Steve Taylor: Utopian fantasy is poles apart from drugs reality

COMMENT

Green MP Nandor Tanczos' attempt to correlate the rising methamphetamine abuse problem with the legalisation of cannabis was astounding in its ignorance.

In blindly championing the cause of cannabis, Mr Tanczos dropped his bong on his foot when he stated: "What we know in New Zealand is that criminal organisations that become rich off illegal cannabis have expanded their trade into P."

This from the man who vehemently resists the empirical reality that cannabis is a gateway drug.

It would seem that he acknowledges the existence of a gateway link after all. Mr Tanczos' "network of tinny houses" may have the opportunity to flood the market with methamphetamine because cannabis is already being sought within them.

Legalising cannabis will only exacerbate this problem by increasing supply outlets (as has happened in the Netherlands), rather than decreasing them. Any parent will confirm that that which we encourage, we will get more of, and that which we discourage, we will get less of. Many more people choose not to use cannabis because of the legal position.

Mr Tanczos stated that "most people who use cannabis never use hard drugs". This is a bold statement in the absence of any evidence.

His somewhat utopian fantasy of separating the market for cannabis from the market of hard drugs flies in the face of the reality of poly substance abuse. In my experience, it is rare to work with a client in the alcohol and drug addiction treatment field who uses cannabis to the exclusion of other substances. Addiction just isn't that choosy.

If, as Mr Tanczos says, more than half the money spent by the police on drug investigation is, indeed, devoted to cannabis investigation, it would seem we have a bigger problem with cannabis than we do P. Might it pay for us to deal with both drug problems, as opposed to vilifying one and upholding another?

Mr Tanczos criticised drug educator Trevor Grice for saying he would rather see his kids using heroin than using cannabis. But he ignored the fact that while pure heroin (surprisingly) does not leave a user with any long-term physiological or psychological contra-indications, cannabis does. These include memory loss, an inability to orientate to one's environment, substance-induced mood disorders, depression, and a host of disease-related harm.

Mr Tanczos seems to applaud the intelligent, streetwise, and well-educated P user, who is apparently able to discern between fact and fiction when it comes to drug information and effects. Clearly this is not the case, as the raft of stories published recently in the Herald and my own clinical experience testify.

Most P users believe P to be a recreational party drug stimulant that is no different to, say, Ecstasy or Fantasy. It would appear they were wrong.

I found it somewhat ironic that Mr Tanczos called for an increase in treatment services. If he had his way, we would be filling them beyond their capacity to cope. In fact, many waiting lists for treatment programmes in the Auckland area alone range from three weeks to six months; we don't need any more clients for a while.

As with every dark cloud, however, I saw a sliver of a silver lining in Mr Tanczos' piece - his call for a halt to liquor advertising on television and radio. I agree with him on this point, with the exception of his definition of harm reduction.

Harm reduction is best achieved through fortified prevention (a fence at the top of the cliff), as opposed to weak-kneed capitulation to the minority lobby group (an ambulance at the bottom). In the words of Cardinal Richelieu, "to pass a law and not have it enforced is to authorise the very thing you wish to prohibit".

The real political courage needed is for politicians like Mr Tanczos to start reclaiming some of the ground we, as a society, have lost by not kowtowing to the lowest common denominator - the tyranny of a self-proclaimed, non-mandated position of power.

* Steve Taylor, an Auckland drug and alcohol addictions counsellor, is responding to Nandor Tanczos' view that legalising cannabis would help to reduce methamphetamine use.

Herald Feature: The P epidemic

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