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THEOne of the curiosities of the 2020 election campaign is Jacinda Ardern’s refusal to reveal her personal position on the cannabis referendum. Next Saturday, New Zealanders can vote in two referendums: the end-of-life election on euthanasia and the cannabis legalization and control referendums; the last, a vote on whether the recreational use of cannabis should be legal.
Ardern said he would vote yes to enact the end-of-life election bill, but on cannabis he wants the public to decide, stating that “the opinion of the public around me is equivalent … to mine.” . Her main competitor, national leader Judith Collins, has come out with a resounding no.
Ardern has tried to justify their different positions in the referendum in terms of how they came to be in the first place. She says she was already on the record as a supporter of the end-of-life election bill, which narrowly passed its third reading in November 2019 in a vote of conscience only after New Zealand’s first MPs demanded that it it was a binding referendum.
Rather, under the Green Party’s trust and supply agreement with Labor, Ardern has never had a similar obligation to express its opinion in parliament on the non-binding cannabis control and legalization bill.
Most will lose the subtlety of Ardern’s justification. In addition, there is a distinctive element of smoke and mirrors. Nothing could stop former national prime minister John Key from defending his personal desire for a flag change through the 2015/16 referendums. Even though Key’s personal preference for a silver fern design ultimately contributed to the failure of the 2016 referendum, there is nothing set in stone that says a prime minister cannot express a personal position on a referendum, binding or not.
In fact, voters find signals from political parties and leaders helpful when making decisions in a referendum. In making the decision to vote for a political party, voters have backgrounds, experience, habits, political polling trends, and media opinions to turn to. Voters have far fewer clues to turn to in independent referenda, so the guidance of political party leaders is an important piece of the puzzle.
As a progressive political party, Labor’s refusal to take a collective position on cannabis and turn it into a vote of conscience for individual members is at odds with its record of pushing for major social reform and even with its 2020 campaign slogan. “Let’s keep moving.”
It would be easy to explain the party’s cautious approach as not wanting to offend the more conservative support base in the Pacific and the party’s Maori. But at the same time, Labor’s conscious stance not to have a position carries the potential to mobilize people to vote against the proposal and protect the status quo. Research abroad shows that this is the default position for people who do not have enough information about the consequences of a referendum. The Labor position, in effect, is no different than the “no” of the National Party.
And that is because it is in the electoral luck of our main political parties to keep cannabis as a crime. Over the past 50 years, elections in New Zealand have become events in which parties have intentionally stoked public fear for political gain by promoting “law and order” (increasingly called “criminal justice “), electoral platforms that are based on promises to keep the streets and communities safe from gangs.
Because gangs have been associated with making illegal money from drug trafficking, keeping cannabis criminalized keeps gangs as the criminal underclass necessary to justify the frequent bidding wars that take place in elections for the number of police officers. . Being perceived as “tough on crime” is one of the main ways that parties legitimize their claim to power.
Since the gangs have a predominantly Maori and Pacific membership, the criminalization of cannabis has led generations of families from those communities trapped in a cycle of poverty and incarceration due to the associated consequences of cannabis-related crimes. By voting no, the criminalization of cannabis remains both a legal and public policy issue with racist consequences.
However, this result appears to be of secondary importance to a debate dominated by a well-meaning anti-cannabis lobby, awash in pious statements from many people who have admitted to having smoked cannabis in the past; Studies show that by the age of 21, 80% of New Zealanders have tried cannabis at least once, including our 40-year-old prime minister, arguing that cannabis must remain criminalized to protect the health of our young boys.
It does not matter that the supposed negative effects of cannabis on young people, such as depression, psychosis, delayed brain development and driving problems, can also result from other legal addictive substances such as cigarettes, alcohol, glue and prescription drugs; as well as foods like sugar, fat and salt and activities like study, work and computer games. No one is calling for these to be criminalized to help young people.
The fact that cannabis is viewed differently is a classic example of a decision-making bias called “overconfidence.” This occurs when people overconfident believe that they are more ethical or competent at handling events than others. It is a bias that leads, in this context, to predominantly older people believing that, although their lives were not seriously affected by cannabis use in their own youth, they were and still are more responsible than younger users of cannabis. cannabis today. Older voters believe this gives them the right to pass judgment on the health outcomes of younger voters, even to the point of keeping them criminalized, for “their own good.”
In theory, a referendum gives decision-making power directly to the people. However, when people have imperfect information, are biased in their decision-making processes, or do not vote for a wider variety of reasons, there is always the risk that the referendum result will be skewed. Winston Peters, Parliament’s most vocal and long-time leader of the referendums, supports them as a “more meaningful democracy in which the people can decide these issues”, not politicians who do not participate in the long term and who do not They have no right to pretend that they know they speak for their voters. If polls are anything to go by, this election could be Peters’ last stand, but if voters go to the polls with his words at the back of their minds, then the referendum decision must be made by the people directly affected by the result. and not others with a completely different agenda.
