Opinion: Let the great unwashed decide on cannabis

New Zealanders will face a referendum on legalising cannabis.

IN 1995, McArthur Wheeler walked into two Pittsburgh banks and robbed them in broad daylight. He made no attempt to even disguise his face.

Later that night he was arrested after videotapes of him robbing the banks were broadcast on the TV news.

When he was shown the surveillance tapes by police, Wheeler was stunned: "But I wore the juice," he said. Wheeler was under the impression that rubbing lemon juice on his face made him invisible to video cameras.

This type of ignorance is referred to as the Dunning-Kruger effect, after a number of studies by these two academics highlighted that average people have a tendency to over-estimate their intelligence. In other words, some people are too stupid to even know they are stupid.

Examples like this lead us to question the ability of the average New Zealander to make a sensible decision in the upcoming referendum on legalising cannabis.

The Government had intended to hold this referendum at the 2020 general election, however, there are calls for the referendum to be held in 2019.

Some would argue that we are a nation of potheads and incapable of knowing what is best for us. Perhaps the decision should be left to our elected representatives who are supposedly the most informed.

However, perhaps calling us a nation of potheads is going too far — a Ministry of Health survey in 2012 showed only 11 per cent of adults aged 15 years and over reported using cannabis in the past 12 months.

But what is the point of having a referendum anyway, if it is not even going to be binding?

We go to the bother of becoming informed (well ... some of us will), and send off our voting paper only to have the Government backtrack and ignore the wishes of the majority of New Zealanders who just might possibly support legalising marijuana. Past governments have done just that; in fact, the Government of the day has ignored every citizens' initiated referendum we have had.

Steve Baron

Ironically, the Green Party argued that the "child smacking" referendum, which garnered 87.4 per cent support from the voting public, should be ignored (which it was), but now argue that the proposed marijuana referendum should be binding on the Government.
Green Party co-leader James Shaw was quoted: "There's not a lot of point holding a referendum if you don't pay any attention to the result." Hypocrisy indeed, but I do support his sentiment. So why aren't all referendums binding as they are in Switzerland and numerous other countries? Well, I believe it is partly due to the Dunning-Kruger effect — "I think I'm smart enough to make a sensible decision in a referendum, but I'm not so sure about you, mate."

And others look at you and think exactly the same. So, if I can't trust you and you can't trust me, best we leave it up to those politicians who also have an inflated opinion of their own abilities ... ?

I should add that over the years I have met a lot of politicians, and I can tell you many of them leave a lot to be desired.

But let's give the last word to Sir Francis Galton, a man who made many important contributions to the field of science.

At one point in his career, Galton set out to prove that full male suffrage should not be extended beyond the propertied classes (something we now take very much for granted). He believed that those lacking in education and wealth should never be involved in the decision-making process, and tried to prove this through the results of an ox-weighing competition at a local fair, where more than 800 people participated.

Most of these folk had no experience in the domain of animal weights, and the average weight guessed was 1197 pounds.

The real weight of the slaughtered animal was 1198 pounds — in other words, people without the proper experience and knowledge can reach a correct answer in aggregate, despite their ignorance. Galton wrote: "The result seems more creditable to the trustworthiness of a democratic judgement than might have been expected."

It's called collective wisdom, Sir Francis, and the collective wisdom of 2.6 million voting New Zealanders is statistically superior to the collective wisdom of 120 MPs.

Steve Baron is a Whanganui-based political commentator, author and Founder of Better Democracy NZ. He holds degrees in economics and political science.