Mike Hosking: Legalising cannabis makes no sense

Why are we "wandering down this path of inevitable social health and economic harm" and considering legalising cannabis, asks Mike Hosking. Photo / File

COMMENT:

Ever since the announcement that we are to vote on legalising cannabis, I have been looking for the logic.

A sign from any one of the major players this somehow makes sense.

I can't find any.

I have asked.

I have asked the Prime Minister, I have asked Winston Peters, I have asked Julie Anne Genter.

Not one of them has produced a sensible logical answer as to why we are wandering down this path of inevitable social health and economic harm.

The only response seems to be, what we do now hasn't worked.

Which is true.

But the way we handle a lot of other things hasn't worked either.

Because we don't enforce the laws.

Mobile phone use in cars is illegal, buying alcohol when drunk is illegal, domestic violence is illegal. Yet it all still happens. Using the justification for the cannabis vote, why don't we throw our hands up and legalise it all.

Is cannabis really the most important thing we can have a say on, Mike Hosking wonders. Photo / File

Part of the Government's argument is that it's important we have our say on the issue. Why?

Why this issue? Why only this issue? And if they are going down the referendum track, is cannabis really the most important thing we can have a say on?

Why not tax? Why didn't they put the Capital Gains Tax to a vote?

Why not the Tomorrow's Schools reforms? Why not the workplace reforms?

The answer is because this is one massive MMP sop to the Greens.

The reality is, and sadly they won't be honest about it, most of them don't want it, don't like it, but clearly have some sort of strange pact not to bag the idea publicly. So every time they turn up on a programme like mine and are asked sensible, logical questions they come up with obfuscation and crap.

Is the Government's aim to be smokefree by 2025 at odds with the cannabis referendum and possible legalisation? Photo / File

The worst of them of course is Winston. A man from Northland, a region riddled with cannabis abuse, a region with irreparable harm wrought on it by drugs, and yet he wants to be part of the Government that legalises it.

This is where there is no logic. This is the same Government that spends billions on health and welfare and social ills.

This is a Government that has made deprivation and poverty its calling card.

This is a Government that rails against social upheaval and harm, and yet it's the same Government that now peddles the idea that legalising a drug that'll do nothing but lead to more of the misery they're trying to fix is a good idea.

They want to be smokefree by 2025, and yet they promote more smoking.

They want the road toll at zero and yet we have the revelation that drug driving killed 71 last year.

We have the revelation that recent multi-death tragedies are the result of drivers being "synnied up".

Alcohol, when liberalised, has done nothing but cause the sort of harm any number of lobby groups, health groups, parent groups, and politicians have railed against.

Mike Hosking

They promote legalising weed when they're barely getting off the ground with tests for it for those behind the wheel.

They labour under the delusion that if they regulate it, the gangs will give up selling it.

There is not one single, solid, positive argument for doing what they're doing.

And it's done against the backdrop of all the evidence you need against doing it.

Alcohol, when liberalised, has done nothing but cause the sort of harm any number of lobby groups, health groups, parent groups, and politicians have railed against.

The more available we made it, whether by age and/or retail outlet, it has done nothing but cause community problems.

How is it they can think cannabis will be any different?

This is an aspirational country, and it needs to be led by aspirational governments.

There is nothing aspirational about encouraging drug use.