The Commission's report on alcohol is due to be publicly released any hour now, although many of its recommendations were leaked by David Farrar last week. The conclusions suggest a curtailment of licensing hours for clubs and pubs, as well as limiting the hours off-license booze can be sold. The purchase age for alcohol should be raised, as should excise taxes, by up to fifty percent.
The Commission's position can be loosely associated with Labour party policy, which attempted to raise the age a few years ago, and were heading towards heavier regulation under their Nanny State platform before the general electorate dumped them in 2008.
National is continuing in their own fashion of Labour-lite conservatism control freakery. The bill that will make effective cold medicines a prescription only drug is wending its way through parliament. As Radio NZ reports, Attorney General Chris Finlayson has released a Bill of Rights impact statement critical of the bill.
Radio NZ also draws attention to a clause I wasn't previously aware of, namely making it a criminal offence to import or sell parts of a pipe or bong:
Every person commits an offence against this Act who—
“(a) supplies, possesses for the purpose of sale or supply, or offers for sale a pipe, other utensil, or identifiable component of a pipe or other utensil whose sale, possession for the purpose of sale or supply, or offering for sale (as the case may be) is absolutely prohibited by a notice issued under subsection (1A); or
“(b) supplies, possesses for the purpose of sale or supply, or offers for sale a pipe, other utensil, or identifiable component of a pipe or other utensil otherwise than in accordance with any condition under which that pipe, other utensil, or identifiable component of a utensil may, under a notice issued under subsection (1A), be supplied, possessed for the purpose of sale or supply, or offered for sale (as the case may be); or
“(c) imports a pipe, other utensil, or identifiable component of a pipe or other utensil otherwise than in accordance with any condition under which that pipe, other utensil, or identifiable component of a pipe or other utensil may, under a notice issued under subsection (1A), be imported.”
Pipes, bongs and "other utensils" are an effective harm minimisation tool, helping to remove tar and impurities that would otherwise be ingested by users. What's more, the lawmakers are missing a fundamental point in all of this. Kiwis with Number 8 Wire technology make this latest prohibition a Class A ass.
In my travels around the country, I have marvelled at the ingenuity that kiwis use to make improvised marijuana devices. Coke bottles and bread bags, corn cobs and big buckets, fish knives and hot stoves, beer cans and bottomless wine bottles, the list goes on. One more stupid law won't make a damned bit of difference to whatever the point was in the first place.
Both the main parties, Labour and National, are of the same narrow mind. If they just write a few more laws, or equip the police with just a few more invasive powers, they can stop 400,000+ NZers a year from smoking pot. The government's war on its citizens continues.
