Tuesday 9 September 2014

The weed drives people mad.

Marijuana has an almost unique ability to get people unhinged.

Well, not people. Politicians.

Latest to fall foul of their sanity when it comes to the cannabis?  The Internet Mana menage led by Hone and Laila.

Laila’s DotCon front wants to legalise cannabis, for reasons both fair and foul, but good on them nonetheless for being willing to free smokers who like a wee toke.  Hone’s mana however doesn’t allow him to concede on a subject for which he’s previously called for execution – yes, live execution on television, for peaceful pot dealers.

I did use the word “unhinged.”

This is not the first time politicians had a public spat about what should be a straightforward issue of freedom. You’ll recall that Don Brash’s 2011 election campaign was derailed by his ill-chosen colleague John Banks, when the Minister of Rhyming Slang threw a tantrum over Brash’s perfectly principled proposal to legalise a victimless crime.

We might wish that history would repeat for Laila and Hone.

But that hardly advances the principle, does it.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

The nature of THC makes this issue a bit more complex than drinking where we can easily and fairly reliably tell someone is pissed or not. With widespread drug testing what do you propose to do with people who fail a test because they had (so they say) a puff week ago? What impact does this have on, say, hot air ballooning and train driving?

3:16

paul scott said...

Hone come back , his accident with crazy DKC , he come back to us

paul scott said...

where did Mana come from and dissolve, at least we knew who Hone is and was;
and now the dirty Cunliffe legs wide apart stands for tax,
he has a difficult job

Peter Cresswell said...

@Anonymous: The appropriate legal phrase is "strict liability," with no resort to that over-used legal phrase "diminished responsibility."