Cannabis reform

Russell Brown's take on cannabis law reform over at RNZ:

Yet, the CRC may still learn lessons from what's happened abroad. Alison Holcomb, the criminal justice director of American Civil Liberties Union in Washington state, who helped design the successful initiative there seven years ago, says that "voters responded strongly to messages that reassured them about tight control of this novel policy experiment. Messages about freedom and individual rights fell flat. I continue to believe that acknowledging basic human nervousness about change is always important."

Tamar Todd, legal director of the Drug Policy Alliance, who jointly authored California's Proposition 64, says voters in her state wanted reassurance in detail. That's what they got: the full text of Proposition 64 ran to more than 100,000 words of legal and technical definitions and proposed amendments to laws and regulations, together making up the Adult Use of Marijuana Act.

This is one reason I think we should be modelling cannabis legalisation on our existing framework for supply and sale of spirits. There is no time before the referendum to write up the kind of detail provided in Prop 64. But we could adapt our existing framework.