Posts by Alfie
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Here's a sadly misinformed piece of nonsense on the cannabis debate from John Key's personal biographer, John Roughan.
With a subtitle of 'Health approach' for cannabis reform did not work the last time, Roughan makes the fundamental error of confusing a natural plant with the chemical cocktails found in synthetics. His ignorance might be partly explained by this statement.
Growing up in the era of sex, drugs and rock 'n roll I developed an interest in only two of them. Drugs I could never understand. Why would anyone want to mess with their brain?
[ Cue some swirling sixties psychedelic graphics... ]
Having an open and enquiring mind obviously isn't for everyone, John. But chilling out and laughing are good for the soul and creative people enjoy extending the human experience. It's as simple as that.
Now alcohol... well that's a different story.
Drinking is pleasant in itself. When the minds starts to spin from alcohol, the pleasure is over. Drugs that do nothing for you up to that point have no redeeming social benefit to my mind.
While Roughan may have led a relatively sheltered life, he makes the mistake of assuming that the effects of drugs only cut in at a point equivalent to alcohol poisoning. That everyone who indulges in a few tokes immediately turns into a drug-addled maniac and that all recreational smokers are chasing the sort of overdosed nirvana he may have seen in Trainspotting.
That unenlightened, entrenched attitude belongs firmly in the Reefer Madness camp of the 1930s. Thankfully most people's understanding of drugs has advanced considerably since then.
Roughan genuinely seems to believe that NZ has tried cannabis decriminalisation and that the experiment failed. A lack of research tells him that synthetics have completely disappeared from the local market, thus proving, in his own mind at least, that prohibition actually works.
He just doesn't get it, does he.
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The SST has further revelations on Les Maxwell's now discredited 2007 New Cannabis report. Documents released under the OIA show that Ministry of Health officials warned at the time that the report would harm the reputation of NZ’s National Drug Intelligence Bureau (NDIB) and asked for all copies to be recalled.
Matthew Andrews, acting team leader of the ministry's National Drug Policy said the paper's sources were one-sided and "not particularly authoritative".
He said the overall theme of "new cannabis" being more potent was inappropriate as it was a contentious issue not backed by evidence in the report.
Andrews said parts of the assessment were inaccurate, it inappropriately criticised other countries' drug policies and could be "perceived as having an agenda".
It also had the potential to "negatively affect the reputation of the NDIB for producing high quality intelligence assessments".
For reasons known only to himself, the NDIB's acting head at the time, DS Stuart Mills, refused to withdraw the report.
He added: "It also supports decision-making at an operational and tactical level".
That contradicts a statement provided to Fairfax last week from current NDIB head John O'Keeffe, who said the paper was "never intended to be an operational document to inform drug enforcement operations".
While the Police were well aware that the report was deeply flawed and exaggerated "social harm" and hospital admissions by a factor of at least ten, Police at a senior level chose to stick with a dishonest document because the lies it contained suited their "war on drugs".
This was shameful behaviour from our Police force.
New Zealand deserves better.
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The Standard has broken an interesting angle on Key’s involvement with offshore trusts. Key claimed that “his private lawyer” Ken Whitney took his investments with him when he moved to the Antipodes Trust Group, a business which facilitates tax avoidance.
Key said Whitney was “highly ethical” and that was why he chose him as his lawyer.
However there’s a problem with that statement. Key’s “lawyer” is not actually a lawyer after all. When the Standard contacted Whitney to ask him if he was Key’s lawyer, he said: “Yes.” He later amended that comment to confirm he was no longer registered to practice law.
Whitney letting his registration lapse is not a simple matter of oversight. He surrendered his law practicing registration when he set up Antipodes, which clearly was done with the intention of cashing in on New Zealand’s tax haven status, that John Key has been instrumental in maintaining.
Whitney openly told TS he specialises in setting up trusts for foreigners.
So the PM’s “blind” Aldgate Trust may actually turn out to be a wilfully blind trust, being administered by a non-lawyer who specialises in offshore tax evasion.
On its website, Antipodes describes itself as “a specialist provider of trustee services for foreign trusts using New Zealand as their jurisdiction of choice.” Such trusts offer “a well-established vehicle for carefully managing the inter-generational transfer of wealth”.
It points to the tax-free benefits, as well as the lack of inheritance taxes and laws that protect client confidentiality and “limited” reporting requirements which mean the identities of settler and beneficiaries do not need to be disclosed.
This is not a good look for a PM who, since the Panama Papers broke, has been carefully choosing his words while denying any tax sheltering. Hopefully the MSM will see through the spin, pick up this story and shine some light on Key’s offshore tax adventures.
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A brief aside.
Otamatea Grey Power in Northland have voted unanimously to write to Parliament lobbying for cannabis to be legalised.
With age comes wisdom. ;-)
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While the only sheep in this story are the increasingly blind populace of our fair isles, it fits into this thread because it involves big money, corruption and yet more McCully sleight of hand.
Yesterday RNZ broke the story about Earl Hagman making a record $101k donation to the National Party. Then just one week later the government awarded his Scenic Hotel Group a nice little contract to manage a luxury resort in Niue. But it doesn’t end there.
Soon afterwards, a further $7.5m of taxpayer-funded money was paid to Scenic Hotels to “upgrade” the resort. As there are only 1190 people living on Niue, that represents thousands of dollars of NZ taxpayer money for every man, woman and child living on the island. In 2006 visitors spent a total of $1.6m a year in Niue, so receiving five times that amount was quite a windfall. Except the money didn’t go into improving roading, health or education. It went straight to Scenic Hotels.
Brian Gould dissects the deal and points out that we’re being asked to believe that despite sitting at National’s top table, McCully knew nothing of Hagaman’s donation, and that the contract was awarded by a completely “independent board"… which just happened to be selected by McCully.
It’s not too many years since this sort of croney corruption would have caused outrage in NZ. But the Nats have softened us up to the extent that most people just go ’Baaaa!’ and move on.
Corruption really is the new blue.
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Hard News: Labour's medical cannabis…, in reply to Sacha,
Herald gives foaming dunce McCoskrie a platform to spread lies.
Why bother with trivial matters like facts or science when you just know, deep down, that your long-held predudices must be correct. Bob certainly knows how to play it fast and loose.
In 1979, the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws said, "We'll use medical marijuana as a red-herring to give marijuana a good name".
Sorry Bob, but the only three places that exact quote appears are on your own website and on Stuff and Herald stories quoting you. You're probably talking about a later myth which was soundly discredited at the time... way back in 2001. But I guess you haven't caught up yet, being as stuck in the fifties as you are.
And the Christchurch Health and Development study found that the risks of driving under the influence of cannabis may now be greater than the risks of driving under the influence of alcohol.
That's most surprising when numerous studies conclude the complete opposite. In fact, while the ChCh report [PDF] mentions that stoned drivers are less safe than sober ones, it makes no such comparison with alcohol-impaired driving.
I don't know Bob. Where are you getting these weird ideas from? And how long has it been happening? Time to adjust your meds, perhaps?
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Another idoitic error from the Herald.
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Hard News: BRB, at UNGASS, in reply to Russell Brown,
It’s a horrible document in a number of ways.
As it's the declared "outcome document" for the session, what chance is there that large chunks might be amended or even better, discarded?
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I'm looking forward to Russell's UNGASS coverage. I see Columbia's President Juan Manuel Santos has added his voice to those calling for a rethink on prohibition.
For those who are interested, here's the UNGASS draft outcome statement [PDF]. It's not the most readable document -- 24 pages of text with no index. I note that the word "cannabis" only appears once (3c, page 10) in the context of increased cooperation to "measurably reduce or eliminate" drug production; and while the word "health" is scattered about, the phrase "harm reduction" ain't there at all.
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I don’t know about you, but for years I’ve suspected that the Police pretty much invent dollar amounts to justify cannabis busts and ensure continued funding. You read about someone being caught with 20 plants which the Police value at $x plus that much larger figure of “social harm” prevented in the process.
To my mind the cops have always done this. Since the seventies the dollar value Police place on plant seizures often exceeds the street value of the drug, sometimes by a stupidly large factor. Once the Police introduced the concept of “social harm” and quantified this in dollar amounts, the societal value of the war on drugs suddenly made some sort of sense. To some people.
But the cops were lying.
For years the Police have relied on a 2007 report called New Cannabis: The Cornerstone of Illicit Drug Harm in New Zealand produced by strategic drug analyst Les Maxwell of NZ’s National Drug Intelligence Bureau (NDIB).
Maxwell’s report shocked a few people with the claim that about 2000 people a year end up in hospital because of the drug. He put the cost of these admissions at $31m in 2005.
This information was widely used by the Police to justify a crackdown and intensify their war on cannabis. But the information they used was false and knowingly fabricated. It’s taken an unemployed sociologist named Steve Dawson several years to determine that the Police report exagerated the reality by a factor of at least ten.
The SST story explains the flawed methodology used by Maxwell including ignoring the primary reason for hospital admissions. If a pregnant women mentioned that she used cannabis, the entire hospital cost for giving birth was recorded as being cannabis-related.
Elsewhere, he finds a case where someone has spent 240 days in hospital due to prostate cancer – again counted as a “cannabis-related” admission in the Maxwell data. “There’s no study on the planet that makes that link."
So those “2000 cannabis-related hospital admissions” are actually around 200. And the “$31m” cost of those admissions is nearer $2.5m.
Maxwell, who is still with the police, says he doesn’t want to discuss his report.
I’ll bet he doesn’t.
And well done Steve Dawson.
