Lay off medicinal plants, fight P epidemic

A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.

Opinion

Well, it’s that time of year, when “Da Plane, Da Plane” is zooming around our Ngati Porou district, wasting petrol and taxpayers’ money; poisoning our whenua and native trees, spraying that disgusting blue shit all over a plant that is grown and used as rongoa (medicine).

How about focusing on the P epidemic! Do some real work on the war against Class A drugs.

Meth is an evil drug that eats the wairua of our people. It rips families apart. Children are neglected and eventually end up in the CYF system. Parents are caught selling and are sent to prison. Meth-using men beat their partners on a regular basis. Young girls are hooked then sold out as prostitutes. Women selling themselves to keep up their “crack” habit. Collaboration with gang members. Loss of employment, homes are sold off, more people relying on the system.

There is no rehabilitation centre in Gisborne. Burglaries, car theft, shop robberies and stand-overs are on the rise. Adults are using 12 to 14-year-olds to do break-ins!

Our mental health system is overflowing. We have homelessness, depression, starvation (thank you to the volunteers who feed the homeless).

This shit is real, it’s a living taniwha that will consume anyone! No particular skin colour, age, gender, social or financial status!

Meth doesn’t help heal people in our community. It’s a soul-taker, death fastened up!

And yet thousands of taxpayer dollars are used to kill a healing plant that has been grown for centuries in many countries around the world.

It’s so sad to see utes with trailers driving through our rural towns on State Highway 35 full of this plant, destined to be burned — and their grower charged as a criminal.

Research has proved the health benefits of cannabis, whether hemp or marijuana. Therefore, I admire Hikurangi Cannabis Company for being the first to step up and be awarded a chance to grow marijuana for medicinal use and research.

No medicine is more natural than cannabis. It comes straight from Mother Earth, Papatuanuku. Yes, it’s our Green, Green Grass of home!

Natural Alternative, Ruatoria