Green Party list MP Chloe Swarbrick for Canvas. Photo / Jason Oxenham
Russell Brown
In 1994, the year Chloe Swarbrick was born, I was editing a street mag called Planet, from a fabled office at 309 Karangahape Rd. The 13th issue of the magazine was published that June and its cover embodied a particularly ambitious goal: the end of cannabis prohibition.
"Like it or not, pot's sticky green threads have been irrevocably woven into the national tapestry for nearly two decades," I wrote in the editorial. "Marijuana in New Zealand has a vocabulary, an etiquette, a code. In thousands of households it's no more remarkable a social lubricant than a cold beer. It is fixed into the culture – and it is not only New Zealanders who know it."
I observed that, nonetheless, "There are serious health problems associated with heavy marijuana use, especially among adolescents" and proposed that revenues from a legalised trade should be tagged for health education and treatment for those who needed it. I wrote:
"The courts cannot decently fine offenders enough to even cover the costs of prosecution. But that is not the real problem. The real problem is that so many New Zealanders have reason to lie to and to fear the police – and even their neighbours. If they're unlucky (and as many as 200,000 citizens in the past decade have been) they draw the lifelong stigma of a criminal conviction."
Twenty-five years on, a few things have changed. Even more of us have used cannabis – according to the Dunedin and Christchurch longitudinal studies, about 80 per cent of people in their mid-40s have had a toke. (Perhaps unsurprisingly, the directors of both studies support careful legalisation.) Fewer of us are being saddled with convictions, as the police find ways not to prosecute us and the courts not to convict us. But the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975, spectacularly ineffective as it is, continues to criminalise the use and possession of cannabis.
I've written about cannabis – and drug policy in general – fairly often since then. Encompassing as it does the law, science, medicine, politics and culture; drug policy fascinates me. So I've watched with close interest as successive jurisdictions have embarked on the reform I envisioned a quarter of a century ago. First the American states, then Uruguay, then Canada.
I've spoken to researchers, doctors, politicians and the drafters of the successful ballot propositions in California and Washington State. Nowhere has there been an explosion in cannabis use. In fact, the basic pattern after legalisation has been remarkably consistent: a modest increase in overall cannabis use, exclusively among older people, who are at least risk of harm – and youth use either unchanged or declining. In Canada, cannabis use among 15-17-year-olds has nearly halved in the two years since legalisation, turning around a rising trend.
That doesn't mean all the reforms are as good as each other. California made it onerous and expensive for existing producers to go legit – and placed no limit on the size of new entrants. They made a system in which only Big Cannabis was a winner. Oregon handed out licences like confetti, causing an oversupply. Decriminalisation – which leaves supply up to the unregulated black market – didn't produce the public health benefits that legalising and regulating did.
I've also followed the evolution of the Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill, the proposal that New Zealanders will vote on in the impending referendum. The Ministry of Justice team that drafted the bill clearly looked at what worked elsewhere and what didn't. The bill would allow cannabis to be sold to adults under very strict conditions, with no advertising or marketing.
More importantly, I think, it includes a range of measures to curb any market, including a ban on vertical integration, so no one can be both a producer and a retailer. A limited number of licences would be awarded under criteria that explicitly favour Māori enterprises (a form of redress for the harm that cannabis laws have disproportionately visited on Māori) and ventures that can demonstrate a social or community purpose.
There's a personal dimension too. I know the form in these pieces is to wink broadly and claim to prefer a good Central Otago pinot these days but let's be honest. I use cannabis sometimes, with a vapouriser and somewhere on the spectrum between therapeutic and "recreational". Plenty of people I know do. I'd like us to have access to cannabis we can be confident doesn't contain fungicides or toxic plant growth regulators – and to higher - CBD strains, which the black market doesn't deliver. (The availability of less potent cannabis is an underrated argument for legalisation.)
But it was a connection to that old magazine that actually tipped me into formal advocacy. The publisher of Planet, my dear, brilliant old friend Grant Fell, died of complications from glioma, an aggressive brain cancer, in early 2018. His death pulled away a time in my life in which I really formed an idea of who I was and I wasn't at all prepared for the grief that followed.
After he had entered the hospice that summer, I got a panicked call from his wife. Grant had been having seizures and doctors at the hospice warned that it was the nature of a glioma in the part of the brain where he had it that these seizures would only become more frequent. She was now under pressure to have him sedated – unconscious – until he died. There would be no goodbyes if that happened.
I had already told her that I would try to lay my hands on a cannabis product to ease his last days. He'd responded well to it during his illness and it's even possible that, alongside conventional treatment, it reduced his tumour growth (research on treating glioma with THC and CBD has moved to the clinical trial stage in recent years). Now it was a matter of urgency. I raced over and – concealing it from the hospice staff, who couldn't know – we got some oil into him.
"Something else happened – or, rather, didn't happen," I wrote three months later in my formal submission on the Misuse of Drugs (Medicinal Cannabis) Amendment Bill. "He didn't have any more seizures. Again, I can't tell you that was because of the medical oil. But he didn't have any more seizures. The doctors remarked on it over the next few days, expressing surprise."
A nice lady from Parliament emailed me after receiving my submission to point out that it contained information of a personal or sensitive nature and an "admission of criminal activity". What did I wish to do?
"Thanks for asking," I replied. "I have cleared the content of the submission with those directly concerned and I look forward to discussing my admitted criminal activity with the select committee members."
In the event, we only got what was already in the bill: a statutory defence that meant Grant himself would not have been prosecuted. Everyone else involved, including me, would still be committing crimes to help him. I had come to know the people who helped me with the oil – the Auckland patient activist Pearl Schomburg and the famous Northland "green fairy", Gandalf – and it offended me that they lived with the possibility of serious criminal charges.
This year, I've been further offended by a vile campaign by a well-funded group urging a "No" vote in this year's referendum on the Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill. It pits a picture of a smiling doctor in a white coat against stock images of dope demons getting their weed fix.
The regulations ushered in by the 2018 bill do a reasonable job of squeezing cannabis products into the formal prescribing system. But as yet, there are almost no approved products and few prescribing doctors. Meanwhile, as two surveys in the past year have indicated, there are tens of thousands of New Zealanders using cannabis more or less therapeutically. The bright line between "medicinal" (good) and "recreational" (bad) is an illusion. It doesn't work that way.
Unexpectedly, I got a chance to act on my feelings about the matter. My friend, graphic designer Roxanne Hawthorne and Cleve Cameron, the co-founder of the Big Street Bikers e-bike company, came to me with an idea. Cleve had been offered a substantial donation of billposter inventory by Phantom Billstickers. Cleve, a former ad creative, had come up with a concept – "We Do" – which would feature ordinary New Zealanders declaring their intention to vote "Yes" in the referendum.
On September 5, about 50 people – young, old, brown, white – marshalled by Splore's formidable production director Fred Kublikowski will have their portraits taken by Kieran Scott for the "We Do" poster campaign. I've called some of them to talk about their reasons.
Daniel, a conservative Christian, told me, "My God is a god of forgiveness, not punishment." Ry, a neuroscientist, told me that, "Our current approach is not good from a medical perspective. It doesn't reduce harm." Kendall, a licensing manager, hated that while her cannabis use is essentially unpoliced, "The criminalisation of cannabis disproportionately affects the young, the poor and Māori."
But one thumbs-up meant more than most. My younger son is differently wired to most of us. He hasn't been able to attend school since he was 12 but he's intelligent and thoughtful. I was talking him about my involvement in the "We Do" campaign and he told me that he'd thought about some stories in that old issue of Planet that I'd asked him to type up for me a few months before.
"This stuff isn't going away," he said. "It just doesn't make sense to keep persecuting people for having it."
And then he asked if there was any way he could help the campaign. From a young man who still battles to engage with the world, this was a big thing. He's going to stuff envelopes for us. He doesn't use drugs and has never even had a beer. But he has the heart and mind to know what we've been doggedly doing for decades doesn't work.
The cannabis referendum - 5 things you should know
1. You are voting on whether New Zealand should legalise, not decriminalise cannabis.
Police can already use discretion for cannabis-related crimes, prosecuting only as a last resort. The law change being voted on in the referendum goes further by creating a legal industry, with cannabis products grown in New Zealand, sold in licensed stores and subject to taxes and regulations.
2 Legalised cannabis in New Zealand would not, however, be a free-for-all.
The proposed rules are potentially the strictest out of any of the five countries and various states that have legalised. There is a minimum purchase age of 20 and relatively strict limits on how much you can buy, carry, grow and where you can use it. The cannabis industry - both stores and producers - would be kept small, tightly regulated and out-of-sight. Businesses in marginalised communities (East Coast, Far North) would be prioritised for growing licences.
3 Legalisation can lead to more people smoking weed.
In countries that have legalised, there has been a moderate increase in adult use but little change in patterns among heavy users or young users - the two most at-risk groups.
Whether it leads to more harm is more difficult to measure. Heavy use is associated with mental illness and anxiety. Making it illegal also has significant, sometimes lifelong social impacts while not reducing cannabis use and young Māori are disproportionately affected.
4 The referendum is not necessarily about whether you personally like cannabis or not.
It is rather whether you believe it is best to maintain the status quo or bring the personal use of cannabis under a Government-controlled scheme.
5 The referendum is not binding.
But the Labour-led government says it will honour what voters choose - a "yes" vote means it will change the law, a "no" vote means the status quo will remain.
National says it would introduce the law change in the event of a "yes" vote, but has not committed to passing it. That would depend on the public consultation process.
It was the latest high-profile event the King has attended without the Queen.