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Mike Hosking: Time to stop the cannabis madness

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 25 Jul 2018, 9:59AM
Cannabis can add no benefit to us as a whole. Photo \ NZ Herald

Mike Hosking: Time to stop the cannabis madness

Author
Mike Hosking,
Publish Date
Wed, 25 Jul 2018, 9:59AM

Here's my frustration with everyone wanting to decriminalise dope.  

Firstly, it's way more complex than just a vote.  

And as much as I value democracy, I also value the health of a society and we are not doing a very good job of that. 

Medicinal cannabis? There would appear some medical support for it.  

And that's the group that should be making that decision not us. What the hell do we know?  

As regards decriminalisation for personal use, you know as well as I do, that won't be regulated, it won't be policed properly, the way so many of our laws aren't policed properly these days.  

Cellphones in cars are illegal, but no one polices it.  

Why do we want to pile more social issues onto our plate in a country that spends hundreds of millions of dollars every year trying to address what the so called experts call a crisis?   

Mental health is overflowing with troubles,  hospital wards are at capacity, youth apparently are falling off a cliff.

How many headlines, claims, and debates are had each and every year in this country revolving around problems, and how we don’t have enough money resource or people?  

And yet faced with that, faced with the knowledge that booze, tobacco, and pills already adds to these issues, we want to pile one more on top just for fun.  

Cannabis can add no benefit to us as a whole. You can scrap over how bad it is, how it might not be as bad as booze.  

You can drum up dumb arguments about people not being violent under the influence of cannabis as opposed to booze.

You can do that all day long, but it distracts from the truth.

The truth is, it isn't good for anyone. It's not in any way shape or form positive health wise.

And irrefutably in some way shape or form, social ill will arise from it.  

Either through road carnage, personal carnage, financial carnage or all of the aforementioned.  

And all of that inevitably in some way shape or form ends up on the plate of the state.  

A government that aspires to a road toll of zero, somehow, can justify stoned drivers. How does that even work?

A government that aspires to kids improving their learning justifies stoned teenagers, not to mention the kids in so called poverty.  

A government that can't get enough jobless into jobs ,employers who can't find enough good people, justifies stoned employees with all its inherent dangers.

The law isn't working. That's the argument isn't it? We have reduced ourselves to the debate quality of six year olds. 

We're looking for excuses for being hopeless.  

All the while having so much evidence of the trouble ahead, and yet still we want to buy more.  

We reap what we sow and if what is sowed is sowed by idiots, then how can we expect anything but carnage?

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