Another day and more ineptitude from the National Party. Fresh from siding with Donald Trump and Breitbart in the hope that they could wedge Winston Peters they then decided to engage in a bit of reefer madness.
Perhaps they have our best interests at heart. Maybe this is what they think will happen if people dying from cancer are allowed to regulate their pain by using something that is actually not toxic.
But their response to the passage of the Government’s medicinal cannabis law was really weird. It was like they had smoked a few really fat doobies and then decided on what to say.
I mean it is a bit of a jump to go from having a quiet joint because you are dying from cancer and the pain is intense to making the smoking of cannabis in front of mental health centers compulsory. And the claim that this is decriminalisation by stealth with no controls is plainly wrong. The only people who can safely smoke cannabis are those who have been certified by a medical practitioner as requiring palliation.
But National leader Simon Bridges went all “hold my joint” on it … this is what he said in Parliament during the debate on the bill:
The Minister is sitting there, he’s looking down, he doesn’t want to listen to this, but not a single thing he has said in this House over the passage of this bill says anything otherwise: that when this bill passes, when it is signed off by the Governor-General, loose-leaf cannabis will be able to be smoked in public in New Zealand. What do you call that? He’s shaking his head. That Minister has been asked these questions. He’s had the ability every single time he’s spoken to answer the basic questions, and he hasn’t done that. In fact, he’s all but confirmed it. I say to him: what will the police do when they’re outside a school and someone, under this legislation, is smoking cannabis? What will they do? Chlöe Swarbrick’s shaking her head. I’ll tell you what they’ll do. I don’t reckon they’ll do much at all, actually, because today that’s what this Parliament arguably—but certainly there’s been nothing to allay our concerns—has lazily, has irresponsibly done in this House.
I don’t think that the risk of cancer sufferers electing to smoke joints in front of schools just because they can is a very high one.
Finally some advice I hope Simon Bridges never accepts.
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