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meIt is believed to be the first country in the world to put the legalization of recreational cannabis to a national public vote. But amid a pandemic, an election focused almost entirely on the Covid-19 crisis, and a simultaneous vote on euthanasia, New Zealand’s upcoming marijuana referendum has not captured the widespread public attention it could have had in a year. normal.
New Zealand would join Canada and Uruguay on the list of countries legalizing the sale and use of cannabis for adults if more than half of voters approve, but public support for the measure has declined in polls during 2020, reversing the growing support in recent years. In a debate rife with claims of misinformation from both sides, and taking place during a crowded election cycle, some politicians have avoided the issue entirely, fearing ending up on the wrong side of a divisive issue.
The proposed law would legalize cannabis for people over the age of 20, regulating how it is grown, used and sold, and the referendum question is non-binding; a “yes” vote means that the next Parliament would have the mandate to approve it. This month, 35% of 1,000 people polled said they would support the proposed law according to a 1 News Colmar Brunton poll, down from 40% in June this year and 43% in November 2019.
Opponents of the measure rose to 53% in September. Another poll of 1,300 people, conducted by Horizon Research and commissioned by a medical cannabis company, showed that 49.5% of those surveyed supported the law and 49.5% opposed it.
Under the proposed law, people would be allowed to buy 14 grams of cannabis per day and grow two plants. The bill includes advertising restrictions and a limit on the amount of market a company could dominate.
Some politicians have avoided sharing their views, including Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister and leader of the center-left Labor Party, who will not say how she plans to vote, but admitted to smoking marijuana in the past on Wednesday night. The matter “has been designed for the public to decide,” she said, although some of her main deputies have supported the law. Judith Collins, the leader of the center-right Nacional, the main opposition group, has said her entire party would oppose the move. The Greens on the left support him.
It made sense for Ardern to avoid getting caught up in a move that could fail, analysts said: She is at the top of the polls, her party is near the threshold to rule alone, and has some of the highest approval numbers ever seen for a New. Leader of Zealand.
‘A slippery slope’
Andrew Geddis, a professor of public law at the University of Otago, said that unlike assisted death, the other question in the October 17 referendum, legalizing cannabis had never enjoyed clear majority support in New Zealand.
“Those who wanted to see an affirmative vote had to convince a reasonable number of people that their previous prohibitionist views were wrong,” he said. “At the moment it doesn’t seem like they’ve been able to do it and time is really running out.”
Supporters of the law have praised his response to the drug based on health and education. On Tuesday, 60 New Zealanders, some of them high-profile, including former Labor Prime Minister Helen Clark, launched an advertising campaign asking the public to vote yes in the referendum.
“I think there is a lot to play with this one,” said Clark, who is also the chairman of the Global Commission on Drug Policy. “If you average all the polls, it’s a tough race, but it’s doable.”
Clark said research abroad showed there was “no evidence of sustained use” of cannabis by young people when it was legalized, and that the form of the drug to be sold in New Zealand was “significantly less harmful to health than tobacco or alcohol. “
He rejected the suggestion that cannabis use had in fact been decriminalized in New Zealand, adding that police discretion on the matter turned a blind eye to organized crime control of the supply and turned on indigenous Maori youth. on a “slippery slope” to participate in the criminal justice system.
Clark said the opposition campaign had been financed from abroad, a claim the “no” group denies.
“We are 100% funded by Kiwi families,” said Aaron Ironside, spokesman for Smart Approaches to Marijuana NZ, a coalition of groups. “We have not received a single dollar from corporate or foreign interests.”
The group planned to spend the NZ $ 300,000 electoral cap plus tax on its campaign. It noted that complaints to the country’s Advertising Standards Authority about its ads had not been confirmed.
Ironside said that for the past two years, polls had “basically said what they said today,” with a consistent gap between those who oppose recreational cannabis and those who support it. He said that the negative vote was also related to the health of cannabis users, but that did not mean that a change in the law was necessary.
“Taxes and excise duties on alcohol have not been enough to cover the social harms of alcohol,” he said. “We have to focus on health … we don’t create more addicts to do that.”
His group “did not advocate for people to get convicted of smoking a joint,” Ironside added, but said that was not happening today.
Official attempts to inform the public include a report led by Juliet Gerrard, the prime minister’s chief scientific adviser. Cannabis hurts “some users but not others,” Gerrard said, but that was not what the referendum question asked voters to decide. “Rather, the vote asks us to decide whether a legal regulatory framework will increase or reduce cannabis-related harm,” he said in a July statement.
The report highlighted evidence that Maori were more likely to be arrested and convicted of cannabis-related crimes than non-Maori, even after adjusting for use rates. The disproportionate criminalization of black cannabis users was at the center of the debate in the United States, where the drug is legal in some states.
More than NZ $ 1.4 billion of public money could be generated each year from legalized cannabis, according to a report this month from the BERL agency, commissioned by the Ministry of Justice. Its authors predicted that legalization would lead to more than 400 cannabis stores, 5,000 new jobs and a short-term increase in cannabis use that would be reduced in three to five years.
If rejected, analysts said, the issue is unlikely to come up again anytime soon. Clark, the former prime minister, was frustrated that it had been put to a public vote. “These issues must be decided by parliament, not by referendums,” he said.
