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Potshots,
I really think steveoh is simplifying things , short bites he can sell to passing people he canvasses .You have taken it a few stages further on .
I think I can see where you are both coming from..
Could I make a suggestion , why don't you actually do a draft of a possible amendment to the MDA ( possibly medicine act as well) with explanations.
And as well a short , simplified people friendly overview to sell to the great unwashed .
I so often find myself getting confused and misuse terminologies others have different interpretations of .
I would like to see a common and more universally acceptable focus rather than the confusion we seem at times to even have among ourselves.
I know there will be diverse views even in what we as individuals would advocate . But a lot of common ground.
I simply want to be able to have medical cannabis available without consequences .. ( love Pharmac to pay for it) and or able to grow and or buy .
And no consequence for cottage grow/dealing or possessions for over 18yr olds .
How it is achieved or put into law I am very open minded about and would suggest the most achievable be the main criteria .
America has many of the world's biggest and foremost pharmaceutical companies. If Barack Obama wins the election, and a FTA comes up on the agenda, they might very well be trying to lean on us to get us to go softer on medpot.
That's a very good question, nukachura, and I'm not sure of the answer.
Although, ultimately, the choice was mine as to whether my submission was made secret, the Health Select Committee did recommend to me that my submission be made secret because of its personal nature (I basically used my own life and my family to show how prohibition maximised both the personal and societal harms of cannabis use).
Anyway, here's a rough account of what happened.
I was able to attend the Thursday evening oral submissions to the HSC and even had the privilege of chauffeuring Nandor from the airport to the meeting. The cool thing was that when we were introduced he told me that he'd just been my submission on the plane and that he thought it was very good.
Phew! That was a huge relief for me because I thought it was possible that no-one would read my submission due to its size. However, it didn't matter to me as to whether anyone read it or not because my philosophy had been to inform the government about how cannabis prohibition actually affected people. Even if no-one read it, the HSC couldn't say that they weren't told.
Having said that, I also have to admit that sitting at the computer and just letting "it" come out without worrying about the size of my submission was the only way I could get it completed in the end (my original attempts all failed because I tried to limit myself to 3 pages). Even then it was only the deadline that prevented it being longer!
But the most cathartic moment for me was when I posted the submission because it felt like a point of no return. Once posted, the "truth" was out there now and that was that!
Unfortunately, I wasn't able to attend most of the Friday daytime oral submissions because it was the school holidays (of course!) and my babysitter step-daughter was doing a catering course. However, I did pop in for about an hour after her family luncheon with my 5-year-old son and his 13-year-old sister in tow and I noticed that the chair of the HSC gave me a few dirty looks for taking my kids along.
Once the older sister had finished her course, I took them home and then rushed back to the meeting thinking that I was still on time for my own spoken submission, only to find that everyone was wondering what had happened to me because it was my turn to speak (apparently?).
They decided to have a tea break instead, which was good.
Straight after tea, the HSC hit me with their recommendation that my submission be made secret and I have to admit that it totally threw me because I couldn't really work out what was going on. Their concern seemed to be to protect me and my family due to my submission's frankness, however, I couldn't help but feel that they were trying to suppress the "truth". I can remember that it took quite a while to sort the issue out (it felt like at least 10 minutes) and that the clerk said that he thought my submission was very good. I tried to make eye contact with Nandor to see if he might be able to help but he was busy reading something. In the end, I thought that I better heed the HSC's advice.
Can't really remember much about the questions except that they were about things that I wasn't expecting (eg Nandor asked about my datura experience which was only a minor part of my submission). One thing that I do remember is that the chair (I think) asked me about the effect that smoking cannabis had on my mood (ie it made me feel "normal") to which I replied that it was like the glass went from being half empty to being half full and then I felt this kind of collective "Ahhh!" in the room as everyone got what I was saying. It was quite weird.
Another cool thing that happened was that even though the committee were in a big hurry to get a taxi to the airport (it was Friday evening), one of the committee members took the time to tell me, off the record, that she was impressed with my submission's section on cannabis use as an anti-depressant and that it mirrored similar things that she had read/heard about.
All in all, a very interesting experience, with the main lesson for me being that personal testamony can be a very powerful weapon in the fight against cannabis prohibition.
Joined: Feb 19, 2004 Posts: 1344 Location: Nelson area
Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 8:08 am
I'm guessing it was made secret because Jason probably implicated himself by admitting in partaking of illegal activity i.e. taking drugs.
Steven _________________ Regulation will set cannabis free
Freedom's just a TICK away - VOTE Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party 2008 then everyone's a winner
Contact me: steven@alcp.org.nz Party website http://www.alcp.org.nz
Potshots, if your submission was secret would you like to post it here if you haven't already done so? I would like to read it myself.
- Vince.
There's no real reason why I couldn't post my submission here.
The most embarrassing thing about looking at it now is that I keep spotting the typos and grammatical errors that I missed during proof-reading (although there wasn't much time for that in the end).
There are a few bits that I should probably remove (not everyone is my friend and some is about other people) but the vast majority of it looks OK. Shouldn't be too hard to edit it.
It's on my old computer so it'll be a bit of work to post it but I'll do it a few pages at a time. That'll probably make it easier to read too.
I managed to find my hard copy and read the introduction which I should be able to post today. I'll start a new thread.
Thanks for showing an interest. I realised later that it's a bit of a tease to talk about something that's secret so I'll have to post it now.
steveoh wrote:
I'm guessing it was made secret because Jason probably implicated himself by admitting in partaking of illegal activity i.e. taking drugs.
Steven
steveoh,
I don't think I'd ever describe you as subtle (unless in comparison to a brick).
I'm pretty sure that many of the other submitters also admitted to smoking cannabis. I'd certainly be surprised if I was the only submitter to have admitted that.
I'm also reasonably confident that the police had no intention of prosecuting submitters (the police assured the 1998 HSC of that).
In hindsight, I think that is possible that the HSC appreciated my honest attempt to demonstrate how prohibition affected people and that they wanted to protect my family from any possible repercussions, even though I was suspicious of their motive at the time.
Joined: Feb 19, 2004 Posts: 1344 Location: Nelson area
Posted: Wed Jul 30, 2008 10:50 am
potshots wrote:
....(not everyone is my friend and some is about other people).....
Maybe defamation then, I think when you submit they inform you that you are not protected from defamation laws, and they must have realised how much work you put into the submission (18,000 words) and felt that it should be included with the other evidence.
Steven _________________ Regulation will set cannabis free
Freedom's just a TICK away - VOTE Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party 2008 then everyone's a winner
Contact me: steven@alcp.org.nz Party website http://www.alcp.org.nz
I've started posting my HSC submission in a thread called "The secret evidence of the 2003 HSC cannabis inquiry" in the Get Active forum.
Tony,
I'll try and do a summary of the different options for controlling cannabis that were outlined in the 2003 HSC cannabis report when I get the chance because I agree with you that it would be good if there was less confusion as to what the different terms actually meant.
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