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Every week a small group gathers on the Otago Union Lawn to openly smoke cannabis as a group. Many people can’t understand why we do this. Some people support us, but think we are crazy for putting our necks on the line and risking arrest. Others just think we are degenerate criminals. Either way, our strategy is working, because the question we are trying to provoke is, “should cannabis use really be considered a crime at all?”

First of all, there are no victims, except potentially the user themselves. And let’s not beat around the bush (no pun intended), cannabis does have SOME harms for SOME people who use it. We should be clear that we don’t think those people should use cannabis. If you don’t find the experience of cannabis consumption relaxing and pleasurable you probably shouldn’t partake anymore. But as for those of us who do find it euphoric, and are able to use it responsibly and in moderation – why should we be punished for the potential mistakes of the few who can’t?

Let us also remember that there are many other harmful and even life-threatening substances that the state allows people to use under certain regulated circumstances. Prescription drugs are allowed because we trust a person’s doctor to exercise sound judgement when deciding what treatment is right for a particular patient. Even drugs with a high potential for abuse and morbidity can be dispensed to any person if their doctor thinks it will benefit them. Strangely, doctors are forbidden from prescribing their patients cannabis even though it is widely known to be medically beneficial in numerous scenarios. An elderly woman experiencing chronic pain and medicating herself with all-natural herbal cannabis under the supervision of her doctor is as legitimate a target for Police as a patched-up Mongrel Mob member. In fact many police would choose to bust the grandmother over the mobster because it would be much easier and less risky. And in case some readers are thinking this is just a hyperbolic exaggeration for dramatic effect, no, this type of situation happens every month in New Zealand. The court records make for a particularly sickening read, and this is one of the most disgusting effects of our current cannabis prohibition laws.

Other obvious examples of legally regulated harmful substances are of course alcohol and tobacco. Both of these substances will unquestionably kill you at the right dose, and yet you don’t even need a doctor’s supervision to use them. In fact billion-dollar multinational companies are allowed to advertise them and you can pick them up at your corner dairy. We recognise as a society that individuals have a right to engage in demonstrably risky behaviours for pleasure as long as they are endangering nobody but themselves. It is legal to bungy jump, go skydiving, or even, heaven forbid, to play rugby. But there is a double standard when it comes to cannabis. You can actually die from the aforementioned activities. Alcohol actually causes brain damage every single time you use it. Cannabis cannot kill you or your brain cells. That’s the difference between a Physiology textbook and “The Great Brain Robbery”, facts.

None of this is new information. The New Zealand Law Commission spent years examining and reviewing the Misuse of Drugs Act, and in 2010 they produced a report of recommendations that included legalising cannabis for medical use, and decriminalising cannabis for personal recreational use. Unfortunately, because cannabis is used as one of the classic political wedge issues in this country, the politicians have done nothing. Just like they did nothing the last several times official government reports have recommended ending prohibition over the past three decades.

But just because the politicians won’t act doesn’t make the expert recommendations less correct. In fact the New Zealand public, and increasingly the judiciary, have moved on. We all know what’s coming, and the politicians are only serving to further prove their irrelevance. We have smoked in public twice a week on campus continuously for eight years and we hardly ever see the cops. We have smoked inside the Police station with no arrests. The Daktory operates a cannabis vending machine in Auckland. And Judges have been giving lenient sentences to, and even discharging without conviction, people who have been cultivating cannabis on a relatively large scale.

Clearly someone’s not taking this whole prohibition thing very seriously. Maybe it’s time we tried something different.

– The 4.20 Crew