Corkery on drugs

Pam Corkery writes:

The full horror of the Psychoactive Substances Act has landed.

More than 100 retailers are selling 28 brands of synthetic highs – with the blessing of 119 MPs who voted for insane legislation now implemented by the Ministry of Health.

This makes it sound like no retailers were selling no synthetic highs before this law change. Every drug being sold, was available with basically no restrictions prior to the law change.

Bowden has been allowed to buy a temporary licence to retail, import and manufacture synthetic highs, and is planning a pioneering factory on Auckland’s North Shore to keep them coming.

The rationale behind the interim legitimacy of the drugs is that working with Bowden and his fellow travellers will be more effective than prohibition at reducing harm.

No the rationale is that you just need to allow some time to get the testing done. Any new drug can not enter the market until tested, but those drugs which had already been selling legally for the last few years have a few months in which to get tested. This is much more preferable to the old law which meant they never ever got tested.

Some may argue we should have had a period of total prohibition before the testing regime starts, but consider that it is the fact that cannabis is prohibited that has led to demand for synthetic highs. Try banning those also, and God knows what you will end up with people using.

I firmly believe that the 119 MPs who voted for this law did so to show that they were liberal-minded, well-adjusted, down with the peeps, almost groovy.

How ridiculous. They voted for the law as they thought a law which decided if a drug was safe based on scientific testing was better than a law where whether a drug is banned is dependent on how many media headlines it generates.

They’re not. New Zealand doesn’t want these drugs. We’ve got more than enough already.

Who is this we? The fact there is such demand for them suggests there is a market for them. Now the irony is that it is because drugs like cannabis are banned, that you have created a demand for synthetic highs.