Internet Mana deny rift over cannabis policy

Laila Harre, leader of the Internet Party. Photo / Duncan Brown

The leaders of the Internet Mana Party have denied there is a rift between them over the party's cannabis policy.

Laila Harre and Hone Harawera told TV3's The Nation they both supported decriminalising cannabis for medical purposes.

"The Internet Party and the Mana Party have both developed policies around drug law reform," Ms Harre said.

"We have enormous areas of common ground. Firstly, we are both committed to the legalisation of medical marijuana."

Mr Harawera said he was proud to represent Internet Mana's policy.

"Which is to support the use of marijuana for medical purposes and also to call for a comprehensive review of all drug laws, in particular with respect to cannabis, to alcohol and to cigarettes."

The laws around cannabis, alcohol and tobacco were "irrational and inconsistent", Mr Harawera said.

"We have one, tobacco, which is killing more than 5000 New Zealanders every single year. You can walk out of here and buy it in a shop.

"You have another one, which we don't know harm that is being caused, and we're spending more than $100 million every single year trying to police it.

"We could be feeding all of the kids in decile 1 to decile 4 schools for that money."

He said he personally did not support decriminalising cannabis for personal use.

But Ms Harre said the Internet Party policy was to decriminalise personalised use.

"The point of departure for both the Internet Party and the Mana Movement, in terms of personal use, is that we all want to see a shifting of the policing of marijuana and cannabis use from the criminal justice system to the health system.

"We have defined that as requiring the decriminalisation of personal use as a first step."

The party wanted to take cannabis sales away from the black market, she said.

"What the Internet Party wants to do is to develop a model for the proper regulation of cannabis production and distribution which would enable its taxation.

"That will need a lot of community engagement and including engagement with our partners in Mana."