I go into the yard to hang out washing, and smell it. I walk my children to school through the leafy avenues of Mt Eden, and smell it. I walk past a group of guys operating highly dangerous construction equipment and, with some alarm, I smell it there too.
Now,
either I'm walking around with a smouldering marijuana leaf about my person (unlikely, as my married-with-young-kids lifestyle is so lily-white it would make the Swiss Family Robinson vomit with disgust), or every second person in New Zealand is on the wacky-baccy. In fact, it's about 10 to 15 per cent of us, according to a recent study in the medical journal The Lancet. Kiwis and Aussies are among the world's highest users of cannabis.
To my mind, this drug is completely loathsome. It makes people talk a load of bollocks, for one thing, but also plays a starring role in cancers, lung disease and our appalling road toll. Teachers hate it for turning students into glassy-eyed no-hopers, parents hate it for turning unreachable teenagers into ... well, more unreachable teenagers; and young children growing up in tinny houses add immeasurably to the workload of the police and social workers.
But the pragmatic in me thinks something lucrative and, dare I say it, positive for New Zealand could be mined in marijuana. Don Brash was halfway there before the last election, in attempting to approach the issue like an adult (for which he got shot down in flames) - but where he advocated decriminalising pot for personal use, I'm thinking bigger, bolder.
What about the Government taking a (cannabis) leaf out of the California story and granting permits to a set number of marijuana growers throughout the country, who would sell it to licensed outlets for use by those with a medical need for the drug (or those wanting a bloody great high - either way), and steal a jump on the way the world is inevitably going?
