR.

Notable that Professor Miron, with whom I had a working relationship, has since died....

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Blair Anderson <blair@mildgreens.com>
Date: Sun, 23 Jul 2006 at 23:30
Subject: Petition: Cost/Benefit analysis of cannabis prohibition
To: <tony.ryall@parliament.govt.nz>
Cc: <paul.hutchison@parliament.govt.nz>

MP. Tony Ryall
National Party Spokesperson on Justice
Parliament House.
Wellington

22 July, 2006

re: Budgetary Implications Of Marijuana Prohibition

Petition of One

Dear Tony,

cc: Dr Paul Hutchison

Thank you for noting my concerns as presented to you outside the National Party Conference venue this day.

As you may be aware, there is a National Drug Policy Review (a work in progress) being conducted by the Ministry of Health Policy Directorate.

At the Christchurch meeting (and Hui) held on April the 20th 2006 it was made clear that the consultation process was grievously flawed as there was no 'evidence' base for discussion and crucially no cost benefit analysis on the current policy of blanket prohibitions, or options there in. At the very same meeting, one of the members of the statutory Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs (Prof. Douglas Selman) expressed directly to the Ministerial officials and before attending public and NGO's that the consultation process was an ' embarrassment' to the Ministry of Health .

Given that the National Drug Policy formulation process included provisions for a cost benefit analysis (budget $50,000 / 1996). This was subsequently dropped from the policy documents purportedly due to 'legislative implications'.

Myself and others have appeared before various select committee's expressing our concerns both specific and general in this regard.

Further, I have made representations to MP's at every opportunity. Some, with respect cannot believe that no such analysis has ever been made. Yet despite furnishing many with copy's of the relevent documents obtained under Official Information provisions, it still seems incredulous to most given resources, contraversy and political tensions that surround this issue. It goes without saying that the State carries no greater burden than to contrain under warrant, a citizen. That it does so , justified on such flimsy purpose as to contrain the prevelence of cannabis is intself highly suspect. That is deluseds the public into beleivign that this is an effective way of protecting the public 'from harm' defies all principlals of natural justice. Further, that it does so under warrant of the Minister of Health absolutely demands that this be examined from first principles of medicine. (First do no harm, informed consent and no decision about us without us would be a good start)

Your fellow MP Dr. Paul Hutchison said to me as recently as this day, it is "essential" that such a cost/benefit study be done. Were you to confer with Paul he would affirm this requirement and may wish to prevail upon the writer to furnish the documentation that evidences this abrogation of due process. Were you both to have a meeting of minds on this matter and support this call I can confirm that Professor Miron is available to assist in the analysis and is willing to come to New Zealand, meet with key researchers and officials and expeditiously prepare a comprehensive and authoritative analysis.

As you will see from the website Budgetary Implications Of Marijuana Prohibition there are 530 distinguished Economics Professors (three of whom are Nobel Laureates) endorsing an enduring 'tax cut' by examining critically the economics that underpin this impositional [un]regulatory model for cannabis control, a model we have followed in New Zealand and embodied in our Misuse of Drugs Act for more than thirty years. The inclusion of cannabis in this Act has been called by Otago Pharmacology Professor Emeritus Fred Faster (member of the original Blake Palmer Committee) as deficient. Prof Fastier subsequently wrote the book "Drugs and the Law" in which he details the reasoning behind this. The Blake Palmer Committee in its recomendations prior to the MUD ACT 1975 said the law should be reviewed in ten years. (this still, technically, has not been done) and further, BP Cmte. said that the ACT as it applies to cannabis related law said it should be continued only so long as it can be seen to be effective.

However, there can be no stronger and more robust argument than this included exemplar list of endorsers calling for evidence based analysis (and policy formulation) and I am sure that a 'Miron' study would highlight the budgetary implications and help restore public confidence. (According to OECD data, New Zealand is the highest per capita consumers of the illicit herb, more than Jamaica].

Irrespective of the legal status, this analysis is a prerequisite to ANY further movement on developing (and reviewing the efficacy of) the National Drug Policy, I therefore ask respectfully, that this initiative be given the highest possible priority so that it can be included in that due process. It is an imperative, and thus incumbent on any prospective administrator of Justice that the public have faith in the rules that govern them. As this concerns cannabis prohibition, no rule on the books of the house... is more widely held in disrepute. (52% of the adult surveyed demograph have broken this criminal statute, APHRU 2000)

I seek your cooperation in demanding before the house, that the prohibition (of cannabis) be held to just scrutiny and account by way of that which has been proscribed in the National Drug Policy formulation so that we can restore justice and principle to the Misuse of Drugs Act .

Again, I thank you for informally receiving me and considering this matter.

Please accept this email as a formal as a petition of one. I shall copy you directly, by post this email with accompanying signature.

Feel free to pass on this list and my concerns to whom you wish, noting that I am available at the email address and acontact numbers below if you have any further questions. I am happy to take advice and speak to this petition as and when required.

I, Blair Anderson, petition for a comprehensive cost benefit analysis on cannabis prohibition and complementary to that, further petition the membership of the EACD for

(a) A Ministry of Justice representative (crime policy/prevention) and
(b) a member drawn from the community of 'cannabis consumers' consistent with current thinking in disability as it applies to policy development, statute, regulations and laws. " No decision with out us."

Yours faithfully,
Blair J. Anderson
50 Wainoni Road, Christchurch, NZ
phone 03 3894065 or 027 2657219

mailto:blair@mildgreens.com

An Open Letter to the President, Congress, Governors, and State Legislatures

We, the undersigned, call your attention to the attached report by Professor Jeffrey A. Miron, The Budgetary Implications of Marijuana Prohibition. The report shows that marijuana legalization -- replacing prohibition with a system of taxation and regulation -- would save $7.7 billion per year in state and federal expenditures on prohibition enforcement and produce tax revenues of at least $2.4 billion annually if marijuana were taxed like most consumer goods. If, however, marijuana were taxed similarly to alcohol or tobacco, it might generate as much as $6.2 billion annually.

The fact that marijuana prohibition has these budgetary impacts does not by itself mean prohibition is bad policy. Existing evidence, however, suggests prohibition has minimal benefits and may itself cause substantial harm.

We therefore urge the country to commence an open and honest debate about marijuana prohibition. We believe such a debate will favor a regime in which marijuana is legal but taxed and regulated like other goods. At a minimum, this debate will force advocates of current policy to show that prohibition has benefits sufficient to justify the cost to taxpayers, foregone tax revenues, and numerous ancillary consequences that result from marijuana prohibition.

Endorsing Economists:
*Affiliations listed are only for purposes of identification.

		Affiliation
Milton	Friedman	The Hoover Institution, Stanford University	Nobel Laureate
George A.	Akerlof	University of California, Berkeley	Nobel Laureate
Vernon L.	Smith	George Mason University	Nobel Laureate
David	Aadland	University of Wyoming
Burton A.	Abrams	University of Delaware
Daron	Acemoglu	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Ljubisa	Adamovich	Florida State University
Earl	Adams	Alleghany College
Ashraf	Afifi	Ferris State University
Rita M.	Akin	Westminster College
William	Albanos Jr.	PSI Learning Institute
William	Albrecht	University of Iowa
Donald	Alexander	Western Michigan University
Michael	Alexeev	Indiana University
Dan	Alger	Lawrence University
Joseph	Allen	University of Georgia
Amer	Al-Saji	Muskegon Community College
Dave	Amos	Lorain County Community College
James	Anderson	Boston College
Joan	Anderson	University of San Diego
Geoffrey T.	Andron	Austin Community College
J.J.	Arias	Georgia College
Bevin	Ashenmiller	Claremont McKenna College
George	Averitt	Purdue University, North Central
Robert J.	Awkward	Middlesex Community College
Howard	Baetjer	Towson University
Richard	Baillie	Michigan State University
Jennifer A.	Ball	Washburn University
Christopher	Ball	Quinnipiac University
A. Paul	Ballantyne	University of Colorado, Colorado Springs
Richard J.	Ballman Jr.	Augustana College
Taradas	Bandyopadhyay	University of California, Riverside
Edward B.	Barbier	University of Wyoming
Andrew	Barkley	Kansas State University
William A.	Barnett	University of Kansas
Humberto	Barreto	Wabash College
J. Douglas	Barrett	University of North Alabama
Kaushik	Basu	Cornell University
James	Bathgate	Linfield College
Tammy	Batson	Northern Illinois University
Yoram	Bauman	Whitman College
Ergin	Bayrak	University of Southern California
Scott	Beaulier	Mercer University
Fred	Beebe	Long Beach City College
Arthur	Benavie	University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Theodore	Bergstrom	University of California, Santa Barbara
Eli	Berman	University of California, San Diego
Colleen	Berndt	George Mason University
Marc	Bilodeau	Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis
Cyrus	Bina	University of Minnesota
Stanley	Black	University of North Carolina
McKinley	Blackburn	University of South Carolina
Calvin	Blackwell	College of Charleston
Emily	Blanchard	University of Virginia
Andre	Blaszczynski	Tunxis Community College
Howard	Bodenhorn	Lafayette University
Donald J.	Boudreaux	George Mason University
James	Bradfield	Hamilton College
James	Bradley	University of South Carolina
Carole L.	Brandle	Kent State University, Stark
W. Kenneth	Bratton	Oakland Community College
Paul	Briggs	Windward Community College
Isabelle	Brocas	University of Southern California
Gregory	Brock	Georgia Southern University
Bruce	Brown	California State Polytechnic University, Pomona
Carl	Brown	Florida Southern College
Neil	Bruce	University of Washington
John	Bryant	Rice University
Roland	Buck	Morehead State University
Carl	Bunham	University of Hawaii, Manua
John P.	Burkett	University of Rhode Island
Joyce	Burnette	Wabash College
Michael	Butler	Texas Christian University
William N.	Butos	Trinity College
Bernard	Caldwell	University of North Carolina, Greensboro
David	Campbell	Whittier College
Noel	Campbell	North Georgia College and State University
S.	Campo	University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Arthur J.	Caplan	Utah State University
Bo	Carlsson	Case Western Reserve University
Juan	Carrillo	University of Southern California
Thomas M.	Carrol	Central Oregon Community College
Michael	Casson	Delaware State University
William	Cauble	Western Nebraska
Adam	Chacksfield	Western Illinois University
Ujjayant	Chakravorty	Emory University
Jack	Chambless	Valencia Community College
K	Chandrasekar	New York Institute of Technology
Chun-Hao	Chang	Florida International University
Andre	Charleston
James	Chase	Valencia Community College
Walter	Chatfield	San Bernadino Valley College
Pierre	Chiappori	Columbia University
Gerald	Childs	Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Kenneth L.	Chinn	Southeastern Oklahoma State University
Gregory	Chow	Princeton University
Jens	Christiansen	Mount Holyoke College
Kenny	Christianson	Binghamton University
Lawrence R.	Cima	John Carroll University
Clifford	Clark	University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
Norman	Cloutier	University of Wisconsin, Parkside
Douglas	Coate	Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
Lee	Cockerill	California State University, Fullerton
Richard	Coe	New College of Florida
Philip	Coelho	Ball State University
Boyd D.	Collier	Tarleton State University
Robert	Collinge	University of Texas, San Antonio
Darius J.	Conger	Ithaca College
Laura S.	Connolly	University of Northern Colorado
Michael B.	Connolly	University of Miami
John M.	Cooper	Minnesota State University, Moorhead
Solveg	Cooper	Cuesta College
Erik	Craft	University of Richmond
Roger	Craine	University of California, Berkeley
James	Crawford	Valley City State University
Ron	Cronovich	University of Nevada, Las Vegas
John	Cuddington	Georgetown University
Scott	Cunning	University of Georgia
Andrew	Currie	Simon Frasier University
Elizabeth	Curtis	New England College
Susan	Dadres	Southern Methodist University
Sami	Dakulia	University of Alabama
Thomas	Dalton	Southern University at New Orleans
Richard H.	Davidson	Daytona Beach Community College
Ronald B.	Davies	University of Oregon
Spencer	Davis	North Carolina State University
William L.	Davis	University of Tennessee, Martin
Susan	Davis	Buffalo State College
Alan V.	Deardorff	University of Michigan
Gregory	Delemeester	Marietta College
Steven	Deller	University of Wisconsin, Madison
Alex	DePinto	University of Redlands
Robert J.	Derrell	Manhattanville College
William	Desimini	Suffolk County Community College
James	Devault	Lafayette University
Darlene	DeVera	Miami University of Ohio
Hashem	Dezhbakhsh	Emory University
Arthur M.	Diamond, Jr.	University of Nebraska, Omaha
Angela	Dills	Clemson University
Caf	Dowlah	Queensboro Community College
Robin	Dubin	Case Western Reserve University
Kevin	Duncan	Colorado State University
Tomas	Dvorak	Union College
William R.	Easterly	New York University
Jonathan	Eaton	New York University
Fritz	Efaw	University of Tennessee, Chattanooga
Bernard	Elbaum	University of California, Santa Cruz
Catherine S.	Elliott	New College of Florida
Howard	Ellis	Millersville University of Pennsylvania
Richard	England	University of New Hampshire
Cosmas	Etim	Central Connecticut State University
Paul	Evans	Ohio State University
Micky	Falkson	Cornell University
Joshua	Farley	University of Vermont
Robert M.	Feinberg	American University
William	Feipel	Illinois Central College
David	Felix	Washington University in St. Louis
J. Peter	Ferderer	Macalester College
Daniel	Fink	Cornell University
Mark	Finlay	Armstrong Atlantic State University
Robert J.	Flanagan	Stanford University
John	Flander	Central Methodist University
Jaime	Flores	Chabot Community College
Fred E.	Foldvary	Santa Clara University
John	Formby	University of Alabama
Annette D.	Forti	State University of New York, Old Westbury
John	Fox	Kansas State University
April M.	Franco	University of Iowa
Mark	Frascatore	Clarkson University
L.	Freiberg	Northeastern Illinois University
Marcia J	Frost	Wittenberg University
Mark	Frost	Southern Methodist University
Drew	Fudenberg	Harvard University
T.	Galloway	Southwest Missouri State University
Alka	Gandhi	Lycoming College
Gay	Garesche	Glendale Community College
Leonard	Gaston	Central State University
Jeremiah	German	Towson University
Malcolm	Getz	Vanderbilt University
Adam	Gifford Jr.	California State University, Northridge
Scott	Gilbert	Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Lance	Girton	University of Utah
Michael	Goldberg	University of New Hampshire
Robert J.	Gordon	Northwestern University
Robert	Gottfried	Vanderbilt University
Simon	Grant	Rice University
Philip E.	Graves	University of Colorado
Keith	Griffin	University of California, Riverside
Anthony	Gu	State University of New York, Geneseo
Eleanor	Gubins	Rosemont College
Oabe	Gunrin	Howard University
Steffen	Habermalz	University of Nebraska, Kearney
Thomas	Hall	Miami University
Juan Carlos	Hallak	University of Michigan
Jay	Hamilton	John Jay College of Criminal Justice
David	Hammes	University of Hawaii, Hilo
Bruce	Hansen	University of Wisconsin, Madison
Robin	Hanson	George Mason University
Stephen	Happel	Oregon State University
Jon	Harford	Cleveland State University
Philip	Harris	University of Wisconsin, Madison
Oliver	Hart	Harvard University
Seid	Hassan	Murray State University
Donald M.	Hayward	Mote Marine Laboratory
S. Aaron	Hegde	California State University, Bakersfield
Ali	Hekm	College of Eastern Utah
Ian	Hellings	Kankakee Community College
Andrew	Helms	University of Georgia
David	Hemenway	Harvard University
David	Henderson	The Hoover Institution, Stanford University
Eugene M.	Herman	Moraine Valley Community College
Berthold	Herrendorf	Arizona State University
Rodney	Hiser	Butler Community College
Arnold	Hite	Charleston Southern University
Vladimir	Hlasny	Michigan State University
Paul	Hodges	University of Texas, Permian Basin
John	Hoftyzer	Southwest Missouri State University
Stephen	Holland	University of North Carolina, Greensboro
James M.	Holmes	State University of New York, Buffalo
Theresa	Honeycutt	Edison College
Steven	Horwitz	St. Lawrence University
A. Reza	Hoshmand	Daniel Webster College
Frank M.	Howland	Wabash College
Wade	Hudson	Wagner College Staten Island
Mary	Huff Stevenson	University of Massachusetts, Boston
Mark	Huggett	Georgetown University
Barry	Ickes	Pennsylvania State University
Selo	Imrohoroglu	University of Southern California
Thomas	Ireland	University of Missouri, St. Louis
Alan	Isaac	American University
Nurul	Islam	University of Massachusetts, Boston
Habib	Jam	Rowan University
Jay A.	Johnson	Southeastern Louisiana University
Laurie	Johnson	University of Denver
Richard	Johnston	Monmouth College
Elia	Kacapyr	Ithaca College
David E.	Kalist	Shippensburg University
M.	Kamrany	University of Southern California
John	Kane	State University of New York, Oswego
Edi	Karni	The Johns Hopkins University
Jonathan	Karpoff	University of Washington
Sheen T.	Kassouf	University of California, Irvine
Terry	Kastens	Kansas State University
Milton	Katoglis	Emory University
Jim	Kelsey	Western Washington University
Dick K.	Kennedy	Odessa College
Lawrence	Kenny	University of Florida
Peter	Kerr	Southeast Missouri State University
Neha	Khanna	Binghamton University
Kyoo H.	Kim	Bowling Green State University
Roy	Kim	Drexel University
So Young	Kim	Florida Atlantic University
Kiho	Kim	Medgar Emers College
Kent P.	Kimbrough	Duke University
John	Kirk	College of San Mateo
Paul A.	Kivi	Bemidji State University
Daniel	Klein	Santa Clara University
Daniel	Klein	George Mason University
David	Klingaman	University of Georgia
Jeffrey	Koch	Strong High-Yield
Kenneth	Koelln	University of North Texas
Stephen	Kolub	Swarthmore College
William	Kordsmeier	University of Central Arkansas
James	Koscielniak	Moraine Valley Community College
Lea-Rachel	Kosnik	University of Missouri, St. Louis
Lawrence D.	Krohn	Tufts University
Monika	Krol	Southern Illinois University
Douglas	Krupka	Georgia State University
Sisko	Kule	Valencia Community College
Ronald	Kuntze	University of Tampa
James	Kurre	Pennsylvania State University, Erie
Michael	Kurth	McNeese State University
Michael	Kuryla	Broome Community College
Ben	Kyer	Francis Marion University
Kern	Kymn	West Virginia University
Sajal	Lahiri	Southern Illinois University
Fabian	Lange	Yale University
George	Langelett	South Dakota State University
Richard	Langlois	University of Connecticut
William D.	Lastrapes	University of Georgia
William	Lay Jr.	Bryan College
Stephen	Layson	University of North Carolina, Greensboro
Gregor	Lazarcik	Brooklyn College
Quan V.	Le	Seattle University
Li Way	Lee	Wayne State University
Gary D.	Lemon	DePauw University
Fred H.	Leonard	Smith College
Stephen F.	LeRoy	University of California, Santa Barbara
David K.	Levine	University of California, Los Angeles
Robert	Levman
Anthony	Lewis Jr.
Yang	Li	University of Mississippi
Carlos	Liard-Muriente	Western New England College
Byron	Lilly	De Anza College
Terrance	Liska	University of Wisconsin, Platteville
George	Loewenstein	Carnegie Mellon University
Franklin A.	López	Tulane University and University of New Orleans
Guido	Lorenzoni	Massachusetts Institute of Technology
Richard	Lotspeich	Indiana State University
Anton	Lowenberg	California State University, Northridge
Hari Sharan	Luitel	West Virginia University
James	Luke	Lansing Community College
R. Ashley	Lymann	University of Idaho
John	Lynham	University of California, Santa Barbara
Roger	Mack	De Anza College
Craig	MacPhee	University of Nebraska, Lincoln
Matt	Maher	Boise State University
Michael T.	Maloney	Clemson University
Howard	Margolis	University of Chicago
Mindy	Marks	University of California, Riverside
Matthew	Marlin	Duquesne University
Craig	Marxsenc	University of Nebraska, Kearney
Paul	Mason	University of North Florida
Harpal	Maur	Austin Community College
Rachel	McCulloch	Brandeis University
Laurence	McCulloch	Ohio State University
Todd	McFall	Wake Forest University
Niccie	McKay	University of Florida
Kelly	McKay	Victoria College
Robert F.	McNown	University of Colorado, Boulder
Michael	McPherson	University of North Texas
Jagdish	Mehra	Youngstown State University
Matthew	Mercurio	Princeton University
John	Merrifield	University of Texas, San Antonio
Peter	Milch	Houston Community College
Dragan	Milkovic	North Dakota State University
Gary	Miller	Los Angeles Harbor College
Matthew	Mitchell	University of Iowa
John	Mogab	Texas State University
Mark	Montgomery	Grinnell College
Carlisle	Moody	The College of William and Mary
James E.	Moore II	University of Southern California
James	Morris	University of Colorado, Denver
Catherine	Morrison Paul	University of California, Davis
Andrew P.	Morriss	Case Western Reserve University
Leon	Moses	Northwestern University
Tracy	Mott	University of Denver
Herv?	Moulin	Rice University
John	Mullen	State University of New York, Potsdam
Thomas	Murray	New Mexico State University, Grants
Richard	Muth	Emory University
Amy	Myers	Parkland College
John	Nader	Grand Valley State University
Emilio	Nazario	Delaware State University
Donald	Nichols	Oakland Community College
Inder P.	Nijhawan	Fayetteville State University
Farhang	Niroomand	University of Southern Mississippi
William	Nook	Milwaukee Area Technical College
Hugo R.	Nopo	Middlebury College
Susan	Nowakhtar	Chaffey College and Mount San Antonio College
Stephen A.	O'Connell	Swarthmore College
Frederick	Oerther	Greensboro College
Brenden	O'Flaherty	Columbia University
Amon	Okpala	Fayetteville State University
Jayde	Okunubj	Medgar Emers College
Bernard	O'Rourke	Caldwell College
Jim	O'Shaughnessy	Daytona Beach Community College
Dragana	Ostojic	George Mason University
Patsy	P.	University of Pennsylvania
Jan	Parker	Suffolk County Community College
Elliott	Parker	University of Nevada, Reno
Christopher	Parmeter	Binghamton University
Christine	Parrott	Austin Community College
E. C.	Pasour	North Carolina State University
Jennifer	Patti
Michael	Perelman	California State University, Chico
Dwight Heald	Perkins	Harvard University
Mark	Perry	University of Michigan, Flint
Stanley	Peters
Bethany	Peters	Rhodes College
Nicholas	Petricoff	University of Cincinnati
Michael	Petrowsky	Glendale Community College
Christopher	Phillips	Somerset Community College
Candace	Pivit
Ivan	Pongracic	Hillsdale College
Charles	Pregger-Roman	Castleton State College
Christopher D.	Proulx	University of California, Santa Barbara
Sara	Provost
Michael	Pumputis
Fernando	Quijano	Dickinson State University
Valerie	Ramey	University of California, San Diego
John	Rapp	University of Dayton
Kenneth	Rebeck	St. Cloud State University
Charles	Reichheld	Cuyahoga Community College
Joseph	Reid	George Mason University
David	Reiley	University of Arizona
Siobhan	Reilly	Mills College
Stanley	Reiter	Northwestern University
Ariell	Reshef	New York University
Charles F	Revier	Colorado State University
Reed	Reynolds	University of Toledo
Linda	Richten	Kansas State University
Mark	Ridin
Robert	Rigney	Valencia Community College
Aric	Rindfleisch	University of Wisconsin, Madison
Ken	Roberts	Southwestern University
Nancy	Roberts	Arizona State University
Gary	Robertson	Aquinas College
Malcolm	Robinson	Thomas More College
William	Robinson	University of California, Santa Barbara
Leila A	Rodemann	Trident Technical College
Terry	Roe	University of Minnesota
Robert	Rogers	Dauch College
Michael	Rolleigh	Williams College
Rafael	Romero	State University of New York Institute of Technology
Don	Roper	University of Colorado, Boulder
Jaime	Ros	University of Notre Dame
Thomas	Rossi	Broome Community College
Santanu	Roy	Southern Methodist University
Dan	Rubenson	Southern Oregon University
Paul H.	Rubin	Emory University
Anthony	Rufolo	Portland State University
John	Ruggiero	University of Dayton
Gerard	Russo	University of Hawaii
Andy	Rutten	Stanford University
Kanchana N.	Ruwampura	Hobart and William Smith Colleges
William	Sackett	Itasca Community College
Massood	Saffarian	Northwestern Oklahoma State University
Diego	Salazar	University of San Dakota
Michael K.	Salemi	University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Michael	Saliba	Loyola University New Orleans
Donald	Salyards	Winoma State University
Subarma	Samanta	The College of New Jersey
John	Sanders	Purdue University
Howard	Sanderson	Virginia Commonwealth University
William H.	Sandholm	University of Wisconsin
Connie	Sanzo	Pima Community College
Hyman	Sardy	Brooklyn College
Rajiv	Sarin	Texas A&M University
Nathan	Savin	Iowa State University
Ted	Scheinman	Mount Hood Community College
Ken	Schoolland	Hawaii Pacific University
Carlos	Seiglie	Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey
George	Selgin	University of Georgia
Rajiv	Sethi	Barnard College, Columbia University
John	Seydel	Arkansas State University
Robert	Sgazzle	Williams College
Mohamad	Shaaf	University of Central Oklahoma
Howard	Shaber	Montgomery College
Harry	Shaffer	University of Kansas
Rami	Shafiee	North Harris College
Sumitra	Shah	St. John's University
Nasrin	Shahinpoor	Butler University
Bill W.	Shaw	Louisiana College
William Douglas	Shaw	Texas A&M University
John	Shea	University of Maryland
Edward	Shepard	Le Moyne College
James F.	Shepard	Whitman College
George	Sherer	University of Dayton
Stephen	Shmanske	California State University
Hamid	Shomali	Golden Gate University
Scott	Shore	Bentley College
Martin	Shubik	Yale University
Steven	Shugan	University of Florida
Werner	Sichel	Western Michigan University
Hammad	Siddiqi	Northern Illinois University
Randy T.	Simmons	Utah State University
Thomas R.	Simmons	Greenfield Community College
Rajesh	Singh	Iowa State University
R.L.	Singson	California State University, Hayward
Sarah J.	Skinner	University of Louisiana, Lafayette
Allan G.	Sleeman	Western Washington University
Kenneth A.	Small	University of California, Irvine
Rachael	Small	University of Colorado, Boulder
Robert S.	Smith	Cornell University
Halon	Smith	University of Minnesota
Rodney	Smith	University of Minnesota
Arthur	Snow	University of Georgia
Russell S.	Sobel	West Virginia University
Eric	Solberg	California State University, Fullerton
Marilyn	Spencer	Texas A&M University, Corpus Christi
Leora	Starr	Metropolitan State College of Denver
Mark	Staynings	Bowling Green Community College
Sally	Stearns	University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Ivan	Steinberg	New Jersey City University
Jean-Philippe	Stijns	Northeastern University
Courtenay	Stone	Ball State University
Scot	Stradley	Concordia College
Diana	Strassmann	Rice University
David	Sturges	Colgate University
Xuejuan	Su	University of Alabama
Venkat	Subramaniam	Tulane University
Diane R.	Suhler	Columbia College
Scott	Sumner	Bentley College
James	Swaney	Wright State University
James L.	Sweeney	Stanford University
Moshe	Syrquin	University of Miami
Alex	Tabarrok	George Mason University
David	Talbot	Plymouth State University
Harry	Taute	New Mexico State University
Henry M.	Taylor	Martin University
Wade	Thomas	State University of New York, Oneonta
Mary	Thompson	University of Tennessee
Henry	Thompson	Auburn University
Philip	Thompson	Central Michigan University
Walter N.	Thurman	North Carolina State University
Jerry	Thursby	Emory University
Richard H.	Timberlake	University of Georgia
Alex	Tokarev	Southern Illinois University, Carbondale
Mark	Toma	University of Kentucky
Kudret	Topyan	Manhattan College
Edward	Tower	Duke University
Karen K.	Tracey	Marygrove College
Philip A.	Trostel	University of Maine
Gordon	Tullock	George Mason University
Bruce	Vanderporten	Loyola University Chicago
Minh	Vo	University of Minnesota
Richard	Volpe	University of Massachusetts, Amherst
John	Volpe	Trinity University
Mark	Votruba	Case Western Reserve University
John R.	Wagner	Westfield State College
Douglas	Wakeman	Meredith College
Douglas M.	Walker	Georgia College
Gary M.	Walton	University of California, Davis
Kam-Ming	Wan	University of Texas, Dallas
X.H.	Wang	University of Missouri
Jennifer	Ward-Batts	Claremont McKenna College
David	Warner	University of Texas, Austin
Matt	Warning	University of Puget Sound
Dale W.	Warnke	College of Lake County
William	Weber	Southeast Missouri State University
Jack	Wegman	Santa Rosa Junior College
Kenneth	Weiher	University of Texas, San Antonio
Martin	Weitzman	Harvard University
Stanislaw	Wellisz	Columbia University
Jeff	Welty	Wright State University
Walter	Wessels	North Carolina State University
James	Wetzel	Virginia Commonwealth University
David	Wharton	Washington College
Hsin-hui	Whited	Colorado State University, Pueblo
James	Whitney	Occident College
Jonathan	Wight	University of Richmond
Walter	Williams	George Mason University
Jeffrey G	Williamson	Harvard University
John	Willoughby	American University
Beth	Wilson	Humboldt State University
Wllmer	Wilson	University of Colorado, Boulder
David M.	Wishart	Wittenberg University
Theodore	Woodruff	St. Ambrose University
Colin	Wright	Claremont McKenna College
Thomas	Wyrick	Southwest Missouri State University
Pavel	Yakovlev	West Virginia University
Takashi	Yamashita	University of Nevada, Las Vegas
Chin W.	Yang	Clarion University
Andrew	Yates	University of Richmond
Madelyn V.	Young	Converse College
Ben	Young	University of Missouri
Huizhong	Zhou	Western Michigan University
Stephen	Zihiak	Roosevelt University
Joseph	Zoric	Franciscan University of Steubenville

Blair Anderson
ph (643) 389 4065

Blair Anderson

Social Ecologist 'at large'
http://blairformayor.blogspot.com

http://facebook.com/mildgreens
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com
http://efsdp.org

Christchurch, New Zealand
nz cell 021 823647

DON'T LET THE PANIC DRIVE: "THE CATEGORY IS THE CON"

2026-09-30T01:07:53.880+13:00

MEDIA RELEASE — FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party
Blair Anderson ALCP Candidate, Christchurch Central

Date: Wednesday 30 September 2026
Embargo: None. Parliament dissolves tomorrow (Thursday 1 October); advance voting opens 26 October; polling day Saturday 7 November.
Attachment available on Request: Fear, Truth and the Electoral Clock: An Ethical Analysis of New Zealand's "Don't Let the Drugs Drive" Campaign (September 2026)

Contact: Blair Anderson, Candidate for Christchurch Central [PHONE 021823647] · [mailto:mildgreens@gmail.com]

DON'T LET THE PANIC DRIVE:
ALCP'S ANDERSON PUBLISHES ETHICAL AUDIT OF ELECTION-YEAR DRUG AD — "THE CATEGORY IS THE CON"

As Parliament dies tomorrow, the cannabis party's Christchurch Central candidate names the 1996 carve-out that took alcohol out of the word "drugs" one election at a time

CHRISTCHURCH CENTRAL, ŌTAUTAHI — Blair Anderson, the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party candidate for Christchurch Central, today published Fear, Truth and the Electoral Clock, an ethical audit of Waka Kotahi NZTA's Don't Let the Drugs Drive campaign, timed to the eve of Parliament's dissolution for the 7 November general election.

The audit, applying utilitarian, deontological and virtue-ethics analysis to the $840,000 graphic campaign and the roadside-testing regime it primes, reaches conclusions the candidate says "should trouble voters of every persuasion."

The fear is unearned by evidence. NZTA concedes the campaign is "the first step" [awareness work only] while its creatives admit the ad was built to "mislead the viewer, before pulling the rug out." The distress is banked now; the behaviour change is always the next campaign away.

The statistic is managed. "Drugs present in nearly a third of fatal crashes" launders toxicological detection into causation and, critically, carves out the deadliest drug of all, Alcohol.

By NZTA's own research, "alcohol (at levels greater than 0.05 gm/dl) is the riskiest substance" on New Zealand roads; among 1,046 killed drivers studied, alcohol-plus-cannabis (14%) outranked either substance alone (alcohol 13%, cannabis 9%); alcohol-and-other-drugs jointly featured in 40% of fatal crashes in 2021. "Drugs: nearly a third" is a slice of a combined toll whose largest member, the drug we drink, the slogan never names.

The category was drawn by hand, not by science. In May 1996, Cabinet split New Zealand's National Drug Policy in two — tobacco and alcohol released promptly in 1996, "illicit and other drugs" left to simmer until 1998 — even as the policy itself declared "of all drugs, tobacco and alcohol result in the most harm in New Zealand."

The split operated in an era the Ministry of Social Development's own journal describes as one where industry lobbying sought "to make alcohol as 'normal' a commodity as possible." Alcohol-industry interference in New Zealand policy is now documented by public-health researchers as systematic and tobacco-style.

The advertising regulator never says No.

Of 45 complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority about NZTA ads since 2015, none were upheld. Shock advertising in this country has no external ceiling.

The enforcement regime is rights-deficient. The roadside saliva regime the campaign primes was found by the Attorney-General to be inconsistent with the right to be secure against unreasonable search and the right not to be arbitrarily detained and "cannot be justified" under the Bill of Rights Act.

It tests presence, not impairment. Criminalising unimpaired patients and medicinal cannabis users, with Māori (whose cannabis use runs 2.2 times the non-Māori rate) are now made to bear the politically induced consequences.

The timing is a rhythm. The Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 was assented seven weeks before the 1975 election. Drug-driving fear peaked before the 2020 cannabis referendum. Testing law, campaign and a National Party headline pledge clustered before the 2023 election. And now the saliva swab goes nationwide in mid-2026, during the election year, weeks before New Zealand votes. "This is not a conspiracy," the audit concludes. "It is a rhythm plus an incentive."

"ALCOHOL GOT A WORD OF ITS OWN — AND EVERY ELECTION SINCE, WE GET THE DEAD PASSENGER"

"For fifty years I have watched the same puppet show," said Anderson. "In 1996 Cabinet took alcohol out of the word 'drugs'; the industry has been collecting the difference ever since. Alcohol is the riskiest drug on the road by the Transport Agency's own science, and it is the one drug the graphic campaign will never name. The two-campaigns test tells you everything: drink driving gets 'booze maths', a wink and a behavioural nudge. Cannabis users get a dead passenger and a kneeling first responder. Equal harms, unequal alarm. That is not a science. That is a price list, and a scare about drugs is the only impairment scare that costs the government nothing, because nobody represents the drug consumer."

"On the electoral clock: prohibition's founding statute made it into law seven weeks before the 1975 election, and the drug-scare has caught the same bus at every stop since. The clock tells you when the meme deploys. The 1996 carve-out tells you why it is always the other popular drugs of choice. A scare about alcohol would cost its industry money. A scare about cannabis is free, the 500,000 kiwi consumers have no industry lobby, no licence, no donations, and until last month, no candidate standing in Christchurch Central willing to say so."

"Parliament dissolves tomorrow. The Misuse of Drugs Act 'evidentially somewhat dysfunctional and crooked', as we told the Select Committee in 2000 should die with it. We burned a copy of that Act in Cashel Mall on Boxing Day 1999. Twenty-seven years on, the smoke still hasn't cleared: instead we get an $840,000 lying slogan, a BORA-busting swab, and the same old sacrifice of the facts to the manufactured fear. While STOP THE ARRESTS is a popular meme, we need to start with the truth about the road."

WHAT ANDERSON AND THE ALCP STAND FOR ON THIS FILE
Impairment, not presence. Genuine road safety targets drivers who cannot drive safely, whatever is in their blood. Presence-based screening, roadside stand-downs on a positive swab, and criminal thresholds detached from impairment fail that test, and fail it unfairly on patients, medicinal users and Māori.

One honest statistic. Every Crown "drugs" number reported against the combined alcohol-and-drugs toll, in the same breath, with alcohol's commanding share named. A state that needs a carve-out to make its case has already lost the case.

Parity of treatment. If impairment is the enemy, the deadliest impairer cannot have a word of its own.

Proportion the alarm to the harm or admit the campaign is about something else.

Harm minimisation, as promised in 1998. The National Drug Policy committed this country to "minimise drug-related harm." Twenty-eight years later the state taxes and advertises its most harmful drug and jails the users of lesser ones.

Repeal the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975; regulate, educate, treat and stop wasting nine hundred thousand police hours between elections on the roots of all evil.

For Christchurch Central, the saliva swab is coming to our roads in the very year we vote. This electorate deserves a MP who will look the dead passenger in the eye and ask the question no one in Parliament will: whose third is it, and who profits from the word "drugs"?

The MMP ask: Anderson asks Christchurch Central voters for both their votes; party vote Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party to end prohibition honestly, and electorate vote Blair Anderson to put the audit's questions on the floor of the House.

EDITORS' NOTES — KEY FACTS AND SOURCES
Full documentation in the attached audit. In brief:

Don't Let the Drugs Drive: NZTA/FCB Aotearoa/MBM; launched 23 February 2025; $840,000; GXC-rated; real first responders; NZTA: "the first step in a programme of work"; creatives: intent to "mislead the viewer" (Stuff, 4 Apr 2025; Stoppress, 24 Feb 2025; LBBonline).
ASA: 45 complaints about NZTA ads since 2015, 85% TV, none upheld (Stuff, 4 Apr 2025).
Science: NZTA Research Report 664 (2020): "alcohol (at levels greater than 0.05 gm/dl) is the riskiest substance"; Poulsen et al (AAP 67, 2014): of 1,046 killed drivers, alcohol+cannabis 14%, alcohol 13%, cannabis 9%; NZTA Report 597: alcohol-and-other-drugs 30% of fatal crashes 2011–13; ITF/OECD (2023): 40% of fatal crashes in 2021.
National Drug Policy: Cabinet's May 1996 direction split tobacco/alcohol from "illicit and other drugs"; policy text: "Of all drugs, tobacco and alcohol result in the most harm in New Zealand" (MoH 1998; NCJRS/Webb 1999). Industry context: "to make alcohol as 'normal' a commodity as possible" (MSD Social Policy Journal 25, 2005); Casswell, NZMJ 2018 (46% of industry NZ profit from very heavy drinking); PHCC briefing 2025 (documented industry interference).
Law: Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment Act 2022 (in force March 2023; roadside regime initially inoperable); Attorney-General s 7 report on the 2024 Bill — inconsistent with NZBORA ss 21–22, unjustifiable; Amendment Act 2025 regime: Wellington from 15 December 2025, nationwide ~mid-2026; 50,000 tests/year within a $1.3b road-policing programme (The Spinoff, 19 Aug 2024); roadside testing "a key pledge of National's election campaign" (2023).
Elections: Misuse of Drugs Act assent 10 October 1975, seven weeks before the 29 November 1975 election; 2026 general election announced 21 January 2026 (National caucus retreat, Christchurch) for Saturday 7 November; dissolution 1 October; advance voting 26 October.
Blair Anderson: Christchurch cannabis-law-reform campaigner of the Mild Greens; ALCP candidate and policy analyst since the 1990s; submitted the Class D harm-reduction protocol on the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill (2000); presented to the Justice and Electoral Select Committee on cannabis law (2001); organised the ceremonial burning of the Misuse of Drugs Act, Christchurch City Mall, Boxing Day 1999.
— ENDS —

Media Contact: Blair Anderson, ALCP Candidate for Christchurch Central · [021823647] ·

Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party, contesting every general election since 1996. Policy: end prohibition, legalise and regulate cannabis for adults, protect medicinal users, and replace punishment with honest, evidence-based harm minimisation.

Blair Anderson http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

Tax Policy Needs More Than a Landlord Scapegoat!

2026-09-26T16:32:18.363+12:00

Tax policy needs more than a landlord scapegoat!, say the MildGreens.

A capital gains tax is not a housing policy, and portraying landlords as the problem will not fix a leaking tap or deliver another home, says prospective Christchurch Central candidate Blair Anderson.

Responding for the MildGreens Initiative, Anderson says Labour’s decision to retain mortgage-interest deductibility while proposing a capital gains tax should prompt a more honest debate about rental housing. Labour confirmed this week that it would leave interest-deductibility rules unchanged, alongside its proposed 28% tax on gains from investment property.

“Interest is a real cost of providing a rental home, not an imaginary expense or a gift from taxpayers. Recognising that cost is a welcome departure from the rhetoric of ‘handouts to landlords’. "

“But swapping the slogan does not answer the housing question. What, precisely, will this tax deliver for tenants?”

Anderson says the debate routinely overlooks what rent purchases: not simply access to a building, but maintenance, repairs, insurance and responsibility for keeping a home habitable.

“When the toilet blocks, the hot water fails or the heat pump breaks down, somebody must organise and pay for the remedy. A mortgage lender does not provide that service to an owner-occupier.

“That does not excuse neglectful landlords. Tenants deserve safe homes and enforceable rights. It does mean we should debate the actual service and its costs, rather than caricature everyone providing it.”

Tax real gains—and explain the losses

MildGreens says any capital gains proposal must answer three practical questions:

Inflation: How much of the taxable ‘gain’ represents increased purchasing power, rather than money losing value?
Improvements: How will genuine investment in better housing be recognised?
Losses: What useful relief exists for someone who sells at a loss and has no future property gains against which to claim it?

Labour’s published proposal has been described as recognising capital-improvement costs and allowing losses to be carried forward against future property gains, rather than ordinary income. The challenge is whether those provisions are adequate—not pretending they do not exist.

International lessons: design matters

The OECD identifies both the taxation of inflationary gains and the “lock-in” incentive to delay selling as genuine capital-gains-tax design issues. Its housing review also reports that 26 OECD countries offered mortgage-interest deductions or credits for rented property. Recognising financing costs is hardly an international aberration. 2 1

“A capital gains tax can raise revenue and address questions of tax fairness. That is not the same as demonstrating that it will deliver affordable homes,” Anderson says.

“MildGreens calls for a published assessment of effects on rental supply, rents, improvements and housing mobility—alongside practical measures to enable more homes.

“Judge the policy by the homes people can afford and the conditions they live in, not by how satisfyingly it identifies someone to blame."

“Less smoke and mirrors. More homes, properly maintained.”

ENDS

Media contact: Blair Anderson — MildGreens Initiative
Quite possibly a Christchurch Central candidate
[media inquiries 021823647 other issues: http://mildgreens.blogspot.com]

NZ's Media-Police Complex Needs No Further Evidence.

2026-09-25T00:12:50.223+12:00

Christchurch, 24 September 2026 — Mild Green Initiatives

Today New Zealand's self-described leading radio and online news network carried the glad tidings: 85 search warrants, 34 arrests, a "myriad of drugs" seized in a Trans-Tasman "week of action." Readers were not told that the story was a Police media release with the serial numbers filed off — both officials' quotes, the entire scoreboard, even the typos ("427 opium pill"), arriving intact from the state's own comms desk. When the newsroom's only original contributions are two misspelled names and a headline, journalism has been outsourced to those it should be scrutinising. Say the Mild Greens: the media-police complex needs no further evidence.

The State's receipts, as dictated to the press:

85 search warrants in NZ — 34 arrests for drugs offences
30kg of methamphetamine
270kg of loose cannabis seized — 6,183 cannabis plants
2.3kg of opium — 427 "opium pill" — 24 Kamini pills
27g of cocaine — 339 MDMA pills — 56g ketamine
Four firearms — $647,690 in cash — three vehicles

Now the arithmetic the scoreboard was designed to obscure. By weight, very nearly nine-tenths of the haul was cannabis — a quarter-tonne of loose leaf plus 6,183 living plants — alongside 30kg of methamphetamine and a mere 27 grams of cocaine. A Class A border operation, harvesting a Class C plant that 1.4 million New Zealanders (48.4%) voted to legalise in 2020. Enforcement is now formally running against the recorded will of the public.

And to what effect? New Zealanders consume an estimated 200 tonnes of cannabis annually. A week's Trans-Tasman haul is a rounding error against that market — the price untouched, the supply unbroken, the "$647,690 in cash" nothing more than prohibition's scheduled subsidy to the very organised crime it conjured into being. You cannot arrest a market out of existence; you can only double its margins.

The Mild Greens repeat our two-decade-old solution, still ahead of its time: amend the Misuse of Drugs Act, remove cannabis from criminal status, establish Class D restricted-drug regulation in a health-promotion context, and treat addiction as health, not handcuffs. Every dollar of that $647,690 is an indictment of Parliament, happy to be tough on crime while fostering the 'mind altering' media-police cabal of convenience.

The police wrote the news. The plant paid for it. The public foots the bill.

PROHIBITION IS THE CRIME.
STOP THE ARRESTS.

Mild Green Initiatives — Christchurch
Three decades beyond prohibition.
Sources: NZ Herald (24 Sep 2026);
NZ Police media release via Scoop;
NZ cannabis referendum, final result 50.7%–48.4% (2020).

Blair Anderson http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

What Christchurch Already Knows About Cannabis — And Why Christchurch Central Should Vote On It

2026-09-20T08:05:04.036+12:00

What Christchurch Already Knows About Cannabis — And Why Christchurch Central Should Vote On It

Christchurch has run the experiment already. We just haven't been reading the results.

Between 1977 and today, close to thirteen hundred Christchurch-born children have been tracked from birth into middle age by the Christchurch Health and Development Study (CHDS) — one of the most complete birth-cohort datasets in the world, run out of our own School of Medicine. By age 21, roughly two-thirds of that cohort had used cannabis at least once. Five percent had used it more than 400 times — near enough weekly use across seven years.

Here's the number that should anchor every conversation about cannabis and crime in this city: of those cannabis users, only 5.1% had ever been arrested for a cannabis-related offence by age 21, and only 3.6% had been convicted.

Read that again. Even inside a cohort where cannabis use was the statistical norm — not the exception — formal law enforcement touched a small single-digit minority. Cannabis use in Christchurch has never been a fringe activity confined to any particular subculture, ethnic group, or criminal affiliation. It has been, for fifty years, an ordinary and widespread behaviour across the whole social spectrum this city produced. The CHDS proved that using our own kids.

So why does "cannabis" keep getting narrated as a gang problem?

Because enforcement and use are being quietly substituted for each other in the public conversation, and the substitution favours whoever benefits from cannabis staying illegal and staying associated with crime.

The national numbers bear this out, and they're moving in the wrong direction. Cannabis use/possession charges nationally rose from 2,055 in 2021 to 3,438 in 2025 — a 50% jump in two years — even as police themselves confirm the increase reflects enforcement activity, not a change in underlying use. The share of all cannabis-offence charges that are simple use or possession, rather than supply, has climbed from 54% in 2016 to 63% in 2025.

And that enforcement doesn't fall evenly. Māori make up about 18% of the population but have outnumbered Pākehā in cannabis possession charges for three years running. Fewer than 5% of personal possession cases result in prosecution at all — but of that small prosecuted slice, 34% are Māori. A population-level study using government IDI data found Māori men had 56% higher odds of a cannabis charge proceeding all the way to conviction than Pākehā in equivalent circumstances.

None of this tracks a difference in who uses cannabis. It tracks a difference in who gets stopped, who gets searched, who gets charged, and who gets the benefit of police discretion. When a "gang" or "patched club" cannabis linkage gets reported, the same mechanism is almost certainly doing the work: an already-marked, already-heavily-policed population returns a higher enforcement statistic for a substance that — per Christchurch's own longitudinal data — is genuinely everywhere. The story isn't that certain groups use more. It's that certain groups get counted more.

Why this belongs in the Christchurch Central campaign

This election, Christchurch Central voters have a direct choice on this question, not an abstract one.

I'm standing for the ALCP in this electorate because regulated, legal cannabis — on the risk-tiered model New Zealand already road-tested through the 2008 Misuse of Drugs (Restricted Substances) Regulations — replaces a system that manufactures exactly the kind of selective, discretionary enforcement the numbers above describe. Regulation doesn't ask who looks like a criminal. It sets rules that apply the same way to everyone, the same way our motorcycle licensing already tiers risk by demonstrated competency rather than by who's riding.

National's candidate for this seat, Dale Stephens, is a former police officer — his career since has been in business and Māori economic development, and he hasn't, as far as the public record shows, made specific statements on cannabis or drug policy this campaign. That's worth watching for, not assuming. If a prohibition-centric line does surface locally — the "gangs and cannabis" framing that's common in National's law-and-order messaging nationally — Christchurch Central has a rebuttal no other electorate has quite so directly to hand: our own fifty-year study of our own kids. Prohibition didn't test as effective here. It tested as unevenly enforced.

The data was collected in this city. The choice about what to do with it is on the ballot in this city too, on 7 November.

— Blair Anderson, ALCP candidate for Christchurch Central

Blair Anderson

Social Ecologist 'at large'
http://blairformayor.blogspot.com

http://facebook.com/mildgreens
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com
http://efsdp.org

Christchurch, New Zealand
nz cell 021 823647

Blair Anderson

Social Ecologist 'at large'
http://blairformayor.blogspot.com

http://facebook.com/mildgreens
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com
http://efsdp.org

Christchurch, New Zealand
nz cell 021 823647

The 2008 "Class D" opportunity: regulation instead of prohibition

2026-09-11T13:06:11.748+12:00

New Zealand's Misuse of Drugs (Restricted Substances) Regulations 2008 offered an important alternative to the conventional prohibition model. They recognised that a psychoactive substance could be controlled through regulation of its market and supply, rather than relying exclusively on criminal prohibition. The rules addressed where substances could be sold, advertising, labelling, child-resistant packaging, signage, storage and display. (New Zealand Legislation)

Applied coherently to cannabis, that philosophy could have delivered a third way between prohibition and unrestricted commercialisation:

Control access rather than simply prohibit possession.
Control suppliers through licensing rather than surrender supply to criminals.
Require product labelling and quality standards rather than leave consumers with an unregulated product.
Restrict advertising rather than permit the promotion associated with alcohol and tobacco.
Keep sales away from schools and places where children gather.
Use taxation and licensing to make the market contribute to the public good.
Use regulatory enforcement against irresponsible suppliers rather than criminalising ordinary consumers.
Generate reliable information about the market and consumption instead of forcing it underground.

The crucial advantage is that prohibition attempts to eliminate the cannabis market; regulation attempts to control it.

Canada provides the strongest comparison

Canada's 2018 Cannabis Act explicitly adopted many of these principles. Its purposes include protecting young people, restricting inducements to consume, providing licit production to reduce illicit activity, reducing the burden on the criminal-justice system and providing a quality-controlled supply. (Department of Justice Canada)

The Canadian experience subsequently demonstrated the practical value of moving supply into the regulated system. A federal legislative review found a 95% reduction in cannabis-possession charges between 2017 and 2022, alongside considerable evidence that the legal market was displacing the illicit market. (Publications.gc.ca)

That is the central advantage over prohibition:

Instead of spending public resources trying to suppress an established market, government can regulate the market, monitor it, tax it and progressively displace criminal supply.

Colorado demonstrates the economic dividend

Colorado provides an even more tangible illustration.

Since regulated marijuana sales began in 2014, Colorado has generated more than US$3.1 billion in cumulative marijuana tax revenue. In 2025 alone, marijuana sales generated approximately US$236.4 million in state tax and fee revenue. (Colorado Department of Revenue)

For FY2024–25, Colorado collected US$231.1 million, with money distributed to state agencies, local government and education; K–12 schools received US$83.3 million in the subsequent distribution. (Colorado Legislative Council)

Under prohibition, that economic activity doesn't disappear. It simply occurs outside the tax system and largely outside legitimate regulatory control.

The policy dividend

The comparison can therefore be reduced to this:

Prohibition	Regulation
Criminal market	Licensed market
Criminal enforcement	Regulatory enforcement
Unknown product quality	Quality control
Unknown potency	Labelling/testing
No tax revenue	Tax revenue
Criminal suppliers	Licensed suppliers
Consumer hidden from government	Consumer market visible to regulators
Possession generates criminal-justice costs	Possession by adults can be regulated
Revenue flows to illicit suppliers	Revenue can fund public purposes
Government tries to suppress demand	Government manages risk and supply

The point is not that regulation makes cannabis harmless. It doesn't.

The point is that prohibition gives government remarkably little control over a market that demonstrably exists.

Canada and Colorado illustrate what becomes possible when the state changes the question from:

“How do we stop people obtaining cannabis?”

to:

“How do we control who produces it, who sells it, who can buy it, what is in it, how it is marketed, and how the resulting economic activity serves the public interest?”

That is the real significance of the 2008 Restricted Substances Regulations. They contained the beginnings of a risk-based regulatory philosophy that could have been developed into a distinctly New Zealand model of cannabis control—potentially achieving many of the regulatory advantages subsequently demonstrated by Canada and Colorado without treating cannabis as an ordinary commercial commodity.

In policy terms, the missed opportunity was not simply legalisation. It was the failure to move from a philosophy of prohibition of the substance to one of regulation of the risk.

Blair Anderson

Social Ecologist 'at large'
http://blairformayor.blogspot.com

http://facebook.com/mildgreens
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com
http://efsdp.org

Christchurch, New Zealand
nz cell 021 823647

Whose been outstanding in his field? And about to do it all again....

2026-09-09T16:22:14.761+12:00

Incomplete, but this was what one of the AI tools captured:
https://mildgreensblogspotcom.pplx.app

Blair Anderson http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

The cure for addiction is availability?

2026-09-06T13:05:32.928+12:00

"Canadian recreational cannabis legalization was associated with overall declines in the reinforcing value of cannabis, even as actual cannabis use frequency remained relatively stable."

see: Behavioral Economic Cannabis Demand Following Recreational Cannabis Legalization: Six-Year Findings from an Observational Cohort Study of Community Adults in Canada

So forbidden fruit has a social consequence.... 'it's the rules , stupid' takes on a new and compelling resonance.

Blair Anderson

Social Ecologist 'at large'
http://blairformayor.blogspot.com

http://facebook.com/mildgreens
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com
http://efsdp.org

Christchurch, New Zealand
nz cell 021 823647

From Rotary Halls to Regulated Clinics: LEAP's Long Road to New Zealand's MDMA Approval

2026-09-06T01:29:33.070+12:00

From Rotary Halls to Regulated Clinics: LEAP's Long Road to New Zealand's MDMA Approval

MildGreens / Blair's Brain

On 4 September 2026, Medsafe approved two New Zealand psychiatrists — Dr Gary Wynn in Wellington and Dr Tom Paterson in Auckland — to prescribe pharmaceutical-grade MDMA to adults with severe, treatment-resistant PTSD. It makes New Zealand only the second country in the world, after Australia in 2023, to authorise clinical MDMA-assisted therapy. It follows Medsafe's 2025 approval of a psychiatrist to prescribe medicinal psilocybin for treatment-resistant depression. Associate Health Minister David Seymour put it simply: "PTSD ruins lives and is difficult to treat... MDMA can be very effective at treating it through psychedelic-assisted therapy." Treatment stays tightly bounded — supervised clinical settings only, no take-home doses, part of a comprehensive treatment plan.

It is a quiet, cautious, thoroughly bureaucratic piece of news. It is also, for those of us who have been at this for a long time, the vindication of an argument that took more than two decades to land.

This is worth stating plainly for the record: MildGreens applauds both the rationale and the informed science behind New Zealand's MDMA and psilocybin approvals — and applauds, specifically, that so much of the underlying evidence base has been drawn from and vindicated by user experience rather than dismissed because of its illicit origins. It's a rare, concrete instance of the harm-reduction argument closing the loop: what users and law enforcement insiders reported anecdotally for years is now the basis of an accredited clinical protocol.

LEAP's own pivot to psychedelics

Law Enforcement Against Prohibition — now the Law Enforcement Action Partnership — has spent the last several years extending its core argument about drug policy into exactly this territory. At a session at the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs, LEAP brought together police officers from multiple countries to advocate for the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs in healing the trauma they carried from their own service in the war on drugs — framed around the acknowledged psychological toll of police work and the promise these substances have shown in supervised therapeutic settings. In Massachusetts, a serving police officer and LEAP representative told lawmakers plainly that residents were already travelling out of state to access psychedelic therapy, and urged the legislature to act rather than watch its own citizens seek care elsewhere.

What's notable about LEAP's advocacy on this front is what it isn't. It isn't advocacy built from a laboratory outward. It's advocacy built from the testimony of people — cops, mostly — who lived the trauma, and who either sought out these substances themselves or watched colleagues do so, long before any regulator sanctioned it. The clinical trials came later. The lived experience came first.

Same argument, three decades running

MildGreens readers with long memories will recognise the shape of this argument, because we were making it — with LEAP's own people standing in New Zealand rooms — more than twenty years ago.

In 2004, MildGreens helped arrange and host a New Zealand speaking tour by three LEAP figures: Jack Cole, the retired New Jersey State Police lieutenant and LEAP co-founder; Eddie Ellison, the former Detective Chief Superintendent who had headed narcotics at Scotland Yard; and Eleanor Schockett, formerly a Circuit Court judge in Miami-Dade County, Florida. Eddie and Jack — both then executive directors of LEAP — presented directly to seventeen officials at the Ministry of Justice, laying out, from the inside of law enforcement itself, why prohibition corrupts the institutions built to enforce it and fails the communities it claims to protect. Eddie carried the same message to Rotary halls up and down the North Island, telling one audience of veteran Rotarians that under existing drug policy, "give me a rookie cop and in three years I'll give you a compromised cop" — and warning, correctly as it turned out, that New Zealand's methamphetamine problem would get worse under the settings then in place. Eleanor spoke publicly in the Listener, warning that New Zealand's hardening stance on drugs would produce the same growing violence the United States had reaped from the same policy. Mikey Havoc interviewed Eddie for TV3 that April.

Four years later, in September 2008, we hosted Judge Jerry Paradis — a retired judge of the Provincial Court of British Columbia and, at the time, LEAP's most prominent judicial voice from Canada — for the University of Canterbury's Pro Vice-Chancellor's Winter Lecture, "Drugs and the Law," at the Ilam campus. Paradis brought a judge's unsentimental view of what prohibition does inside a courtroom, and a blunt eulogy for a colleague lost along the way: "an honourable man on a hopeless cause."

None of these visits argued for psychedelics as therapy specifically — that wasn't yet the live question. What they argued, consistently, was that the people closest to the sharp end of drug enforcement — the cops, the judges — were the ones most qualified to say the policy had failed, and that their qualification came from experience, not textbooks. It's the identical epistemic move LEAP is making today at the UN and in state legislatures: trust the people who lived it.

Why this matters now

New Zealand's MDMA and psilocybin approvals are narrow, tightly gated, and clinically conservative — as they should be at this early stage. But the underlying evidence base behind both approvals owes an enormous, under-acknowledged debt to decades of user experience that prohibition tried to criminalise out of existence rather than study. The same is true of LEAP's advocacy: officers who came to see psychedelics as therapeutic didn't get there from a randomised controlled trial. They got there from their own trauma, their own recovery, and their own willingness to say so publicly at professional risk — exactly as Eddie, Jack, Eleanor and Jerry did when they stood in Ministry of Justice boardrooms and Rotary halls and university lecture theatres telling New Zealanders that the people running the drug war didn't believe in it either.

MildGreens applauds both the rationale and the informed science behind Medsafe's decisions — and applauds, in particular, that so much of the evidentiary weight behind them has been drawn from and ultimately vindicated by the very user experience that prohibition spent a century trying to silence.

It has taken a long time for the clinic to catch up with what the people who actually used these substances, including the cops among them, already knew. But it has caught up. That's worth marking.

MildGreens Initiative — mildgreens.blogspot.com

Blair Anderson http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

Victory! Government appoints a Minister for the War it's losing

2026-09-05T05:48:40.452+12:00

Victory! Government appoints a Minister for the War it's losing

A MildGreens response, even if a little satirical, to the appointment of a 'Minister of Organised Crime'

What a marvellous week for New Zealand. We have solved national security. We have done this not by doing anything difficult, but by appointing a Minister for it.

Hon. Casey Costello (*) has been handed the grand, shiny, brand-new portfolio of "Organised Crime", the first minister in our history dedicated to a threat so enormous that apparently one entire Cabinet position should be enough to stare it down. A single human being, one pair of hands, a folder and a phone. Arsenal: one media release and a ministerial advisory group.

Let us review the evidence of how well we are doing, as presented so proudly in the announcement.

Record-breaking drug busts. Record-breaking. At the border. Inside the border. Behind the baggage carousels. Corrupt baggage handlers at Auckland Airport, which is a genuinely wonderful image: the Syndicate right there, in the bag-drop, folding their own shirts over $4 million of meth and grumbling about the shift rota.

And yet, and this is the part the media release reads with the straightest face, like a near daily weather reporter, methamphetamine consumption is also at record-breaking levels. Nationwide. In the wastewater. Every week. No wonder Internal Affairs re-labelled it 'P'.

Read that again. We are seizing more drugs than ever, and people are consuming more drugs than ever. Both are at record highs, simultaneously. This is not a head-scratcher. This is not a paradox. This is the definition of an arms race with no finish line, run by two sides who both think they're winning because the scoreboard only counts productivity, not outcomes.

The logic of the war on drugs, compressed into one sentence: the more we confiscate, the more there is to confiscate. It is a war economy. It is, frankly, a jobs program. The cartels supply the market. The Police and Customs provide the seizure statistics. The media provide the headlines. Corrections are accommodating. Diversion, the overflow. And the Minister provides the press release. Everyone gets paid. Nobody is sober.

And what have we been told will fix it? Accountability. The expert panel says everyone, "from the top down", must be held accountable for their performance.

Hold accountable for what, precisely? For the fact that the market they are tasked with crushing has grown, not shrunk, for four decades? That the wholesale price of meth in New Zealand, the highest in the world, a point of national pride we seem to have quietly dropped, is a moral lesson in what happens when you criminalise a product people will always want?

Yes. Let's fire a few more border agents. That'll do it.

Here is the elephant in the room, and it is not so much an elephant as a 25-tonne cold-cellar of pure, uncut, undeniable reality: prohibition is the thing that makes this market exist. The organised crime the Minister has been hired to fight is not the cause of the drug trade. It is a symptom of the decision to ban some drugs. Cartels don't exist to make people happy; they exist because prohibition creates a product with enormous, tax-free margins and guarantees there is no legitimate competitor. Remove the profit, and you remove the cartel. Remove the illegal market and you remove a great deal of the "organised crime.". Does no one remember, we made beer legal, and the guns disappeared.

Instead, we have chosen the approach of a man trying to drain a swamp by appointing a Director of Swamp Management, celebrating each bucket hauled out, while the rain keeps falling and the frogs get the last laugh.

We are told the No 1 national security threat is organised crime. Actually, the No 1 national security threat is the policy that grows organised crime, and the No 1 threat to our intelligence is the collective refusal to say it out loud.

The finest irony: the exact same Cabinet that appoints a Minister of Organised Crime could, in one afternoon, kill the syndicates by regulating the market, decriminalising possession, investing the resulting revenue into treatment rather than 'Kilos of White Powder That Costs Us Orders of Magnitude More Because We Made It A Crime'. That is the recommendation the advisory group will politely circle around -> the recommendation that never quite makes the media release.

It is not like the idea isn't popular; the 2020 referendum evidenced that half of New Zealand, bar the population of Blenheim, voted Yes, to at least think about it.

So: congratulations to the Minister. May her portfolio be long, her advisory groups plentiful, and her paperwork immaculate as she swims against the tide.

It won't change a thing. But it will look like we're doing something.

And looking like we are doing something, in New Zealand, is the most important achievement a minister can have.

You can tell there is an election pending; you can smell the elephants in the room.....
The expert panel may yet have time to anoint a Ministry of Deodorant.

( as published on http://mildgreens.blogspot.com )

Blair Anderson http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

* Cassandra Jane 'Casey' Costello is a New Zealand politician, lobbyist, and former Det. Sergeant police officer and vice-President of the Police Association, a List MP for the New Zealand First party, Port Waikato. see https://monica.so/answers/TavnRgVSdKbVOT1w4hto7/Casey-Costello-organised-crime

Police, Waikato, Canada and the 'Medicine Wheel'.

2026-09-02T10:53:10.287+12:00

Objective Analysis: The Waikato Police Cannabis Media Release, Canada's 2018 Cannabis Act Reform, and Indigenous Integration with the Toronto "Medicine Wheel" Case
A policy / legal / public-health analysis of enforcement-led cannabis policy in Aotearoa New Zealand, benchmarked against the post‑prohibition Canadian model.

Date of analysis: 2 September 2026.
Prepared by Blair Anderson, AnotherMildGreen Initiative, Christchurch. NZ.

Note on source: The Waikato Police media release quoted throughout is the user‑supplied text; all facts attributed to it come from that document. Canadian and New Zealand law, statistics, and the Medicine Wheel case are drawn from the public sources listed in the References.

1. Purpose and method
This document does three things:

Analyses the Waikato Police media release objectively, separating the facts it reports from the framing it adopts (a police media release is a communications artefact, not neutral reporting).

Compares the release, and the enforcement model it represents, to Canada's legalised, regulated framework established by the Cannabis Act (in force 17 October 2018).

Uses the Toronto‑based Indigenous cannabis retailer "Medicine Wheel" (the Mississaugas of the Credit Medicine Wheel) as a case study of Indigenous economic and community integration, drawing out the opportunities and the tensions that a post‑prohibition reform, done well or done badly, creates.

The MildGreen analytical lens is deliberately comparative and balanced: it does not argue that legalisation is automatically "good" or prohibition automatically "bad." It asks what each model achieves, for whom, and at what cost, and what that means for a country (Aotearoa) that is currently in a prohibition‑plus‑discretionary‑health posture following the narrow failure of the 2020 referendum.

2. Analysis of the media Release

2.1 What the release reports (the facts)

Reported data point followed by Detail:

Scale of operations; 14 "Vietnamese‑run grow houses" across the Waikato district, ~200–600 plants each

Single‑site seizure; Up to 750 kg of cannabis at one property

Power theft; Electricity diverted, estimated up to $10,000 per month per premise to run grow rooms (objective critique of this power consumption assessment is made elsewhere)

Method; Residential and commercial rentals modified into commercial grow operations; ventilation to mask odour; water reticulation; a "fake wall" to conceal grow rooms

Arrests; 5 people of Vietnamese nationality arrested at one property on Wed 19 Aug (cultivating cannabis for supply); 3 more at the same address the following day

Notable site; Frankton, a rented industrial premises fitted out as a bespoke indoor grow operation with multiple grow rooms; 580 plants of varying age

Landlord status; Landlords/owners described as "unaware and shocked"

Community role; Community described as "valuable"; public encouraged to report unusual activity, equipment or aromas

Cross‑agency work; Police working with Immigration New Zealand regarding those charged
Reporting channels 105, or Crime Stoppers anonymously on 0800 555 111

2.2 The framing and its choices
An objective reading distinguishes the evidence above from the narrative that surrounds it.

Key framing features:

Organised‑crime framing. The lead is the "Organised Crime Squad." The scale is emphasised (tons, hundreds of kilograms, a $10,000/month electricity bill). The purpose is to convey that this is commercial, organised, and significant, not low‑level personal use. This is the classic supply‑side interdiction narrative.

Victimisation framing. Landlords and owners are "unaware and shocked"; the community is "valuable" and is asked to report. This positions the harm as done to the wider community and to property owners, a reasonable and persuasive framing, but also one that foregrounds property and public safety harms rather than health harms.

Nationality/ethnicity framing. The offenders are repeatedly described as "Vietnamese nationals," with a specific mention of Immigration New Zealand. This is legally relevant to the release (foreign‑national involvement, immigration consequences), but it also creates a risk of public salience attaching to a nationality rather than to the conduct, in a way that can stigmatise a migrant community that is overwhelmingly law‑abiding. [An objective analysis notes this is a framing risk, not an assertion of bad faith by police.]

Demand‑side absence. The release says nothing about demand for cannabis, about consumer harm, about diversion/health‑based options, or about whether prohibition is an effective way to reduce the harms of use. It is an enforcement‑success communication, not a harm‑reduction communication.

Metrics of "success." The implied success metrics are quantity seized, people arrested, property disrupted, and community information received, i.e., input and process metrics. These are real and legitimate. But they are not the same as policy‑outcome metrics (does this reduce cannabis‑related harm? does it reduce the illicit market? does it improve public health?).

2.3 Notable points an objective reader should weigh
Some harms described are genuine and independent of legal status. Power theft is a real offence and a direct cost to households and infrastructure; amateur/industrial indoor grows pose fire and electrical risks; unscrupulous operators may use unsafe practices; the disruption is significant. These are legitimate reasons to investigate and prosecute, whoever the offenders are.

The release foregrounds enforcement and property/safety harms, not health.

If measuring whether NZ is achieving harm reduction, the release is not evidence of that; it is evidence of enforcement activity. These are different claims.

Prohibition has a supply‑side problem the release inadvertently illustrates. Under prohibition, all production is by definition "illicit," so it is driven underground precisely where it is hardest to regulate, in rented houses with hidden wiring, fake walls, and odour control. The very concealment that makes these operations dangerous (hidden wiring, diverted power, unsafe grow rooms) is a product of illegality. A regulated model would relocate much of this activity into licensed, inspected premises.

The transnational/migrant dimension coexists with a domestic equity story. In NZ, while prohibition's supply and cultivation are policed as organised crime, its possession/consumption burden falls overwhelmingly on Māori (see §5.3). The release is honest about what it is, but a full policy picture must also account for who carries the enforcement burden on the demand side.

3. Canada's Cannabis Act (2018): the comparative model
The Cannabis Act (Bill C‑45) came into force on 17 October 2018. It explicitly sets out three statutory goals:

* Keep cannabis out of the hands of youth.
* Keep profits out of the pockets of criminals.
* Protect public health and public safety by allowing adults access to legal cannabis.

3.1 Structural design

Federal level: federal licences control production (cultivation, processing), with strict product‑quality and safety requirements, and a labelling/packaging regime.

Provincial/territorial level: provinces control distribution and retail (public or licensed private stores), minimum age, possession limits, and public‑consumption rules.

The design logic is a regulated legal market intended to displace the illicit market and defund organised crime, rather than simply to suppress supply.

This is the fundamental philosophical divergence from the Waikato release model. In the release, the state's role is to find and destroy cannabis supply. In Canada's model, the state's role is to capture and regulate the supply so that consumers do not need the illicit market at all.

3.2 Outcomes (evidence)
Market displacement is substantial. An International Journal of Drug Policy study found Canada's legal market displaced ~78% of domestic expenditures on illegal cannabis within four years of legalisation (an estimated C$5.23bn legal vs C$1.49bn illegal in the 12 months to Sept 2022).

Another analysis estimated the legal market reached ~72% share five years post‑implementation, with illegal cannabis falling from ~88% (pre‑legalisation) to ~24%.
Organised‑crime exposure. Before legalisation, ~44% of assessed Organised Crime Groups in Canada were involved in the cannabis market. Legalisation was aimed at removing that revenue stream (though many OCGs diversify into other drugs).

"Keeping profits out of criminals' pockets" is, by this measure, largely working, the metric the Cannabis Act was designed around, and the metric the Waikato release is not designed to measure.

3.3 The acknowledged gaps in the Canadian model
It is important not to overstate the Canadian success. The 2024 Legislative Review of the Cannabis Act (Expert Panel) and earlier engagement documented significant gaps:

No explicit social‑equity objectives in the Act itself.
Indigenous exclusion in design. The Act was drafted and passed without adequate consultation with First Nations, Inuit and Métis; it "vests control over the implementation of the law ... in the federal and provincial governments only," and is widely described as silent on its application to Indigenous communities.

Exclusion from tax revenue. First Nations are excluded from cannabis excise/tax revenue shares, prompting calls for tax‑sharing arrangements.

The "red market" phenomenon. Because the formal regime was seen as inaccessible or illegitimate by many Indigenous entrepreneurs, a parallel "red market" of sovereign, community‑sanctioned dispensaries emerged, which the Expert Panel acknowledged as "compliant with community‑based laws and regulations" but not with federal/provincial law.

These gaps are central to the Medicine Wheel case in §6.

4. Direct comparison: enforcement‑led prohibition vs. regulated legalisation

Dimension NZ (per the Waikato release) Canada (post‑2018 Cannabis Act)
Primary state role Interdict/destroy supply; criminalise production Capture and regulate supply; legalise for adults
Target metric Quantity seized, arrests, property disrupted, power theft deterred Legal‑market share; disruption of illicit market; youth protection
Producer status Criminal (imprisonment for supply) Licensed/regulated (federal licence)
Where production happens Hidden, unregulated (rentals, fake walls, diverted power) Inspected, licensed premises
Public‑safety framing Foregrounded (property, power theft, community reporting) Foregrounded but alongside a health/regulated‑supply approach
Health framework Discretionary (2019 COVID‑era‑style health‑first discretion exists but is non‑binding) Rights‑based adult access + product regulation
Indigenous dimension Demand‑side enforcement falls disproportionately on Māori; no market for Indigenous economic participation Legal market + Indigenous entry, but poor design → "red market"
Consumer choice None (all otherwise‑legal supply is illicit) Broad regulated choice
Organised‑crime revenue Targeted by enforcement, but illicit demand persists Targeted by removing the illicit market itself

The clearest structural point: The Waikato release describes a police force cleaning up crime. Canada's reform describes a government changing the incentive structure so the crime is far less profitable and far more regulated. Both are defensible policy positions; they are simply solving different problems with different tools.

5. The post‑prohibition reform: what opportunities it creates
The MildGreens asks about the "opportunities that exist in the post‑prohibition reform that commenced in 2018." These can be grouped into opportunities that a regulated market creates and, crucially, the design lessons that determine whether those opportunities are shared equitably.

5.1 Opportunities that regulation creates (demonstrated in Canada)

* Defunding organised crime. Removing the illicit market's customer base is the most durable antiprofit measure; enforcement alone tends to displace criminal activity rather than defund it.
* Public‑safety, not just public‑benefit, gains. A regulated, inspected supply removes many of the physical risks named in the release. Concealed wiring, diverted power, fire risk, fake walls because legitimate operations are compliant and inspected.
* Quality control and product safety. Labelling, potency limits, and testing reduce adulteration and mislabelling (a real risk in unregulated products).
* Tax and licensing revenue that can be reinvested in health, education, and community services.
* Redirecting enforcement capacity toward genuinely harmful and violent crime (and toward the residual illicit/mis-labelled market), rather than spending it on low‑level drug matters.
* Health‑led harm reduction, including resources for youth protection and culturally appropriate education, which are statutory goals in the Canadian model.

5.2 The equity lesson: design determines who benefits
Canada's structural success in displacing the illicit market was not matched by success in equitable Indigenous participation. The Canadian Expert Panel's recommendations (calls for nation‑to‑nation agreements, tax‑sharing, culturally appropriate education, co‑development, support for Indigenous applicants, more flexible retail models) indicate that the opportunity to include Indigenous communities was largely missed at the design stage. The result is:

* Only 47 Indigenous‑owned or ‑affiliated businesses held federal cultivation/processing licences, and only 6 were located within First Nations communities.
* More than 475 sovereign Indigenous dispensaries operate across Canada and the US, i.e., the overwhelming majority of Indigenous cannabis enterprise sits outside the formal legal market.

[This is the single most important transferable lesson for NZ: inclusion must be designed in, not bolted on.]

5.3 The Aotearoa / Māori dimension (why this matters locally)
Although the release is about supply‑side enforcement, the equity case is strongest on the demand side:

Māori are ~17% of the population but 48% of those convicted of drug possession — they are charged roughly 4× more often than Europeans as a share of the population.
61.9% of those sentenced to prison for drug‑possession offences are Māori.
The 2019 "health‑first" amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act did not reduce this disparity; research has found Māori ethnicity remained a significant predictor of cannabis conviction (OR ~1.56–1.57), and there was no reduction in charges against Māori after the amendment.
Māori voters were among the strongest supporters of the 2020 legalisation referendum (rejected 50.7% No v 48.4% Yes, a margin of just 67,662 votes).

For NZ, the opportunity in a future post‑prohibition framework is therefore both economic and reconciliatory: a well‑designed regulated market (or a genuinely equitable decriminalisation framework) could

(a) reduce the disproportionate criminalisation of Māori, and
(b) create Indigenous‑led economic development and rangatiratanga (self‑determination) over the plant, exactly the pattern the Medicine Wheel case embodies, but ideally within the legal framework so it does not have to operate as a parallel "red market."

6. Case study: "Medicine Wheel" (Toronto) and Indigenous integration

6.1 Naming note (important for accuracy)
"Medicine Wheel" is used for two distinct enterprises, and the distinction materially affects the analysis:

Medicine Wheel Natural Healing; Alderville First Nation (the "Green Mile") and Vanier/Ottawa. 100% Indigenous‑owned, opened 21 June 2017, and describes itself as a dispensary + testing site + production facility. Founder Rob Stevenson (Anishinaabe, Bear Clan). Its products are described as "lab‑tested Indigenous cannabis product."

Mississaugas of the Credit Medicine Wheel (MC Medicine Wheel)
Toronto‑based, the relevant entity for this request. Operated by Ken Hughes of the Mississaugas of the Credit First Nation. First store opened in October 2021 at 1176 Danforth Ave; expanded to ~13 locations (nine in Toronto) by early 2023. This is the "Toronto‑based retailer" the writer case-studied.
[I focus on MC Medicine Wheel but note both, because the two illustrate the opposite poles of the Indigenous integration spectrum.]

6.2 What MC Medicine Wheel is
* Sovereign/unlicensed. It operates without an Ontario licence and outside provincial regulation, on land it claims as unceded Mississaugas of the Credit territory.
Explicit self‑determination framing. Its storefront declares: "This store is operated by sovereign people on sovereign land. We are exercising our constitutional and inherent right." Owner Ken Hughes describes this as an expression of self‑governance, comparing seeking an Ontario licence to "receiving a driver's licence from a province where you're not a resident."
* "Rejection of economic genocide." The enterprise frames itself as rejecting "centuries of economic genocide" and reclaiming economic activity on contested territory.
* Seed‑to‑sale Indigenous. All workers, growers, processors, and store operators are Indigenous, so value chains stay within the community.
* Broadened to multiple locations and a legal argument. It is represented by a lawyer (Jack Lloyd) who argues a pre‑colonial history of Indigenous trade and medicinal use of cannabis as a basis for Indigenous jurisdiction.

6.3 How it exemplifies "Indigenous integration into the community"
From the case, several concrete integration mechanisms are visible:

* Economic self‑sufficiency and local employment. A vertically integrated, wholly Indigenous workforce keeps earnings within the community, addressing Indigenous unemployment and promoting Indigenous entrepreneurship, the "economic reconciliation" rationale that Indigenous leaders in Canada repeatedly cite.

* Community harm reduction. Manager Cheryl Tones frames the store as a harm‑reduction vehicle for Toronto's Indigenous community, with lower prices (e.g., "2 ounces for $100") making it a more accessible, safer option for people who might otherwise turn to stronger or adulterated substances. This ties a commercial operation directly to a public‑health goal.

* Cultural and territorial continuity. "Welcome to the traditional territory of the Mississauga of the Credit"; the store enacts ongoing connection to land, treaty history, and traditional medicine, making it a symbolic and cultural as well as economic institution.

* Accessibility within the urban Indigenous population. Having a sovereign store in the city (rather than forcing a trip to Alderville or Tyendinaga 'reserves'.) meets demand where urban Indigenous people actually live.

* Catalyst for a movement. It is framed as the first of its kind in Toronto, within a broader network (>475 sovereign dispensaries) i.e., it is a tangible, repeatable model of Indigenous community economic control.

6.4 The objective counterweight (why "success" is contested)
An honest analysis must hold the tensions alongside the 'indigenous' achievements:

It is technically illegal under provincial/federal law.
The store is unlicensed. Therefore, it cannot simply be described as an unqualified "policy success." It is a system‑level signal of a design failure, a case of a population exiting a legal market that did not accommodate its jurisdiction, sovereignty, or economic needs.

Police have historically raided such Indigenous‑run stores. For example, a raid on Aamjiwnaang Nation land (Dec 2022); charges were later withdrawn for all but one employee. This shows the continuing risk of criminalisation of precisely the self‑determination the release/community might otherwise celebrate.

Acknowledged by the Expert Panel. Health Canada's own review described these 'red‑market dispensaries' as "compliant with community‑based laws and regulations" but not federal/provincial law, an explicit admission that the legal framework and the community framework are in conflict.

The "red market" label is contested even among Indigenous leaders. Rob Stevenson (of the separate, licensed Medicine Wheel Natural Healing) describes unlicensed sovereign stores as the "red market," while other Indigenous entrepreneurs are actively building a regulated red market by and for Indigenous Peoples. [There is no single Indigenous view.]

Potential consumer‑safety concerns. Because such stores are unregulated, product testing/labelling is not federally enforced though the enterprises themselves claim lab‑testing and safety measures. [The writer observed store, staff handling, presentation and packaging innovation was exemplar]

6.5 What the case teaches Aotearoa New Zealand
The Medicine Wheel case is best read as a proof of unmet demand for two things at once:

Indigenous economic self‑determination (employment, profit, and authority staying within Indigenous communities and on Indigenous‑claimed land), and a legitimate, orderly place in the legal market.

Whether one views it as an inspiring model or as evidence of a broken framework, the net lesson is identical: a post‑prohibition system that does not build in Indigenous [and cultural] authority (ie. nation‑to‑nation agreements, revenue‑sharing, culturally appropriate licensing support and education, and space for Indigenous‑owned retail) will either exclude Indigenous communities or push them into a parallel, unregulated market.

For Aotearoa, with its own strong claims of rangatiratanga and its disproportionate criminalisation of Māori, the design challenge is to ensure Māori economic and governance participation is built into the framework from the outset, rather than leaving it to emerge as a contested parallel system.

7. Concluding observations
The media release is a legitimate and well‑executed piece of 'enforcement communication'. The scale of the seizure, the power theft, and the concealment techniques are genuine harms that warrant investigation. Nothing here questions that.

But it measures enforcement, not policy outcome.

The release demonstrates that police are disrupting supply. It does not, and cannot, demonstrate that prohibition is reducing cannabis harm, because the entire supply exists only because prohibition keeps it illicit and unregulated.

Canada's reform demonstrates that a different model is available and that it works on its own terms. Legalisation displaced ~three‑quarters of the illicit cannabis market and defunded organised‑crime revenue streams, which is precisely the outcome an enforcement‑led model cannot easily achieve because it leaves consumer demand attached to an unregulated underground.

The MildGreens note that the Canadian model's biggest failure is equity, not efficacy.
The Cannabis Act achieved market displacement but largely excluded Indigenous communities from design, revenue, and jurisdiction producing a parallel "red market" of >475 sovereign dispensaries.

Medicine Wheel (Toronto) is the clearest illustration of that failure and of the opportunity. It is simultaneously an economic, cultural, and harm‑reduction success for an urban Indigenous community and an explicit rejection of the formal legal market, a double signal that the framework was not designed for Indigenous self‑determination.

The transferable opportunity for Aotearoa New Zealand is to design in Māori authority and equity before any future reform. Given the narrowly‑missed 2020 referendum and the entrenched over‑criminalisation of Māori on the demand side, a future framework should ensure Māori economic participation, governance/rangatiratanga over the plant, culturally appropriate harm‑reduction and public‑health resources, and revenue‑sharing so that Indigenous integration is a feature of the legal market, not a reason to exit it.

8. References
Government of Canada — Department of Justice. Cannabis Legalization and Regulation. https://www.justice.gc.ca/eng/cj-jp/cannabis/
Government of Canada — Health Canada. Legislative Review of the Cannabis Act: What We Heard Report. https://www.canada.ca/en/health-canada/services/drugs-medication/cannabis/laws-regulations/cannabis-act-legislative-review/expert-panel/legislative-review-cannabis-act-report.html
Government of Canada — Health Canada. Legislative Review of the Cannabis Act: Final Report of the Expert Panel. https://www.canada.ca/content/dam/hc-sc/documents/services/publications/drugs-medication/legislative-review-cannabis-act-final-report-expert-panel/legislative-review-cannabis-act-final-report-expert-panel.pdf
Hammond, D. et al. Transitions to legal cannabis markets: Legal market capture of cannabis expenditures in Canada following federal cannabis legalization. International Journal of Drug Policy (2025). https://davidhammond.ca/wp-content/uploads/2025/06/2025-ICPS-Legal-Market-Capture-IJDP-Hammond.pdf
NORML. Analysis: Legalization Has Largely Displaced Canada's Illicit Cannabis Market. https://norml.org/blog/2025/05/12/analysis-legalization-has-largely-displaced-canadas-illicit-cannabis-market/
Government of Canada — Question Period Note: Cannabis Black Market. https://search.open.canada.ca/qpnotes/record/ps-sp,PS-2022-QP-2--MPS-036
Alberta Law Review. Indigenous Peoples and Cannabis Legalization. https://albertalawreview.com/index.php/ALR/article/download/2519/2497/2689
IRPP Policy Options. Canada must respect Indigenous cannabis laws. https://policyoptions.irpp.org/2019/08/canada-must-respect-indigenous-cannabis-laws/
The Varsity. Why this Mississaugas of the Credit-owned cannabis shop operates without an Ontario license. https://thevarsity.ca/2023/01/29/why-this-mississaugas-of-the-credit-owned-cannabis-shop-operates-without-an-ontario-license/
Toronto Star. Toronto's first sovereign, Indigenous-owned cannabis shop aims to fight 'economic genocide' and is operating without provincial licensing. https://www.thestar.com/news/gta/toronto-s-first-sovereign-indigenous-owned-cannabis-shop-aims-to-fight-economic-genocide-and-is/article_cb3b1011-ab1e-5e65-ac73-f1f8a3e540c8.html
Cannabis Culture / Dispensing Freedom. Medicine Wheel: Inside Toronto's First Sovereign, Indigenous-owned Cannabis Shop. https://www.cannabisculture.com/content/2021/10/06/medicine-wheel-inside-torontos-first-sovereign-indigenous-owned-cannabis-shop/
The Globe and Mail. Indigenous cannabis entrepreneurs choose between government red tape and reserve 'red markets'. https://www.theglobeandmail.com/featured-reports/article-indigenous-cannabis-entrepreneurs-choose-between-government-red-tape/
New Zealand Drug Foundation. State of the Nation 2022. https://drugfoundation.org.nz/assets/Uploads/Submissions-and-reports/State-of-the-Nation-2022-web.pdf
Harm Reduction Journal (Springer). Indigenous people in Aotearoa New Zealand are overrepresented in cannabis convictions. https://link.springer.com/article/10.1186/s12954-022-00613-9
New Zealand Drug Science / PMCSA. A drug harms ranking study for Aotearoa New Zealand. https://www.drugscience.org.uk/a-drug-harms-ranking-study-for-aotearoa-new-zealand
New Zealand Prime Minister's Chief Science Advisor. Cannabis in Aotearoa New Zealand / Legalising cannabis: What does the evidence say? https://www.pmcsa.ac.nz/topics/cannabis/
Wikipedia / Electoral Commission. 2020 New Zealand cannabis referendum. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2020_New_Zealand_cannabis_referendum

Analysis and Report prepared by Blair Anderson,
Another MildGreen Initiative, Christchurch.

Blair Anderson http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

Cannabis: Candidates Can’t Hide Behind 2020 Anymore

2026-09-01T21:18:25.875+12:00

MEDIA RELEASE

Cannabis: Candidates Can’t Hide Behind 2020 Anymore

1 September 2026

Six years after New Zealand narrowly rejected cannabis legalisation, the argument has changed. The projections can now be tested against real-world experience.

BERL estimated regulation could add $440 million annually to GDP and generate $675 million in health-earmarked revenue. NZIER estimated around $490 million in annual tax revenue.

The referendum failed 50.7% to 48.4%.

Canada’s experience since legalisation suggests those 2020 estimates were conservative, not exaggerated. Colorado provides the counter-warning: excessive taxation can push consumers back towards the illicit market.

“Candidates can’t keep campaigning on the assumptions of 2020 when we now have evidence from the countries that actually did it,” says Blair Anderson of the MildGreens Initiative.

“With the 7 November election approaching, MildGreens is challenging every candidate: tell voters what your cannabis policy is. Will you continue prohibition, or will you support a regulated market that captures the economic and social dividend while protecting public health?

The evidence is in. Now candidates need to put their positions on the record.

ENDS

Cannabis, The Untested Referendum, Unresolved Resolution. Follow the Money

2026-09-01T12:36:00.476+12:00

Cannabis, The Untested Referendum, Unresolved Resolution. Follow the Money

MEDIA RELEASE MildGreens Initiative

Six years on, real-world data shows New Zealand's cannabis referendum numbers were conservative, not exaggerated.

New Zealand's 2020 cannabis referendum was fought over a few speculative projections —> BERL modelling estimated a legal market could add $440 million a year to GDP and $675 million in health-earmarked revenue; NZIER separately projected $490 million in annual tax take. The referendum failed 50.7% to 48.4%, and those figures have sat untested ever since.

They no longer need to be. Canada, five years into full legalisation, recorded $10.6–11.6 billion in direct GDP contribution from licensed cannabis in 2025 alone, on a trajectory of accumulated GDP gains topping $76 billion since 2018. Adjusted for population and exchange rate, that scales to roughly $1.6 billion a year for New Zealand —> more than three times BERL's estimate.

Colorado, closer to New Zealand in population, offers the more sobering comparison: a mature market now posting declining sales, partly attributed to excessive excise-tax stacking pushing consumers back toward the illicit supply BERL's modelling assumed would disappear.

"The 2020 numbers weren't wrong, they were conservative!" said Blair Anderson of the MildGreens Initiative. "The real debate this election isn't whether regulation generates revenue. Overseas data settles that. It's whether we build a tightly regulated market like the one BERL modelled, or a commercial one like Canada's, and what tax structure avoids Colorado's slide back toward the black market."

With cannabis policy reflected in every electoral 'list candidacy' the past thirty years, now with evidence ahead of the 7 November election, MildGreens is calling on all candidates to engage with the social dividend evidence [ Google (Canada Cannabis GDP Deloitte ) ] rather than repeat the 2020's guesswork and speculation.

ENDS

The MildGreens Initiative is a New Zealand drug policy reform project advancing evidence-based, regulation-first approaches to cannabis law. Its work draws on the Misuse of Drugs (Restricted Substances) Regulations 2008 (RSR 2008), which its founders co-authored, and on comparative international evidence, to argue for risk-tiered regulation over prohibition. MildGreens publishes analysis and commentary at http://www.mildgreens.blogspot.com and engagingly on facebook.com/mildgreens

Media contact: Blair Anderson, Another MildGreens Initiative [phone 021823647]

DIAGNOSTIC INVERSION AND THE 2020 REFERENDUM

2026-07-31T00:09:21.754+12:00

MildGreens Initiative — Briefing Note Christchurch, New Zealand DIAGNOSTIC INVERSION AND THE 2020 REFERENDUM: WHY "NOT UP FOR DISCUSSION" IS A CATEGORY ERROR, NOT A POSITION 1. The mechanism Diagnostic inversion describes a specific and recurring error in drug policy discourse: the relabelling of prohibition-market harms as drug harms. Violence associated with unregulated supply chains, contamination from unregulated production, the criminal records generated by enforcement rather than by any pharmacological event, the enforcement expenditure itself, all of these are artefacts of a particular market design (illegal, unregulated, untaxed) rather than properties of the substance being prohibited. When these costs are attributed to the drug rather than to the policy architecture surrounding it, the diagnosis is wrong before any remedy is proposed. A policy response built on a misdiagnosis will, definitionally, treat the wrong variable. This is not a rhetorical flourish. It is falsifiable in the ordinary sense: where a jurisdiction has altered the market architecture while holding the substance constant (regulated retail replacing illicit supply, as in the Canadian post-2018 rollout see: https://www.statcan.gc.ca/.../9129-canadas-cannabis...), the harms attributed to "the drug" have moved with the market change, not independently of it. That is evidence the harm was substantially a market artefact. 2. The referendum as a case of the same error, applied politically The 2020 cannabis referendum is ordinarily narrated as a settled expression of public will: reform was put to a vote and the vote said no. That narration is itself a diagnostic inversion, for two reasons. First, the result was uneven and thin. The equivalent of Blenheim's electorate voted the measure down, while the equivalent of Canterbury's engagement didnt vote at all with the substance of the question being blunted by circumstances that had nothing to do with the Christchurch High Court's considered judgement on cannabis policy. The Electoral Commission, exercising Crown Law, made sure of that. (the writer is on $100,000 / the 2yrs, Bail, until his late September court date, days before the election.... ) [ context: The Electoral Commission lied by omission to the Justice and Electoral Committee by NOT TELLING THEM they had acted in bad faith pretending 'one of our issues' (their portraying 'you are voting for cannabis' was the same as 'your voting for Cannabis Legalisation and Control. ' ] Treating a narrow, unevenly distributed result as a stable national verdict misattributes electoral noise to settled preference, the same inferential error diagnostic inversion makes when it misattributes market harm to pharmacology. Second, the referendum's legal challenge was dismissed on a procedural security-deposit ground, without a hearing on the merits. A statutory right was extinguished by a procedural default before it could be exercised or tested. The subsequent political use of the result, "the public doesn't want this" treats a procedural artefact as though it were a substantive finding. This is the referendum's own diagnostic inversion: process failure relabelled as public verdict. Six years have elapsed on the strength of that relabelling. The cost of that elapsed time is not abstract. It is measured in the continued operation of the prohibition-market harms described in Section 1, harms that a corrected diagnosis would have begun addressing in 2020. 3. RSR 2008 as the corrected diagnosis, not a new argument The Misuse of Drugs (Restricted Substances) Regulations 2008 already exists in New Zealand law as a domestic regulatory counterfactual. Its relevance here is structural rather than rhetorical: it demonstrates that the "how" objection routinely raised against reform, that regulation is administratively untested, does not hold in the New Zealand context, because a workable regulatory instrument already exists. Voting FOR a platform grounded in RSR 2008 is not a request to relitigate 2020's binary conclusion; it is a request to apply an available, evidenced instrument to a diagnosis that has already been corrected in the analysis above. 4. Class D as interim correction Pending any legislative platform built on RSR 2008, Class D reclassification offers an interim mechanism for beginning to correct the misdiagnosis without waiting on a further electoral cycle. The relevant metrics are regional and immediate: Avoided enforcement expenditure, and health system relief, redirected as fiscal dividend, order of magnitude in the billions at a national level, with Canterbury a material beneficiary given its enforcement and health-system exposure. Regulated employment displacing illicit-market activity, an estimated four figures of local jobs across cultivation, testing, retail, and compliance functions, following the pattern already observed in comparable regulated markets since 2018. 5. Conclusion "Not up for discussion" functions, on this analysis, as a claim that the diagnosis is closed. The evidence above suggests the diagnosis was wrong at the point it was closed, and has not been reopened since. MildGreens will continue to advance this analysis in the lead-up to the 7 November 2026 general election, on the basis that a policy built on a corrected diagnosis is not a repeat of an old argument but a first attempt at the right one. Prepared by: Blair Anderson MildGreens Initiative Blog: Blair's Brain on Cannabis. Media Inquiries. cell: 021823647 About MildGreens: MildGreens is a New Zealand cannabis and drug policy reform initiative drawing on the Misuse of Drugs (Restricted Substances) Regulations 2008 and the work of Educators for Sensible Drug Policy (http://EFSDP.org). ENDS

Twenty Stakeholders in Prohibition... who don't want you to read this!

2026-07-29T09:20:47.670+12:00

Fwd: Police Mendacity

2026-07-29T09:13:57.569+12:00

Blair Anderson

Social Ecologist 'at large'
http://blairformayor.blogspot.com

http://facebook.com/mildgreens
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com
http://efsdp.org

Christchurch, New Zealand
nz cell 021 823647

---------- Forwarded message ---------
From: Blair Anderson <mildgreens@gmail.com>
Date: Wed, 22 Jul 2026, 8:56 am
Subject: Police Mendacity
To: Blair Anderson <mildgreens@gmail.com>

If we examine the Police statement through the lens of mendacity — not necessarily as provable lying, but as strategic distortion, omission, framing, insinuation, or half-truth — the release becomes less a neutral report of enforcement activity and more a piece of reputational management.

A careful reading shows several places where Police language appears designed to imply more than it proves.

1. “Multiple breaches of the licence” — vague but prejudicial

Police say they found “multiple breaches of the licence,” but the statement does not specify:

what type of medicinal cannabis licence the person held;
what conditions applied to that licence;
which conditions were allegedly breached;
whether the breaches were technical, administrative, commercial, or criminal;
whether the Medicinal Cannabis Agency had already confirmed a breach.

That vagueness matters. “Multiple breaches” sounds serious, but without particulars it functions as a conclusory smear. The reader is invited to accept that the licence holder was abusing the system, even though the specific licence terms are not explained.

From a mendacity perspective, this is not necessarily a direct lie. It is more subtle: the withholding of context that would allow the public to judge the seriousness of the alleged conduct.

2. “Evidence of cannabis and paraphernalia” — framed as suspicious despite the licence context

Police say they found “evidence of cannabis and paraphernalia” at one property.

But because the person is described as a medicinal cannabis licence holder, the mere presence of cannabis-related material is not automatically incriminating. The key issue would be whether the cannabis or equipment was:

outside the licence conditions;
possessed in unlawful quantities;
intended for unauthorised supply;
kept at an unauthorised location;
unrelated to the licensed medicinal activity.

The release does not explain that evidential bridge. It simply pairs “licence holder” with “cannabis and paraphernalia” and lets suspicion do the work.

This is a classic rhetorical move: state a neutral or ambiguous fact in a context that makes it sound damning.

3. “Allegedly believed to be for personal use” — internally awkward

The sentence says:

“Police found evidence of cannabis and paraphernalia at one of the properties allegedly believed to be for personal use.”

This is strange wording.

If the cannabis was “for personal use,” that usually points away from commercial supply. Yet the person has also been charged with possession of cannabis for supply. Police then add language about “personal use and profit.”

So the release appears to run two narratives at once:

the person was using cannabis personally outside the licence; and
the person was exploiting the system for supply/profit.

Those may both be possible, but the statement does not clearly distinguish them. Instead, it blends them into a general impression of wrongdoing.

Through the mendacity lens, this is category-blurring: personal use, supply, profit, licence breach, and exploitation of vulnerable patients are all rhetorically bundled together, even though they are legally and morally distinct.

4. “Hide behind it” — moral accusation before trial

Police say:

“The medicinal cannabis licensing system exists to support patients... not for someone to allegedly hide behind it for their own personal use and profit.”

This is one of the most loaded lines.

“Hide behind it” implies conscious deception. “Profit” implies commercial exploitation. “Vulnerable people” implies predation. But at this stage the person has merely been charged, not convicted.

Police use “allegedly,” but the moral framing remains powerful. The accused is not simply said to have potentially breached licence conditions. He is portrayed as someone abusing a patient-care system for selfish reasons.

That is arguably prejudicial storytelling rather than neutral public information.

5. “Profit” is asserted rhetorically, but the charges listed do not prove profit

The person is charged with:

possession of cannabis for supply; and
possession of cannabis.

Possession for supply does not necessarily prove actual sale, actual profit, actual victims, or exploitation of patients. It alleges an intent or purpose related to supply.

Yet the statement uses the word profit, which goes beyond the listed charges unless Police have evidence not disclosed in the release.

That may be true in their investigation, but the public statement does not show it. So the word “profit” functions as an aggravating insinuation.

From a mendacity perspective: the release may be converting an allegation of supply into a public impression of corrupt profiteering.

6. “Vulnerable people” — emotional laundering

Police say they will hold to account those who:

“undermine any systems designed to help vulnerable people.”

This is rhetorically effective because it casts Police as protectors of patients and the accused as someone undermining vulnerable people’s access to medicine.

But the statement does not say:

any patients were harmed;
any medicinal cannabis patients were deprived of treatment;
any vulnerable people were exploited;
any licensed medicinal products were diverted;
any fake prescriptions or patient records were involved.

So “vulnerable people” may be less an evidential claim than an emotional device. It morally intensifies the alleged offending without giving concrete facts.

That is not necessarily false, but it is sentimental framing: using the social purpose of the medicinal cannabis regime to make the accused’s alleged conduct appear more sinister.

7. “Police remain committed…” — institutional virtue signalling

The release closes with:

“Police remain committed to ensuring New Zealand's medicinal cannabis regulatory framework operates lawfully and with integrity.”

This positions Police as guardians of regulatory integrity. But medicinal cannabis licensing is primarily overseen by the Medicinal Cannabis Agency, which Police only later say they have referred the matter to.

There is a subtle institutional power move here. Police present themselves not merely as enforcing criminal law, but as defending the integrity of the medicinal cannabis framework itself.

That may be partly true, but it also helps justify aggressive enforcement optics. It makes the operation appear less like a drug bust and more like protection of a health system.

Through the lens of mendacity, this can be seen as mission inflation: expanding the moral meaning of the police action beyond the specific allegations.

8. The statement protects Police uncertainty while projecting certainty

The release repeatedly uses softeners:

“allegedly”
“appears to be”
“potential offending”
“continuing to assess information”
“further charges or arrests aren’t ruled out”

These phrases preserve legal caution. But the overall message is much stronger: the person abused the licence, hid behind the medicinal cannabis system, used it for personal use and profit, and undermined protections for vulnerable people.

So there is a tension between legal hedging and moral certainty.

This is a common form of official mendacity: the institution avoids making directly actionable false claims, while arranging the language so the public draws a harsher conclusion.

9. What is omitted may be as important as what is said

The statement omits key facts that would allow a fair assessment:

quantity of cannabis allegedly found;
whether it was plant material, product, medicine, or cultivation material;
whether the licence authorised possession or cultivation at any searched address;
whether the person had a prescription;
whether the “paraphernalia” was ordinary consumption equipment or commercial equipment;
whether any money, sales records, messages, packaging, scales, or customer lists were found;
what “multiple breaches” actually means;
whether the Medicinal Cannabis Agency had determined any regulatory breach before Police publicised the case.

These omissions are not accidental in effect. They allow Police to preserve investigative secrecy while still obtaining reputational advantage.

The public gets the accusation, but not the evidential detail.

10. The core mendacity: conflating legality, morality, and guilt

The strongest mendacity critique is this:

Police present the matter as if a licence holder was caught corruptly abusing a compassionate medicinal cannabis system for selfish gain. But the concrete public facts only establish that:

search warrants were executed;
cannabis-related evidence was found;
Police believe licence conditions may have been breached;
one man has been charged;
the matter is ongoing;
the Medicinal Cannabis Agency has been notified.

Everything beyond that — “hide behind it,” “profit,” “vulnerable people,” “integrity” — is framing.

The release therefore moves from allegation to moral narrative faster than the evidence publicly disclosed permits.

A more honest version would have said something like:

Police executed search warrants at several Christchurch addresses as part of an investigation involving a medicinal cannabis licence holder. Cannabis and related items were located. Police allege the items were possessed outside the terms of the licence and in breach of the Misuse of Drugs Act. A 40-year-old Christchurch man has been charged with possession of cannabis and possession of cannabis for supply. The charges remain before the court. Police have referred the matter to the Medicinal Cannabis Agency for assessment of any regulatory issues.

That version would inform the public without implying exploitation, profiteering, or bad faith before trial.

Bottom line

Through the lens of mendacity, the Police statement is not necessarily a blatant lie. It is more plausibly an example of official narrative-shaping:

vague allegations are made to sound conclusive;
regulatory breach is fused with criminal offending;
personal use is blended with supply and profit;
the accused is morally framed as exploiting vulnerable patients;
institutional virtue is foregrounded;
evidential specifics are withheld.

The mendacity lies less in any single sentence and more in the architecture of implication. Police say just enough to construct a damning public story, while saying too little for that story to be properly tested.

Blair Anderson

Social Ecologist 'at large'
http://blairformayor.blogspot.com

http://facebook.com/mildgreens
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com
http://efsdp.org

Christchurch, New Zealand
nz cell 021 823647

Canada’s cannabis industry contributes more than $76 billion to Canada’s GDP, generates nearly 100,000 jobs annually

2026-07-29T09:13:42.378+12:00

Sharing this StratCann article with you.

UNODC/World Drug report Critique.

2026-07-29T09:13:38.709+12:00

Analysis

The UNODC/World Drug report contains a clear, albeit implicit, ideological divide. The majority of statements reaffirm a commitment to the existing UN drug control conventions, which are prohibition-based. However, a significant minority of statements, alongside data points within the UNODC presentation itself, provide direct and indirect support for reforms that move beyond a purely punitive, prohibition-centric model.

Content supporting reform falls into several key categories:

Critique of Supply-Side Focus & Emphasis on "Shared Responsibility":
- Colombia delivers the most direct critique of the current system. It argues that the focus remains on supply and countries of origin, while "the efforts and the costs stay at the source," despite demand growing in consumer markets. It calls for "shared responsibility" to be "real or is just a convenient fiction," highlighting that consumer countries host money laundering and demand, not just drug production. It questions measuring success by "hectares eradicated" rather than reduced violence, human suffering, and environmental damage.
- Mexico similarly notes that no country is solely a producer, consumer, or transit state and stresses the need for a health-focused approach, cautioning against "plac[ing] all the blame on the users because that increases criminalization and stigmatization."
Pragmatic Public Health and Harm Reduction Approach:
- Switzerland makes the most explicit statement for reform, asserting, "punishing people who use drugs does not work. Drug dependence is a health condition." It champions its four-pillar policy, including supervised consumption rooms, drug checking, and opioid agonist therapy, stating they "do not encourage substance abuse. They reduce overdoses, offer a compassionate bridge to healthcare, and contribute to reducing acquisitive crimes."
- Uruguay interprets the report’s finding that adverse outcomes are avoided with access to health/social services as confirming its conviction: "public security and public health are not opposing objectives but complementary ones, and responses based solely on repression do not yield lasting results."
- Ghana emphasizes that "as long as treatment is not available, demand will be met by supply," calling for investment in demand reduction infrastructure.
- Brazil, Malta, and the EU statement all stress people-centered, human rights-based approaches that include harm reduction as an essential part of the response.
Support for Alternatives to Punishment and Opposition to the Death Penalty:
- CANZ (Australia, Canada, New Zealand) explicitly notes that "83% of reporting countries have established alternatives to conviction or punishment for drug use offences," framing this as a "growing recognition of the value of proportionate, reviewable, and health-focused responses."
- Multiple delegations (EU, CANZ, Switzerland, Malta, Brazil) strongly and unequivocally oppose the death penalty for drug-related offences, calling for its universal abolition or a moratorium, which challenges a core punitive tool of prohibitionist regimes.
- Colombia offers a concrete example, highlighting its public utility law where "women heads of household have replaced prisons for minor drug offences with community service."
Data-Driven Insights Challenging Prohibition Narratives:
- Chloé Carpentier (UNODC) states the association between drug use and crime/violence "is not deterministic," and depends on factors like poverty, homelessness, and stigma. This directly undermines a simplistic prohibitionist argument that drug use inherently causes crime.
- She also notes a decrease in adolescent cannabis use in some high-income countries, potentially linked to increased risk perception, a fact that can counter narratives that legalization or regulation inevitably increases youth use.
- The stark contrast between the record-high cocaine supply and the call for demand reduction implicitly questions the effectiveness of supply-side interdiction as a standalone strategy.
Call for Systemic Review and New Metrics:
- Colombia and Burkina Faso specifically reference the CND expert panel reviewing the international drug control system's implementation. Colombia states this is a "timely opportunity to review... how we define and measure success, so that our policies are guided by human rights, evidence, effectiveness... rather than by outdated assumptions."
- Uruguay and the Vienna NGO Committee on Drugs (VNGOC) call for the inclusion of human rights and civil society voices, respectively, in policy discussions, challenging the state-centric, enforcement-led status quo.

Summary Brief: Support for Drug Policy Law Reform Beyond Prohibition (CND Special Event, June 26, 2026)

Subject: Analysis of content supporting drug policy reform at the CND event commemorating the International Day against Drug Abuse and launching the 2026 World Drug Report.

1. The Core Critique: The Imbalance of the Prohibitionist Model
A powerful argument was made that the current system places a disproportionate burden on producer and transit countries while consumer markets evade responsibility. Colombia highlighted this failure of "common and shared responsibility," noting that the demand, money laundering, and financial systems that fuel the trade are hosted by nations that focus enforcement pressure on supply reduction abroad. This structural critique calls for a fundamental rebalancing of the global drug control regime.

2. The Paradigm Shift: From Punishment to Public Health
Several states argued that drug dependence is a health condition, not a moral failing requiring criminal punishment. Switzerland explicitly stated that "punishing people who use drugs does not work" and detailed how harm reduction services (supervised consumption, drug checking) improve safety and health. Uruguay and Ghana echoed this, asserting that lasting solutions require complementing law enforcement with robust, accessible public health, treatment, and social services. The statement from CANZ highlighting the widespread use of alternatives to conviction for drug offences reinforces a global trend away from punitive responses.

3. Rejecting the Extremes of Prohibition
A broad consensus from reform-minded states emerged against the death penalty for drug offences, with the EU, CANZ, Switzerland, Brazil, and Malta calling for its abolition. This stance directly challenges the most extreme and irreversible punitive measure under prohibitionist policies. Colombia provided a tangible alternative, replacing prison with community service for minor offences.

4. Evidence from the 2026 World Drug Report
The UNODC’s own data provides levers for reform. The finding that the link between drug use and crime is "not deterministic" and depends on social determinants weakens a core assumption of prohibition. The reported decrease in youth cannabis use in some regions despite policy changes elsewhere provides a data point for discussions on regulatory models not inevitably increasing prevalence.

Conclusion:
The event revealed a growing and assertive bloc of nations arguing that a purely prohibitionist model is unbalanced, ineffective, and unjust. Their calls for reform focus on pivoting from punitive, supply-centric enforcement to a public health and human rights framework, demanding genuine shared responsibility from consumer nations, and replacing criminal sanctions for personal use with health and social support. These positions directly support law reform beyond traditional prohibition.

/Blair Anderson,

Another MildGreen Initiative,

MEDIA INQ: 021823647

CHRISTCHURCH.

Blair Anderson

Social Ecologist 'at large'
http://blairformayor.blogspot.com

http://facebook.com/mildgreens
http://mildgreens.blogspot.com
http://efsdp.org

Christchurch, New Zealand
nz cell 021 823647

European Union Drugs Agency "Whack-a-Mole"; Prohibition Exporting Itself

2026-07-10T11:29:36.666+12:00

The EUDA's New "International Cooperation Framework" Is Just Prohibition Exporting Itself

Blair's Brain on Cannabis — MildGreens

The European Union Drugs Agency (EUDA) has unveiled its new International Cooperation Framework (ICF), pitched as a modernised response to a changing global drug landscape. Read the announcement closely, though, and what's being modernised isn't the thinking, it's the reach. The ICF takes the same supply-reduction logic that already dominates the EU's 2021–2025 Drugs Strategy and extends it outward, dressed in the language of partnership and human rights.

Here's the paragraph doing the work:

Drugs are a transnational phenomenon, affecting communities worldwide and posing challenges to public health and security. Illegal drug flows are increasingly complex, with drugs and key chemical precursors being manufactured and transported across regions, often by transnational criminal organisations. Ongoing wars and conflicts have also had repercussions on drug use and trafficking, including in EU neighbouring countries. The ICF was designed to respond to these realities, drawing on the EMCDDA's history of international cooperation.

Every sentence here is factually defensible. None of it withstands scrutiny as an argument for what it's used to justify.

1. "Drugs are a transnational phenomenon" — yes, and so is every commodity humans have ever wanted

Cannabis, opium, coca and psychoactive fungi have moved across borders and cultures for millennia — as medicines, trade goods and sacraments, long before the 1961 Single Convention existed. What's actually transnational isn't the substance. It's the enforcement regime built around it, and the black-market logistics that regime inevitably produces. By naming "drugs" as the phenomenon of concern rather than "prohibition" as the policy choice generating the disorder, the EUDA frames the object as the compound, not the architecture — the same sleight of hand MildGreens has already flagged in the EUDA's 2026 European Drug Report.

2. "Increasingly complex... transnational criminal organisations" — the enforcement paradigm citing its own failure as proof it needs more resources

This is the tell. Drug market complexity, scale and criminal sophistication aren't facts arriving from outside the system; they are the predictable output of decades of supply-side suppression pushing production and distribution toward the actors best equipped to absorb enforcement risk: violent, well-capitalised, vertically integrated organised crime. Criminalise a market and it doesn't shrink. It professionalises. The EUDA cites this professionalisation as the reason to internationalise its enforcement toolkit, the drug-policy equivalent of raising the dose because the fever went up.

3. Precursor chasing: the problem RSR 2008 solved in 2008

The mention of chemical precursors "manufactured and transported across regions" implicitly endorses precursor interdiction as a security good — an unwinnable, permanent game of chemical whack-a-mole. New Zealand's Misuse of Drugs (Restricted Substances) Regulations 2008 already demonstrated the alternative: a regulated, quality-controlled, risk-tiered domestic supply chain removes the incentive for illicit precursor diversion, because the licit route out-competes it on safety and reliability. RSR 2008 isn't a novel proposal answering the EUDA's 2026 framing. It's an eighteen-year-old answer to a problem the EUDA is still describing as though it were new.

4. Conflict and displacement: real evidence, marshalled for the wrong conclusion

Wars reshaping trafficking routes and drug-use patterns in conflict-affected regions is a genuine phenomenon. But note what this fact is used to justify: expanded security cooperation, not expanded treatment and harm-reduction capacity. The same evidence, trauma, displacement, and disrupted health systems argue at least as strongly for a biopsychosocial, treatment-first response as for an interdiction-first one. The EUDA reaches for enforcement by institutional reflex, not because the evidence points there.

5. Institutional lineage is not an evidentiary claim

The ICF is legitimised by "drawing on the EMCDDA's history of international cooperation" — continuity, not outcomes. Nowhere does the announcement ask whether that history actually reduced the harms it targeted, or how a cooperation model benchmarked against alcohol as the comparative baseline — per the Nutt et al. comparative harm framework, and Andy Towers' Massey University data on hazardous drinking among New Zealanders over 50, might look entirely different in design and priority.

The throughline

Every sentence in the ICF's founding paragraph describes something real: transnational flows, precursor diversion, conflict-linked trafficking, criminal sophistication, and reaches, without argument, for the same conclusion: more enforcement cooperation, exported further. None of these five observations logically compels that answer. Each is at least as well explained, and in most cases better explained, by the market-structure-harm model MildGreens has built against the alcohol comparator: harms generated by how a substance is regulated, not by what the substance intrinsically is.

The paragraph isn't dishonest. It's circular. It uses the visible symptoms of prohibition as the proof that prohibition's toolkit needs internationalising now with a name (ICF) and a budget line to match.

MildGreens Initiative — evidence-based cannabis and drug law reform for Aotearoa New Zealand

Blair Anderson http://mildgreens.blogspot.com

Canvassing for Opinion - aka "Blairs Brain on Cannabis"

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Cannabis study lands in the country that legalises the more violent drug

For immediate release — 07 October 2026Cannabis study lands in the country that legalises the more violent drug

About MildGreens

Note to editors — the numbers behind this release

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Fwd: Police Mendacity

1. “Multiple breaches of the licence” — vague but prejudicial

2. “Evidence of cannabis and paraphernalia” — framed as suspicious despite the licence context

3. “Allegedly believed to be for personal use” — internally awkward

4. “Hide behind it” — moral accusation before trial

5. “Profit” is asserted rhetorically, but the charges listed do not prove profit

6. “Vulnerable people” — emotional laundering

7. “Police remain committed…” — institutional virtue signalling

8. The statement protects Police uncertainty while projecting certainty

9. What is omitted may be as important as what is said

10. The core mendacity: conflating legality, morality, and guilt

A more honest version would have said something like:

Bottom line

Canada’s cannabis industry contributes more than $76 billion to Canada’s GDP, generates nearly 100,000 jobs annually

UNODC/World Drug report Critique.

Analysis

Summary Brief: Support for Drug Policy Law Reform Beyond Prohibition (CND Special Event, June 26, 2026)

European Union Drugs Agency "Whack-a-Mole"; Prohibition Exporting Itself

The EUDA's New "International Cooperation Framework" Is Just Prohibition Exporting Itself

1. "Drugs are a transnational phenomenon" — yes, and so is every commodity humans have ever wanted

2. "Increasingly complex... transnational criminal organisations" — the enforcement paradigm citing its own failure as proof it needs more resources

3. Precursor chasing: the problem RSR 2008 solved in 2008

4. Conflict and displacement: real evidence, marshalled for the wrong conclusion

5. Institutional lineage is not an evidentiary claim

The throughline

For immediate release — 07 October 2026
Cannabis study lands in the country that legalises the more violent drug