Gone to pot: New Zealand cools on legalising cannabis

It is believed to be the first country in the world to put the legalisation of recreational cannabis to a national public vote. But amid a pandemic, an election concentrated almost entirely on the Covid-19 crisis, and a simultaneous vote on euthanasia, New Zealand’s upcoming marijuana referendum has not captivated the mainstream public attention that it might have in an ordinary year.

New Zealand would join Canada and Uruguay on the list of countries legalising the sale and use of cannabis for adults if more than half of voters approved it – but public backing for the measure has eroded in polling during 2020, reversing growing support in recent years. In a debate plagued by claims of misinformation from both sides – and taking place during an overcrowded election cycle – some politicians have shied away from the matter altogether, fearing they will end up on the wrong side of a divisive topic.

The proposed law would legalise cannabis for people older than 20 – regulating how it is grown, used and sold – and the referendum question is non-binding; a “yes” vote means the next Parliament would have a mandate to pass it. This month, 35% of 1,000 people surveyed said they would support the proposed law according to a 1 News Colmar Brunton poll, down from 40% in June this year and 43% in November 2019.

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Those opposing the measure rose to 53% in September. Another survey of 1,300 people, conducted by Horizon Research and commissioned by a medicinal cannabis firm, showed 49.5% of those polled supported the law and 49.5% opposed it.

People would be allowed to buy 14g a day of cannabis under the proposed law, and grow two plants. The bill includes advertising restrictions and a cap on how much of the market one company could dominate.

Some politicians have avoided sharing their views – among them Jacinda Ardern, the prime minister and centre-left Labour party leader, who will not say how she plans to vote, but on Wednesday night did admit to having smoked marijuana in the past. The matter “has been designed for the public to decide”, she has said, although some of her senior MPs have supported the law. Judith Collins, the leader of the centre-right National, the main opposition group, has said her entire party would oppose the measure. The left-leaning Greens support it.

For Ardern it made sense to avoid being ensnared in a measure that might fail, analysts said: she is riding high in the polls, her party is close to the threshold to govern alone and holds some of the highest approval numbers ever seen by a New Zealand leader.

‘A slippery slope’

Andrew Geddis, a public law professor at the University of Otago, said that unlike assisted dying – the other referendum question on 17 October – the legalisation of cannabis had never enjoyed clear majority support in New Zealand.

“Those wanting to see a yes vote had to convince a reasonable number of people that their previous prohibitionist views were mistaken,” he said. “At the moment, it doesn’t look like they have been able to do so and time really is running out.”

Supporters of the law have hailed its health and education-based response to the drug. On Tuesday, 60 New Zealanders – some of them high profile, including the former Labour prime minister Helen Clark – launched a publicity campaign asking the public to vote yes in the referendum.

“I think there’s everything to play for with this one,” said Clark, who is also the chair of the Global Commission on Drug Policy. “If you averaged out all the polls, it’s a tough race but it’s doable.”

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Clark said overseas research showed there was not “any evidence of any sustained usage” of cannabis by young people when it was legalised, and the form of the drug that would be sold in New Zealand was “significantly less harmful to health than either tobacco or alcohol”.

She rejected the suggestion that cannabis use had in effect been decriminalised in New Zealand, adding that police discretion on the matter turned a blind eye to control of the supply by organised crime and put particularly Indigenous Māori youth on a “slippery slope” to involvement in the criminal justice system.

Clark said the opposing campaign had been funded from abroad, a claim the “no” group denies.

“We are 100% funded by Kiwi families,” said Aaron Ironside, a spokesperson for Smart Approaches to Marijuana NZ, a coalition of groups. “We have not received a single dollar from corporate or overseas interests.”

The group planned to spend the electoral limit of $NZ300,000 plus tax on its campaign. He pointed out that complaints to the country’s Advertising Standards Authority about its ads had not been upheld.

We need to focus on the health … let’s not create more addicts to do that.

Aaron Ironside, Smart Approaches to Marijuana NZ

Ironside said that for the past two years, the polls had “basically said what they’ve said today”, with a consistent gap between those opposing recreational cannabis and those supporting it. He said the no vote was also concerned with the health of cannabis users, but that did not mean a law change was needed.

“The taxes and excises on alcohol have not been sufficient to cover the social harms of alcohol,” he said. “We need to focus on the health … let’s not create more addicts to do that.”

His group was “not advocating for people to get a conviction for smoking a joint”, Ironside added, but he claimed that was not happening at present.

Official attempts to inform the public include a report led by Juliet Gerrard, the prime minister’s chief science adviser. Cannabis does harm “for some users but not for others”, Gerrard said, but that was not what the referendum question asked voters to decide. “Rather, the vote asks us to decide whether a legal regulated framework will increase or reduce cannabis-related harm,” she said in a July statement.

The report highlighted evidence that Māori were more likely to be arrested for, and convicted of, cannabis-related offences than non-Māori, even after adjusting for rates of use. The disproportionate criminalisation of black users of cannabis was at the heart of debate in the US, where the drug is legal in some states.

More than $NZ1.4bn of public money could be generated each year from legalised cannabis, according to a report this month by the agency BERL which was commissioned by the justice ministry. Its authors predicted legalisation would result in more than 400 cannabis stores, 5,000 new jobs, and a short-term spike in cannabis use that tailed off over three to five years.

If voted down, analysts said, the matter would be unlikely to arise again soon. Clark, the former prime minister, was frustrated that it had been put to the public vote at all. “These issues should be decided by parliament, not referenda,” she said.