Pot protesters arrive at Parliament, smoke joints on front lawn
Did he inhale?
Sheathed in a cloud of smoke, more than 100 people gathered on Parliament's front lawn this morning to promote the benefits of cannabis over its legal counterparts alcohol and tobacco.
The protest was part of the Armistice Tour -- a nationwide promotion of cannabis law reform.
Despite the presence of police and parliamentary security guards many of those present were openly smoking cannabis cigarettes.
ABOVE: Protest leader Dakta Green with 3News' Patrick Gower (photos courtesy Mr Gower's public Twitter-stream).
Spokesman Dakta Green told NZPA cannabis was a more natural, healthier option than other drugs and did not fuel crime.
"You smoke a toke on a joint right now, you're not going to all of a sudden going to be overcome with the urge to go out and rob a bank or belt somebody over the head.
"There's nothing within cannabis that turns you into a criminal."
The illegality of cannabis was what attracted criminals to use and trade it, he said.
While some people used cannabis for medicinal purposes, Mr Green said he wanted to see full legalisation.
ABOVE: Protesters light a joint with a magnifying glass to signify ... something, dude.
"You cannot overdose on cannabis. There are many people that have died from drinking too much alcohol, one night of heavy drinking and you can die, tobacco will almost certainly kill you.... cannabis has never killed anybody."
More than 400,000 people were part of the cannabis culture including lawyers, judges and teachers, Mr Green said.
That meant they were regular consumers of cannabis and enjoyed using it.
"You cannot keep locking us up when the science says cannabis is safer than alcohol or tobacco to the individual and to the community."
Those gathered today were asking MPs to make peace with members of the cannabis culture.
Smoking cannabis will in no way impair your spelling ability. Probably.
Mr Green was part of the Daktory which opened in Auckland two years ago as a place where cannabis users could meet.
He said they had been holding temporary Daktorys as they toured the country and were looking to set up a permanent one in Hawke's Bay and Wellington.
They were restricted to people aged over 18 and no alcohol or other drugs were allowed.
Mr Green will stand trial in November following his arrest during a raid on the Auckland Daktory in January.
He hopes that trial will highlight his cause and that he will be cleared.
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Comments and questions17
About time! Let it be!
Cost of accidents caused by drink driving???
Deaths caused by drink driving??
Assaults by drunks??
Domestic abuse caused by alcohol??
Deaths by tobacco??
What is the theme? When will we get the picture??
Hello JH, are you for real? At a time when NZ is questioning the morality, health and safety of alcohol and smoking (including possibly banning smoking), let alone the negative effects of party pills, ecstasy and P, the last thing the country needs is to legalise more drugs (especially another "inhaling" drug). To suggest otherwise is blissfully, if not willfully, ignorant of public opinion, public health and the lessons you happily quote from alcohol and smoking.
To legalise pot would lead to more drug-related road deaths (it is implicated in @20% of road deaths now), more drug-related crime and more lung-cancer related deaths.
What is the theme? NO new drugs - stricter use of current legal ones.
When will we get the picture? When people like you and Mr Green stop the lies and look at the reality of the world without a haze of pot smoke around you. Legalising more drugs is NOT the answer.
About time we here in NZ had an adult, conversation about pot – as opposed to dogmatically labelling this natural herb “drugs” and therefore it must be “bad”
This website is about Law Enforcement Against Prohibition and makes for some interesting reading.
http://www.leap.cc/cms/index.php
Maybe NZ should not only decriminalise it for personal use amongst adults – but make it legal? We could gain a “first-mover” advantage on the rest of the world and utilise the plant in all it’s many varied uses – e.g. rope, paper, clothing, recreational and medicinal uses also. As well as all the tax income for government from domestic consumption – and all the tourist interest it would likely attract also.
When we have had a binge drinking culture for decades and thousands dying already from tobacco – a natural God-given herb should be allowed to be grown by consenting adults on their own property for personal use.
Especially when considered the Labour party made sodomy and prostitution legal amongst consenting adults – we should also have the same freedom’s with a God-given herb that grows just as easy as …well, weed actually.
Are you people for real?? More pot smoking = more road injuries and deaths, more work accidents, higher mortality from lung and whatever other diseases that will come out of the woodwork over time. It is not natural nor healthy to be breathing in any type of smoke on a regular basis. Also over time a major business will be built up (see tobacco companies and booze companies) that will lobby government and use their money to hide any additional health issues and negative social consequences! Remember people tobacco was a natural home grown herb as well until big business got into it and alcohol is derived from natural products grown on the land!
It is well documented that this drug is a precursor to harder drugs, it is also implicated heavily in depression, and other mental disease, many suicides as well as being involved in the spreading of STD's and unwanted pregnancies due to people under the influence not taking proper precautions during sex.
Think about it would you be happy for the pilot of your plane, the surgeon that is about to operate on you, the guy building the office building you are about to work in, the driver coming towards you on the road, the policeman holding the tazer/gun, or the politician making the laws that govern you to be under the influence when doing those things.
We DO NOT need any more social drugs to be legalised in society we are already in a damned mess!
NZ will be the next Neitherland, why not?
Bob, it may come as a surprise to you, but 400,000 kiwis currently admit to having smoked cannabis. It is not a *new* drug. It is a well-established drug, and decades of prohibition have done nothing to reduce use, or harm. Instead it has created harm, especially for the nearly 1000 kiwis currently in prison *only* for cannabis offenses.
Drug experts like Professors David Nutt, Doug Sellman, and Ian Gilmore agree that the evidence shows alcohol to be more dangerous than cannabis. Time to end the hypocrisy, and the willful ignorance on this topic. Time for an armistice between the state and drug users.
"Think about it would you be happy for the pilot of your plane, the surgeon that is about to operate on you, the guy building the office building you are about to work in..."
I would much prefer any of these people to smoke cannabis before going to work, to having them drink alcohol before work. Besides, have you got any evidence that legalisation would motivate people to come to work high, rather than doing it in their spare time? Have you actually smoked cannabis, ever? Do you really think anyone would want to do complicated, stressful work in that relaxed, floaty state?
Bob, your response is laughably naive. No one is suggesting legalising more drugs... you couldn't make cannabis more popular if you made it compulsory. (800 out of the 1000 Christchurch Health and Development Study have smoked it more than five times... why, because they liked it IN SPITE of yours and others foolish belief that if it is 'criminal' it will be some how be awful, dangerous and unhealthy.) When 4:5 people not only know it is SAFER than alcohol or tobacco, they resent and distrust you, the Ministry of Health and the Police. The science is on the side of reform, as too is the public opinion in the demograph most affected. With such double standards you (and yours) are the ones looking for trouble where otherwise there would be (nearly) none. Yet you seem happy to tolerate (and content to pay for) the chronic and systemic failure of the status quo.
If EVERYONE who drove clinically 'drunk' displaced that risk with being stoned, you would find (as do most who are experienced with cannabis and drive) that the subjective decision to drive at all is, unlike alcohol where the decision to drive 'is impaired', far more rational and evidently cautious that empirical studies show (ie: South Australia) they are less likely to be responsible for an accident (ie: culpability) than someone who does neither alcohol or cannabis.
Gee... does that mean the 20% you quote is merely evidence of prevalence and popularity? Consider, 100% of dead drivers drank water yesterday. If water could be tested for... would they suddenly all become culpable? No. Prevalence, or cannabis's effects is not causation. That is not to say cannabis in excess or to inexperienced consumers is not impairing to driving. However, on balance, the rules (now) protect no one... best to have credible health promotion education unimpaired by double standards. Blanket bans in disrepute create the very problem they set out to solve by impairing the safety message, and some might argue, fueling the prejudice that protects no-one.
Legalise Pot Campaigners operate in the same anti NZ anti West quantum as the Green Party and other associated Libtard Collectivist wannabes
Anyway, watching What The Green Movement Got Wrong last night I felt very much like the Other Son. The documentary was a celebration of the fact that two notable green campaigners – Mark Lynas and Stewart Brand (creator of the Whole Earth Catalog) had finally come round to appreciating that some of the key tenets of their Green religion were flawed and had in fact done more harm than good.
GM crops such as “golden rice” and vitamin-enhanced millet, they cheerily conceded, were not evil “Frankenfoods” after all but a vital way of averting malnutrition in the Third World.
Nuclear power, they agreed, was way more efficient at producing clean energy than the coal alternative. Furthermore, the fuss about Chernobyl had been horribly overdone.
The near global ban on DDT – inspired by Rachel Carson’s junk science bestseller Silent Spring – had caused millions to die of malaria.
And so on.
Well bully for Lynas and Brand. But why, pray, do they deserve any credit for reaching conclusions that those of us who aren’t blinkered eco-zealots reached years ago?
What about the hundreds – perhaps thousands – of starving Zambians who died in the 2002 famine when, thanks to the misinformed campaigning of green activists like Lynas, the Zambian government refused to distribute US foreign aid packages of GM food?
What about all the honest, decent scientists and agricultural engineers and nuclear workers whose career path was stymied as a result of green hysteria?
What about the brown-outs and power shortages and energy insecurity this country is going to suffer as a direct result of the Greenie anti-nuclear hysteria which prevented us replacing our old nuclear power stations?
What ABOUT those millions and millions that Rachel Carson inadvertently massacred with her entirely unfounded claims about the effects of DDT on birdlife?
Green campaigners like Brand and Lynas have not only caused massive damage to the global economy – the biotech and nuclear industry, especially – but they have also almost certainly contributed to numerous deaths in the Third World. And we’re – what? – supposed to cosy up to them now and go: “Well done, lads! You’ve seen the light! Here’s a bung and a nice promo video from your mates at Channel 4?”
What sticks in my craw still further is that neither Brand nor Lynas actually HAS seen the light. As the programme went on to demonstrate, both men remain wedded to the equally wrong-headed theory of Man Made Climate Change. The final part of the programme, both could be heard fantasising at the kind of Geo Engineering that might be necessary – a recreation of the dust clouds of the Mt Pinatubo volcanic eruption which caused world temperatures to drop by around 3 degrees C, say – in order to avert “Global Warming.” Come back Dr Strangelove, all is forgiven.
Had these Greenies been capable of a scrap of insight or self-analysis, they would have understood that the current (now fading) hysteria about AGW comes from exactly the same school of junk science and muddled thinking that gave us Atomkraft Nein Danke and know-nothing idiots in masks and white jumpsuits (Lynas among them) destroying fields of GM crops.
But obviously it wouldn’t be in Lynas’s interest because that might jeopardise the rather cushy number he’s landed these last few years from the Maldives Government, advising it on how best to squeeze yet more guilt-money out of the global taxpayer (it was Lynas who dreamed up that photo of the Maldives government holding a cabinet meeting underwater) in the name of Anthropogenic Global Warming.
And the readers over at Komment Macht Frei would seem to agree with me. Definitely worth a trip to see the comments below the Moonbat’s blog on the same subject. The Moonbat, of course, being cross for reasons entirely different to mine.
Environmentalism is not just about replacing one set of technologies with another. Technological change is important, but it will protect the biosphere only if we also tackle issues such as economic growth, consumerism and corporate power. These are the challenges the green movement asks us to address. These are the issues the film ignores.
And there you have it: the true voice of the Green movement – red in tooth and ideology. It’s not about easy fixes. It’s not about making things better. It’s about advancing the Marxist war on capitalism by other means. Thanks George, for reminding us where you stand.
thanks for the anti-green rant but that has nothing to do with the story at hand. As is typical for anti-druggies, you are confusing the Greens with those who support drug law reform. In fact, support for drug law reform increases with income and is very strong in people who identify themselves as being "right wing". Liberty and freedom are values that anyone can - and should - support.
What is wrong with New Zealand and / or New Zealanders that so many of us need substance abuse on regular basis in our lives? Shouldn't at least some of the time and money spent on fighting for or against legislation of the day be spent on researching the causes of this issue?
For Chris Foilie at 10:53 am on November 12, 2010
___________________________________
Perhaps Max was drwing a corollary between the two groups as:
a) Many of the Wellington protesters are all-round activists also present at Climate Justice events
b) Both Climate Activism and this vein of Cannabis Legalisation Activism are both stated aims of the Marcusian Frankfurt School Theorists - who state that they would use both (amongst others) 'causes' to destroy Western Civilisation.
I agree with your point about some 'right-wingers' supporting a more laissez faire approach to drug use but they are not really the protest/activist demographic.
HAHAHAHAHA.... these f-ups spelt Cannabis incorrectly on the cake that they made to take to parliament!!!
I guess only Losers Use Drugs... or is it only Users Lose Drugs....
Just another attempt to 'make the West so corrupt it stinks'.
Adorno would be proud.
Hey Chris.
Not so much right-wing as pro-democracy and anti-totalitarian.
Hope that clears things up for you. Now go and eat some chocolate (sans palm-kernel oil) and enjoy a sesame street re-run ;)
Bob, it seems you are trying too hard portray the cannabis plant as being of the same ilk as all the noxious man-made chemicals in your list. In the scope of your... research, you missed the fact that it is impossible to succumb to an overdose on marijuana. Quite the opposite to the other substances you attempt to lump it in with.
As for the drugged driving canard you dropped in for provocation, drug tests concerning cannabis have never had the capability of measuring intoxication (which lasts a couple of hours at most). They can indicate dormant THC metabolites that remain in one’s system for several weeks, but never intoxication.
Public safety does require alleviating fears when it comes to operating machinery, and many international studies have done that concerning cannabis:
Cannabis & road safety:
http://www.ukcia.org/research/driving/02.php
Marijuana and actual driving performance:
http://www.ukcia.org/research/driving/01.php
Abstracts of several driving/testing studies:
http://www.ukcia.org/research/medline/8.htm
The issue being brought to parliament is not about ‘legalizing more drugs’, but rectifying the glaringly obvious misclassification and eliminating all the horrid prohibition related crimes by re-legalizing cannabis to its proper status.
Common_Science at 11:35 am on November 14, 2010.
Great. Stoned kids on our roads. Even the news reportage of these cretins on their day trip to Parliament showed half of them gurning to camera whilst smoking a bifter and swilling down Hieneken.
Booze + Pot + cars = pillocks
Booze + cars = pillocks
Pot + cars = pilocks
Common_Science @ 11.35 - idiot
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