This week's letter to the editor discusses a recent conviction and sentence for possession and supply of cannabis.
This week's letter to the editor discusses a recent conviction and sentence for possession and supply of cannabis.
I congratulate you on your comments about Kelly van Gaalen's conviction and sentence for possession and supply of cannabis (Dealing drugs, August 18).
Quite why the charge was defended is hard to understand, as admittedly the cannabis was hers and she admitted that she supplied it to others.
An appealagainst conviction seems unlikely to succeed, unless on some technicality we have not heard about.
The quantity of cannabis in her possession was very large, and as she has been supplying it to others, one might very well think that the harm caused more than balanced the good she did for the Kaikohe community. But in any case, should one regard good works as a sort of balance to be maintained against the day when one is caught breaking the law in quite a big way?
Upon the coat tails of her conviction have come the usual group of wilfully ignorant and self-interested people who maintain, against all evidence from people in a position to know, that smoking cannabis is about as harmless as peeing on one's foot, that it should therefore be legalised, that it has never harmed them, that it is an essential but un-recognised part of the medical armamentarium, and that its oil, fed arrogantly and in secret to an unconscious patient on a ventilator, is an excellent way to stop otherwise uncontrollable seizure due to severe brain inflammation. (It didn't work).
There may well be something in the contention that sentencing for possession and supply of the drug is inconsistent throughout the country, but almost unremarked in this saga is the fact that the eminently sensible Law Commission recommended in 2006 that an independent Sentencing Council should be set up to help in ensuring consistency of sentencing and parole.
The government, having had only nine years to consider this, on April 1 this year gave notice that they would not proceed with the establishment of the Sentencing Council, so if you want to blame someone, blame the 'Gumment.'
