Cancer link bolsters drug critics

A study linking cannabis use to lung cancer is further proof that New Zealand is long overdue for a change in its liberal approach to drug abuse, a Wellington drug educator says.

But the claim has further highlighted the gap in stance between drug and substance abuse hardliners and organisations such as the New Zealand Drug Foundation.

The study, being completed by Richard Beasley of the Medical Research Institute, said smoking three cannabis cigarettes a day was equivalent to smoking 20 tobacco cigarettes and may be a reason behind Maori having the world's highest lung cancer rate.

It was among research used in court last week by Wellington coroner Garry Evans to criticise the current approach to drug use among young people.

At the time, Mr Evans was releasing his findings into the deaths of six young people who had inhaled butane, propane or liquid petroleum gas.

The current focus of drug education was harm minimisation, but that needed to change to prevention with hard-hitting advertising to back it, Mr Evans said.

Life Education Trust founder Trevor Grice backed the coroner's calls yesterday. He said New Zealand had among the highest rates of cannabis use rates in the world, and it was also the same with suicides.

"Is that linked? Of course it's linked," he said.

"The libertarians say, 'Let them do it. They'll learn, it's part of growing up.' Well sorry, it's part of growing down.

"Part of this drug education is to confine your drug use to the weekend. But they don't realise that smoking on the weekend is like getting a good dose of sunburn, and the sunburn doesn't go away when the sun sets."

Drugs and alcohol were becoming increasingly embedded in society at an increasingly younger age, and the situation would not improve until attitudes were changed and law and order was strengthened.

But New Zealand Drug Foundation executive director Ross Bell said that approach had been tested worldwide and had not worked.

"It sounds really sensible to take a tough approach ... but what that ignores is the reality of human nature.

"Human beings have been finding ways of altering their state of mind for thousands of years."

Mr Bell said while the foundation promoted harm minimisation, it also had a bottom line of promoting abstinence, something which detractors sometimes overlooked.

What worked best was a range of approaches. Harm minimisation acknowledged that people used drugs and aimed to find effective ways of reducing the harm, he said.

In regard to law enforcement, Mr Bell said police resources had been shifted toward eliminating drugs at the source, including marijuana and P-lab raids, and sentences involving harder drugs had been toughened.

"In spite all of that law enforcement people are still using drugs.

"So I think one of the things we need to think about in New Zealand is how we balance our enforcement with our treatment and with our prevention."

- NZPA