TV Pick of the week: Inside NZ: High Time?

Dakta Green and Brian Borland outside the Daktory in New Lynn. Photo / NZ Herald

"It's a drug loved among New Zealanders," proclaims this documentary with an almost gleeful sense of rebellion. It's marijuana - or some might call it the evil weed or electric puha - that High Time? is talking about.

This documentary looks at the facts and fallacies surrounding cannabis use in New Zealand, and ponders whether it's time we made cannabis legal.

As the narrator states early on, the call for cannabis law reform is nothing new, but what is new are the many and varied voices of support for it to happen. These include experts in the alcohol and drugs fields and Warren Young of the Law Commission, who has been involved in a recent review of our drugs laws and supports changes, through to serial campaigner and pot advocate Dakta Green and 70-something arthritis-sufferer Dawn, who used cannabis for medicinal purposes but was charged with marijuana offences.

Green, formerly known as Ken Morgan, who was an electorate chairman for the National Party and campaigner for Saturday trading and casinos before pushing for cannabis law reform, is a central character in High Time? The doco takes you inside The Daktory, his warehouse in West Auckland that operates as a club for cannabis users. They can smoke the drug here and it is meant to be an example of how legalisation might work in the future.

"The purpose of this club is to show my fellow New Zealanders that you have absolutely nothing to fear from people who are part of the cannabis culture," says Green.

High Time? is comprehensive and looks at everything from the possibility of decriminalisation, like in Holland, the comparative impacts of cannabis and alcohol ("the great contradiction at the heart of the cannabis debate"), and the health impacts of smoking pot.

Maki Herbert, one of Green's followers, reckons "I smoke an ounce a week" and doesn't believe it has had an adverse affect on her health.

High Time? has an old-school doco feel to it, with the interviews broken up by a good mix of old and new footage, that range from people smoking it up at J-Day celebrations, to police helicopters airlifting masses of seized marijuana plants.

"Police go to great lengths to weed out the cannabis problem," says the narrator, which is kind of corny, but worth a chuckle.

When: Wednesday, 8.30pm
Where: TV3
What: Time to go green?

- TimeOut