Former CTU president Helen Kelly has mounted a campaign that seeks to reform the government's procedures over medicinal cannabis. Kelly has blogged about her predicament and campaign - see: Life and death and Cannabis. This must-read post sets out her problems with getting appropriate treatment.
Blogger Russell Brown is strongly critical of what he believes are unreasonable and poorly thought out bureaucratic hoops applicants must jump through to meet the Ministry of Health's criteria - see his blog post, Helen Kelly's letter.
Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne has responded to such criticism saying "The application has... been deferred, not declined, by the ministry, until it receives the information it had requested. The delay in resolving this case, rests, for whatever reason, with the oncologist's ongoing lack of response" - see Jo Moir's Former union boss given two months to live - nearly a year ago.
The only approved medicinal cannabis in New Zealand is the mouth spray Sativex. It is not funded by Pharmac and costs over $1000 a month. Any other product must be approved by Dunne. Moir reports that "As of January 27, the ministry had received 120 applications for medicinal cannabis, of which 105 have been approved. Another five are still in progress and 10 have not been granted for various reasons including the application being withdrawn, cancelled, declined or incomplete."
Peter Dunne continues to receive a lot of flak for his role in the process, especially in relation to Helen Kelly's request. But not everyone is laying the blame entirely at Dunne's feet. In his post, Kia kaha, Helen Kelly, Russell Brown argues that the Minister is far from being the main problem: "Dunne is habitually, and often unfairly, pilloried in these matters. Yet in delivering the new National Drug Policy last year, he had to carefully navigate the National government's cynical and entirely political stance on drug law reform to become the first minister to acknowledge that a significant portion of the harm from illicit drugs lies in the laws that make them illicit. Dunne is also constrained by the official advice he receives."
See also Brown's blog post, A dramatic and unremarkable decision. Notably, in the comments section, the Drugs Foundation CEO, Ross Bell, says "I think what this case highlighted is that our Medicines Act can work really well, in that the minister has the ability to make these decisions. It also shows that, fundamentally, we don't need to change our drug laws to allow medical cannabis (we do need to change laws for lots of other reasons though). All we simply need to do is have a much wider range of medpot products regulated under medicines law (and then have those fully subsidised)."
The Politics of medicinal marijuana
But shouldn't the system be more straightforward? After all, on the face of it, the decision to allow access to medicinal marijuana for those in need should be simple. So "Why are the politics so hard?" asks Danyl Mclauchlan - see his blog post: Politics and meta-messages.
Mclauchlan says it's a question that has baffled him for a while: "The answer, I think, is something experienced politicians know instinctively, which is that when you take a position on an issue and make a statement about it, you actually send two messages to the voters. There's the first, surface message, which in the case of medical marijuana would be about compassion and scientific evidence and easing suffering and so on, and the meta-message, which is that you're partly legalising pot and this makes you a pot-head and a hippy etc. And for many, many voters it is the meta-message, operating on a mostly subconscious basis that is the more powerful and influences their perceptions of the politician or the party sending it."
If the Government is really so concerned about public opinion, then Helen Kelly says it's within their power to find out how the public feels - see Michael Forbes' Helen Kelly wants referendum on legalising cannabis at the next election. Kelly says she has spoken with a number of MPs who support her call for a referendum in 2017.
A Press editorial says this call for a referendum is ultimately "misdirected" - see: Reform, not referendum, needed on medicinal drug laws. The editorial argues, while it's useful for raising awareness of the issue, "A referendum is unnecessary. Medicinal cannabis use is not a conscience issue, it is a clinical one. Any reform should be guided by research and the advice of medical experts rather than a nationwide poll." The newspaper says that if the hurdle is a lack of high-quality research, then "get it".
The issue is obviously not a classic left-right ideological one. Jenesa Jeram of the right-wing think tank The New Zealand Initiative says medical marijuana is a rare case where greater government regulation is desirable on safety grounds - see her column, I agree with Helen Kelly.