National drug policy summit

A few assorted observations from today's National Drug Policy Summit in Wellington:

1. Ross Bell and his team pulled together a reasonably diverse group. So it's fun.
2. As with many NZ conferences, and especially those with a policy focus or those addressing issues of interest to Maori, we broke unexpectedly (to me) into song. There were lyrics up on the projector, but I sure didn't know the tune.
3. I suspect that it is impossible for policy conferences addressing issues of ethnic or economic decile correlates to avoid spending 30-60 minutes finding a balance between noting how bad the current state of the world is for a disadvantaged group and how we don't want to problematise a disadvantaged group by pointing them out, presenting them as homogeneous, and so on. There should be a single-paragraph boilerplate that covers this for most policy issues. I wish it would be universally adopted.
4. Doug Sellman sought to clarify at the outset whether drugs like sugar were to be ruled out of the discussions.

Follow the hashtag #drugpol13 for further updates. I've been tweeting there a bit. The objective to is hash out some consensus document that might improve policy. I want to know whether their vision of harm reduction includes harm imposed on substance users from restrictions on their access. We'll see.