Herald on recreational drugs

The Herald editorial:

New Zealand once prided itself on being a “social laboratory” for advances in public welfare. Within a few months it will become a laboratory in every sense: for the approval of new recreational drugs. Other countries are taking a close interest in Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne’s proposed licensing system for synthetic psychoactive substances, as Mr Dunne found when he addressed a United Nations Drug Convention in Vienna recently. Drug researcher Chris Wilkins told the Weekend Herald he found the same interest at a drug policy conference in Bogota, Colombia last week.

Neither Mr Dunne nor Dr Wilkins relishes the idea that New Zealand could be the first legal, regulated market for recreational drugs thanks to the Psychoactive Substances Bill before Parliament. The bill’s purpose is to put a stop to present sales of untested, unregulated party drugs. It will require them to be proven safe before they can be put on sale and the regulators probably would not mind very much if their testing regime proves prohibitive.

I can’t say I have a problem with a regime that drugs need to be proven safe before being allowed to be sold.

Campaigners for the legalisation of cannabis must be watching with interest. While the law would apply only to synthetic equivalents, it might be hard to deny the same tests to naturally grown leaf.

Exactly. What not subject all drugs to the same regime?