 | NORML News: Labour MP leads drug law reform charge |
 BY STEPHEN MCINTYRE, NORML News Summer 2003-4
This year's Labour Party Conference featured a drug policy workshop lead by Christchurch Central MP Tim Barnett, who later hosted a meeting of local cannabis law reform activists discussing strategies relating to the Health committee's cannabis report.
Soon after the passing of the Prostitution Reform Act in June, Tim was congratulated by Helen Clark and asked what he was going to take on next. Tim replied that he planned setting his sights on drug policy reform as an area where harm minimisation had yet to be applied.
NORML asked Tim what motivated him - as a self confessed teetotaller - to pursue changing the current drug policy?
"There is something so disfunctional and damaging about the current law, not just for people who use or who are around drugs, but for wider society as well, that it offends me and something should be done about it."
Tim describes the current approach to drugs in New Zealand as 'messy, confusing and lacking coherence'. To illustrate, he gives the example where on one hand the reality of drug abuse is politically accepted in allowing the needle exchange and methadone programmes; while on the other hand it's being denied in the very limited range of available addiction programmes, the poor standard of school-based drug education and the continued criminalisation of drug users.
Looking at the big picture and seeing the contradictions in this approach it's not obvious to Tim what the Government is actually trying to achieve apart from attempting to look good; and if harm minimisation is the stated outcome then clearly in that respect the current approach is not working.
Having worked through prostitution law reform, Tim argues that many principles from that area can be applied to cannabis law reform, and that all the principles of cannabis law reform can be applied to drug reform as a whole. Tim refined the argument for prostitution reform by asking 'what are the real harms of the current approach and how do we find a solution to those harms?' The same question now needs to be asked of drug policy, while the costs of prohibition (both financial and social) also need to be evaluated.
Tim presented a time line for cannabis law reform. He would like a 'solution' or complete reform model ready by mid 2005. This model needs to be acceptable to all cannabis reform groups so that there will be consensus in the lobby machine. Without cohesion, MPs would quickly lose interest in the issue. Bill principles could be established by late 2005, introduced to select committee by early 2006, with a vote and law change possible by late 2007.
So, cannabis reform in 4 more years - can it be achieved? For Tim the argument for change has already been won on the intellectual level, and the challenge he now presents to us all in the reform movement is deciding how it will be won in the public arena.
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