Bastia Bulletin: Big fish makes quite a splash

Frank Greenall

New Zealand First has landed a big one from Te Hiku o te Ika -- the tail of the fish, aka the Far North.

The biggie is Shane Jones, the ex-Labourite who was offered a gold-plated Kava Card by the Nats to chill out of harm's way in lava-lava land.

But now Jonesy has hitched a ride on a friendly whale, with Winston giving him a berth in Whangarei -- and, undoubtedly, a cosy party list ticket back to Parliament.

Always good for a sound bite, Jones Boy has hit the ground running on TV's talking heads circuit.

Shane has got a good turn of phrase. He might have inherited a bit of it from a namesake and another famous Awanui (just north of Kaitaia) alumnus -- Peter Jones.

Untouchable? Shane Jones is taking outdated inspiration from Eliot Ness (pictured).

Peter the fisherman was a whale of a man too, but better known for his rugby prowess and the immortal "I'm absolutely buggered" after the 1956 victorious fourth test against the Springboks, in which he belied his bulk and sprinted away to score the crucial try.

Shane was similarly not slow off the mark in latching on to the Far North's hot potato issue -- the P epidemic. Symptomatic of how much damage the noxious chemical is inflicting, even the gangs are getting worried.

But Shane has the answer -- he reckons we need to channel Eliot Ness and his faithful band of Untouchables, who fought it out with the American Prohibition gangsters, and stick a similar SWAT squad on to the Far North meth merchants.

Eliot's escapades made for some great television 30 years after his heyday, courtesy of Robert Stack's swarthy good looks and Caped Crusader antics. But the reality is the Untouchables didn't take the illegal hooch barons down, the abolition of Prohibition did -- the authorities sensibly decided it wasn't a war they were ever going to win.

It didn't do Eliot himself much good, either. He died near broke, having been reduced to repping for a hamburger pattie company.

But Shane wants him back anyway ... maybe he's just nostalgic for a new series of his old TV favourite, and still hasn't got the message that fighting fire with flamethrowers isn't such a bright idea.

Post-Prohibition, the United States found itself with a massive, but now idle, anti-illicit substance bureaucracy. A new war needed to be invented, and cannabis became the new villain. This eventuated in President Richard Nixon's official War on Drugs -- probably the most expensive lost cause in history.

The illegality itself was what was artificially pumping the money into the whole business and making it all so damn attractive for the baddies. Talk about throwing petrol on the fire.

Unbelievably, this has been our main anti-drug strategy for many decades. The big fear was to be seen to be supposedly "soft" on drugs. It was okay to be incredibly stupid on drugs -- just not "soft".

Our current strategies so spectacularly don't work that New Zealand has among the highest -- if not the highest -- cannabis and meth usage in the world, and virtually all those who want to be using the drugs are. But, incredibly, people in high places think we're on to it.

Finally, a few glimmers of light are penetrating the blockhead mentality, and a realisation that it might be more effective to take the hot money out and replace it with education and treatment.

A few of our -- albeit minor -- political parties are even going there. Advocates cite Portugal, which successfully decriminalised personal possession of all drugs in 2001. Even Canada's about to change its punitive drug regime.

New Zealand has been ideally placed to pioneer progressive and effective drug strategies, but we've opted to retain dumb and expensive stone-age tactics.

Just as well we didn't apply the same degree of intelligence to the America's Cup, where we managed "Untouchable" status without an Eliot Ness in sight.