OPINION:
The provisional results of the cannabis referendum show the vote for change coming close, but short of a majority. The gap between yes and no is likely to narrow when the large number of votes yet not counted are factored in, but the jury is out on whether it can be closed altogether.
The provisional result is disappointing for the broad range of those who advocated for change. The case for legalisation was evidence-based. It weighed up the harms caused by prohibition against the potential for harm from cannabis use. It took into account that cannabis has for decades been a very widely available recreational drug in New Zealand and that a large majority of New Zealanders have used it.
A no vote cannot and will not deliver a cannabis-free New Zealand. What it delivers is the ongoing control of supply chains by organised crime which profits greatly from it. It also delivers a pipeline of recruits to the criminal justice system. Those young people caught in the law and order net for use, possession, and/or supply can face years of a downward spiral into one conviction after another. Those, including at worst custodial sentences, blight their prospects for employment and other opportunities.
A yes vote would have delivered significant health benefits with a levy on sales dedicated to improving services, including for the under-20s who could not be legally supplied with cannabis, but nonetheless were procuring and using it. There would also have been significant economic and social benefits for the regions where cannabis is grown and where people would have had legal livelihoods, and for the public purse which stood to benefit both from hundreds of billions of dollars of tax revenue and from not spending more than $200 million a year on futile attempts by authorities to enforce prohibition.
