 | NORML News: PROHIBITION IN NZ: 1975 TO PRESENT |
 Crime, Politics & putting the Dread in the House! The period since the Misuse of Drugs Act was introduced saw growth of organised crime, the formation of NORML, then ALCP and the later the election of the world's first Rastafarian MP, write STEPHEN MCINTYRE and CHRIS FOWLIE in Norml News Autumn 2004
THE SIXTIES saw a dramatic rise in the use of cannabis, both worldwide and here in New Zealand. A growing liberalism saw new attitudes develop towards use of the herb, and politically this took the form of the 1975 Misuse of Drugs Act.
No longer would people earn a prison sentence simply for possessing a joint. The act brought in two classes for cannabis; with more lenient penalties for the Class C form of marijuana, while hashish - being the more potent substance - attracted stiffer sentences in Class B.
A softening approach could be felt from other quarters as well. A remit for state control of legalised marijuana was proposed at the Labour Party's 1976. In 1977 the national drug intelligence bureau admitted that cannabis was not the danger police once thought, and that pot smokers were now at the bottom of the list of police priorities.
In January 1978, the New Zealand Marijuana Party staged a smoke-in at the Nambassa music festival. Police confronted the 500 strong group, but no arrests were made. Later a smoke-in was held on Parliament steps, but again there were no arrests. "My men never detected anything" a police inspector said.
The Values Party also called for legalisation of the drug. The party's candidate for Tauranga said: "legalising the growing of marijuana for one's own private use would take the criminal element out of the use of this drug. Ours is a law and order stance."
In response to such liberalism the National government dug its heels in even harder. Prime Minister Muldoon said rigorous measures were needed, and so penalties for hashish and other Class B drugs were increased from 7 to 10 years maximum.
The seeds for NORML New Zealand were then planted in 1978 by Hank and Tonny Jansen and Dave Currie (NORML was formally incorporated in 1980).
At the second Nambassa festival in January 1979, the Marijuana Party joined forces with NORML but this time police showed little tolerance. By Sunday night 58 arrests for cannabis had been made.
Police seizures of cannabis skyrocketed in the latter half of the 1970s. "NZ Green" was now a cottage industry with pounds retailing for around $500. Half was locally grown with the rest imported from Afghanistan, India, Sumatra and Vietnam. By 1975 high potency "buddha sticks" from Thailand started coming into the country; and ounces that once sold for $30 now cost between $150 to $200.
Amateur smuggling along the South East Asian 'hippie trail' had always been the main source of imported pot, but by the mid-1970s professional traffickers had entered the lucrative trade, and millions of dollars worth of buddha sticks started flowing into New Zealand through Sydney.
The Mr Asia drug syndicate first attracted police attention in 1976, when a routine patrol on the Auckland wharves discovered two men in dripping wetsuits with sacks containing half a million dollars worth of buddha sticks at their feet. At its peak the syndicate was bringing in 5 million dollars of top quality marijuana on a yacht at one time.
By the late 1970s, pot use had reached the middle class and even turned up on military camps. It was spreading among teenagers too. A 1977 survey of secondary students found that one in six used marijuana and almost a quarter had tried it. Auckland University research found that prohibition was causing curiosity, and disrespect for the police as reliable sources of information about drugs.
Pot arrests reflected racist tendencies within the police force. A 1979 Waikato study found that police tended to arrest visible stereotypes, in particular the young single unemployed male Maori who rarely accepted legal advice.
"So long as minor possession and use is a criminal offence tens of thousands of New Zealanders are not only socially disadvantaged, but resentful of society and the law it upholds", the study said.
THE EIGHTIES saw a continued rise in the use of and acceptance of cannabis. At the 1980 Sweetwaters festival so much marijuana was being smoked that one police officer said he would have had to fall over it before it became a threat requiring official action. Heavily influenced by Bob Marley's 1979 tour to the country, the eighties also saw the rise of Rastafarianism in New Zealand.
A violent cannabis underworld also began to appear. Valuable cannabis plantations turned some remote areas into no-go zones, fuelling a prohibition dope and dole economy that saw millions of black market dollars wash through the regions. Better seeds and cultivation methods doubled the average potency of NZ green.
By the mid-eighties the value of the annual cannabis crop was estimated to be $300 million. Reports of cannabis prohibition murders increased, and the first significant thefts of chemical solvents were reported as growers started making hash-oil from leaf.
Police also claimed that a nationwide wholesale and retail network was linking the country, with syndicates buying between growing regions to manipulate higher prices and bigger margins.
The number of pot smokers was also growing. A 1980 survey showed that 600,000 Kiwis were tokers; while a 1984 poll found that nearly 750,000 of us had tried pot. Police seizures over the decade had increased from 36,000 plants in 1980 to 150,000 in 1990; while prosecutions went from 8000 in 1981 to 18,000 in 1988.
Reflecting the growing popularity of cannabis, NORML Access radio in Wellington had its first broadcast on the 28th of March 1982, and continued for another 22 years.
In 1984 psychologist Les Gray told a public meeting in Northland that cannabis should be decriminalised. He was subsequently fired by the Education Department; and then, after admitting to "enjoying" cannabis at home during an interview on the Holmes programme, was raided at home and arrested for possession! Les later became president of the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party, proof that arresting an activist will only make them more determined!.
In a Heylen poll taken that year, more than 25 percent admitted to using cannabis.
Incoming Labour Minister of Health Michael Bassett said "if you've got a quarter of the population breaking the law you're in danger of making the law an ass."
Phil Goff agreed, saying that "there is inconsistency in the fact that certain damaging substances [like alcohol and tobacco] can be promoted legally while possession of others is a criminal offence."
Then in late 1984 over a thousand people filled the Auckland Town Hall to hear The Great Marijuana Debate, a widely promoted and lively event which the reformers won hands down.
However reformers hopes were dashed when Prime Minister David Lange later confirmed that Labour would not be changing the cannabis laws. (Only after retirement did Mr Lange agreed that cannabis should be legalised.)
POLITICALLY, THE cannabis law reform movement really took off in the '90s. In 1990, NORML national coordinator Mike Finlayson stood in the general election as the Legalise Marijuana Party candidate for Auckland Central against then- Minister of Police Richard Prebble. He was promptly raided, and spent a few days at Mt Eden prison, generating lots of publicity.
A bunch of NORML activists - Nandor Tanczos, Gary Clarkson, Vanessa Walker and Rohan Bush - ran the first NORML "Revolutionary tea train" bus tour in 1992, travelling the country in a big green Bedford bus that bore the NORML name. It was eventually written off by a runaway car soon after completing its ALCP tour of duty in 1996.
1992 also saw the first national J Day, with events smokin' up the nation from Whangarei to Invercargill.
During the same period, Auckland University NORML was attracting thousands of people to parties that have become the stuff of legend. The parties provided NORML with the funds to publish NORML News magazine; and in 1993 the first full-colour issue, with Nandor as editor, rolled off the presses.
NORML also kicked off the Court Support programme in the early nineties. This was in response to the huge numbers of people being arrested and pleading guilty, thereby keeping prohibition easy to maintain.
NORML activists kept a post outside courts, informing defendants of their options and encouraging them to plead not guilty and be "Roaring Lions". The big green bus proved invaluable in spreading the Court Support idea to towns all over Aotearoa.
In 1994 the second Great Marijuana Debate was held at Waikato University. This time Helen Clark, then leader of the opposition, spoke fiercely about the harms of prohibition with such notable lines as "prohibition is not good public policy [because it] causes harm by involving otherwise law-abiding citizens who are marijuana smokers in the criminal scene" and "strict punitive measures against individual marijuana users are costly and counterproductive".
Then medical marijuana user Danuiel Clark was jailed, a sentence that shocked many people. Danuiel, a tetraplegic, tried applying for permission from successive Ministers of Health but was refused each time.
1996 saw the introduction of the MMP proportional voting system and the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party was formed by a group pot reform luminaries including Mike Finlayson, then NORML president, Chris Fowlie (later NORML pres), Phil Saxby (NORML secretary), Mac MacIntosh (later Hemp Assn chair), Michael Applyby (party leader), John Creser, Brandon Hutchison (later party secretary), Dave Moore (later party pres), Kevin O'Connell (now party pres), and more than six thousand members.
The campaign was incredibly intense in a "fear and loathing" kind of way, and saw the movement grow to its biggest ever, with hundreds of activists around the country campaigning to "tick the leaf". The ALCP got 1.8 percent, or around 36,000 votes.
NORML activists then had the idea of organising a free concert on Waitangi Day, seeing as how it is also Bob Marley's birthday. The idea took off, and the 98 concert in Auckland's Domain drew 15,000 reggae fans out to an irie day in the sunshine - One Love had become Aotearoa's most popular Waitangi Day event!
Later that year NORML joined the Global Coalition for Alternatives to the Drug War, an umbrella organisation of over 100 groups that organised activities opposing the UN Anti-Drug Summit in June.
The New Zealand delegate to the Summit, Tuariki Delamere, was the only politician in the world to denounce the war on drugs, calling the legal difference between alcohol and cannabis "hypocritical". Minister of Justice Doug Graham and Minister of Police Clem Simich also both came out in favour of cannabis decriminalisation.
The Drug Policy Forum Trust, a "think tank" of experts led by Dr David Hadorn, was also formed in 1998. The forum issued a report that recommended New Zealand "regulate and tax cannabis commerce." The logic of the report could not be faulted, so then-Prime Minister Jenny Shipley used a classic diversionary tactic of a select committee inquiry.
Unfortunately for prohibitionists, the 1999 mental health effects of cannabis inquiry found the "dangers from cannabis have been overstated." Their terms of reference did not let them examine the law, so they recommended another inquiry to do that.
By this time NORML had its own television show, albeit short lived, on Auckland's Triangle TV. NTV smoked up the airwaves for over 20 programmes before we ran out of money.
The Greens had left the Alliance and were making noises sympathetic to law reform. Many NORML activists became members, and Nandor Tanczos became an MP in the 1999 election - the world's first Rastafarian Member of Parliament!
In 2000 the Health Select Committee began an inquiry into 'the most effective public health promotion strategies to minimise the use and harm associated with cannabis, and consequently the most appropriate legal status of cannabis'. The committee received over five hundred written submissions and spent a year touring the country hearing oral submissions, but dragged its feet over preparing a report. This was a sure sign it was likely to recommend law reform!
The report still wasn't finished when an election was held in 2002, so the inquiry lapsed. After a falling out with the Greens over GE, Labour's new agreement with United Future ruled out any Government sponsored law change for three more years.
When the cannabis inquiry's report was finally released in 2003 its recommendations reflected politics more than evidence and good science.
THE NEXT stage of law reform for New Zealand now rests in the hands of the Justice Select Committee, which is chaired by Tim Barnett. Tim is a solid supporter of drug reform, but has not yet committed the committee to its investigation of the legal status of cannabis citing an already heavy workload as an excuse.
But with over 2 million New Zealanders now having smoked cannabis at least once, there's no good reason for any more delays in doing something about our expensive, corrupting and dangerous cannabis laws.
Due to the unchallenged importation in 1927 of a foreign law that was dishonest, racist and corrupt, we have reached the point where we now have a government, led by a Prime Minister who has publicly denounced cannabis prohibition in the past, which spends at least $56 million a year arresting sixty New Zealanders every day for a plant that was once much respected by doctors and considered a highly useful and medicine around the home! PHOTOS: clockwise from top left: Tigi Ness at One Love 99, Court Support crew outside Otahuhu Court; MLF graffiti on John Banks' former pub; irie crowd at One Love concert, medical marijuana user Danuiel Clark; Les Gray. Centre: NORML's Bust Buster Bus crew, including Nandor and Mike Finlayson (top).
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