(Wairarapa Times-Age) Marijuana activist Phil Saxby passed through Wairarapa yesterday on a tour to drum up support for reform advocacy group Norml New Zealand.
Mr Saxby is president and spokesman of Norml – the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, and he said Wairarapa has had a “strong branch here”.
The push to increase support for Norml comes as the New Zealand Law Commission undertakes a comprehensive review of New Zealand drug laws, and Mr Saxby wants Norml to be a consulting party in that review.
He said he was disappointed in the lack of Parliamentary support last week for a bill allowing medicinal cannabis use, particularly the fact that no National Party voters supported the conscience vote.
Mr Saxby said the health vote would have been a step towards achieving Norml’s aims.
He says the key to successfully dealing with cannabis is “treating it as a health issue rather than putting people in jail”.
Check out www.norml.org.nz for more information on cannabis law reform in the Southern Hemisphere. While NORML is primarily about United States marijuana law reform, we are proud to help other countries apply the successful NORML principles and advocacy worldwide. If you are reading or listening from a foreign country and you want to join with us in ending adult marijuana prohibition, just send me an email at stash@norml.org.
The problem in countries like New Zealand is the politicians fear “relaxing” marijuana laws will adversely affect trade with one of their largest trading partners – us.
That, of course, is on top of their burning desire to copy the decisions of U.S. legislators in everything they do, no matter how ludicrous they are.
The battle has to be won in the U.S. And when it is it’ll affect almost every person in every country around the entire world.
The fight we fight won’t just improve our lives, or those of the people in our state or in our country, but also the lives of billions of people we’ll never meet in countries we may never visit.