Why are we arresting medical marijuana users? Is it time to call for a truce on the war on drugs?

In Afghanistan they've accepted reality. The US has realized that they can't win this war and are trying to negotiate a truce from the Taliban. I suggest that we should be looking at the reality of the war on drugs and call a truce on marijuana.

If the US can realize how counter productive their war on terror in Afghanistan is, why can't we in NZ realize how counter productive our war on drugs with marijuana is?

We have one of the highest rates of incarceration for personal marijuana use and the hundreds of millions we waste on policing marijuana prohibition each year demands all educated people to actively ignore this farce at 4.20pm every day. Or 4.20am, depending on your internal body clock.

The conservative elements of society that justify the status quo refuses to enter the debate because they know they get a pasting when the issue gets aired and have to rely on some backwards 'morality' hang up to explain marijuana's continued illegality.

If this was about our 'health' then the Government would arrest every employee of KFC, as the double down burger will kill more people than marijuana ever has.

The prohibition debate must be advanced some how, now that the political voices have all been silenced. The Greens don't touch the issue any longer in their continued march towards suburban credibility, Labor have always been weak, National love killing any buzz and Peter Dunne has done more for the alcohol and tobacco lobbyists to kill off reform than anyone else.

So where to now for the debate?

My hope is medical marijuana, which is why this story gets me so mad...

Activist gets off cannabis charges

A Golden Bay activist caught growing 62 cannabis plants to help her husband relieve the phantom pain he suffers following a double amputation, has succeeded in getting the charges thrown out.

...what a despicable waste of time, taxpayer resources and anguish. Look, we all know the marijuana laws are bullshit. As a substance, marijuana is far less lethal than booze and tobacco and it's unregulated illegal status only empowers criminal organizations.

Who the fuck has a problem with cancer patients, AIDs patients, Parkinson's sufferers, chronic pain sufferers or double amputees growing their own and smoking a joint? How backwards a society have we become because of these stupid prohibition laws to justify this type of response to the ill using marijuana for pain relief?

Why not allow green speakeasys to be created where smokers can have an Amsterdam experience? Funds of which help discount medical quality marijuana for medical users. There is a way to regulate and tax the marijuana trade that not only eliminates the cost of policing but generates revenue at the same time while keeping a large chunk of people out of prison.

The utter silence from our political leaders on an issue as black and white as marijuana is difficult to sustain as we continue to try and lock up sick people who have committed no other crime than growing and smoking their own. Shouldn't the Police have more important things to do like investigate REAL crimes rather than arresting double amputees who smoke weed?

It is time to call a truce in the war on drugs over marijuana and as adults seriously embark upon working out how we implement a new regime that brings the black market out of the shadows and contribute to the economy while locking less of our citizens up for a drug that has none of the lethality of tobacco or booze.

It's time we grew up over this.

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