CHRISTCHURCH - Some judges and police officers smoke cannabis, Green MP Nandor Tanczos claimed yesterday.
Mr Tanczos, who uses the drug, told more than 300 Canterbury University students he was not the only MP who had used it.
He said millions of dollars was being spent on cannabis prohibition when the police did not have the resources to respond to real crimes, such as burglary and violence.
Mr Tanczos said after the speech that he had spoken to police officers who had used cannabis. He also referred to a 1997 newspaper article in which some politicians admitted they had used the drug.
He could not expand on his claim about judges using cannabis other than to say that a former head of a commission had admitted to using it.
"I'm not actually clear whether he was a judge," he said. Mr Tanczos could not remember his name either.
However, he said the point he was trying to make was that cannabis use was widespread across society.
He told the students that the cannabis law was creating a taxpayer subsidy for organised crime because prohibition artificially inflated the price of the drug.
The law will be reviewed this year, and Mr Tanczos urged his audience to get involved in the issue by writing to their MP.
"We have to get real about this issue. The way we are approaching it is not working."
New Zealand now had the highest arrest rate in the world for cannabis offences and had among the highest cannabis use rates.
"If the point of the law is to stop people using cannabis, it's clearly not working," he said.
Last week, Mr Tanczos claimed in Parliament that some MPs had been "drunk in charge of the country."
- NZPA
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