All posts by Richard
Legalise Drugs and Murder
Green Party to decriminalise abortion
The Green Party will decriminalise abortion and assert the right of women to make decisions regarding their own health and the wellbeing of their family or whanau.
But will the Green Party assert the right of unborn women to make decisions regarding their own health? Check your born privilege!
Abortion is currently a crime under the Crimes Act. It is only legal if two consultants agree that the pregnancy would seriously harm the woman’s mental or physical health or that the fetus would have a serious disability.
So let’s get this straight. Abortion is already legal if “the fetus would have a serious disability.” That’s disability based discrimination, isn’t it?
“The Green Party trusts women to make decisions that are best for them and their whānau/family,” Green Party women’s spokesperson Jan Logie said.
“The Green Party believes the time has come for New Zealand to take an honest approach to abortion, to treat it as the health issue it is, and remove it from the crime statutes.
I think the time has come for the Green Party to take an honest approach to abortion, and acknowledge that abortion is killing an unborn child. Abortion is a form of infanticide.
“The fact that 99 percent of abortions are approved on ‘mental health’ grounds and that rape is not grounds for an abortion reveals the dishonesty of the current legal situation.
“By keeping abortion a crime, New Zealand has created an unnecessary stigma around abortion that has led to delays, erratic access to terminations depending on where you are in the country, and unnecessarily late terminations.
Perhaps there should be a stigma around killing babies. Nice to have?
“Decriminalisation will reduce the stigma and judgement that surrounds abortion, and enable abortions to be performed earlier in pregnancy, which is safer for women.
“The Green Party’s policy would allow terminations after 20 weeks gestation only when the woman would otherwise face serious permanent injury to her health or in the case of severe fetal abnormalities
“Our policy will ensure that women have access to neutral counselling, if they want it, and that women who choose to continue with their pregnancy are given more support and are not financially penalised for doing so.
“We would also ensure parents are fully informed about the support available for families and people living with disabilities and address discrimination against disabled people that exists in the current laws around abortion,” Ms Logie said.
I don’t see how the Green Party can “address discrimination against disabled people that exists in the current laws around abortion” by amending the abortion laws to make it legal to kill disabled people in the womb. But maybe my head’s just too muddled by smoking too much of the other thing the Greens want to decriminalise?
When is a disability not a disability? When it’s a severe fetal abnormality.
Green Party women’s spokesperson Jan Logie also posted this clarification on Facebook.
Some people have raised concerns that our policy might allow abortions post 20 weeks based on disability. This is not the intent of the policy. The Greens have a commitment to human rights and the acknowledgement of international obligations runs under all of our policies. The UN Committee with responsibility for the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities (CRPD) has already ruled that any distinction in abortion law on the grounds of fetal abnormality breaches the CRPD so our policy will not do that. The intent is to re to allow abortion after 20 weeks for a baby who has conditions so severe that they are extremely unlikely to survive post birth.
So the intent is to allow abortion after 20 weeks for a baby who has conditions so severe that they are extremely unlikely to survive post birth. But not if those severe conditions are fetal abnormalities. What other severe conditions are such that a baby is unlikely to survive post birth? Being sucked out of the womb with a vacuum cleaner?
Provisions later in the policy make it clear that we wish to extend protections against disability based discrimination.
We just read (above) that abortion is already legal if “the fetus would have a serious disability.” Is this the disability based discrimination the Greens want to protect against?
Also, if a baby has “conditions so severe that they are extremely unlikely to survive post birth,” why not just let nature take its course? That would be the Green thing to do, after all.
I’m not sure what disgusts me the most. Killing babies in the womb or the Green Party’s blatant contradictions, Orwellian newspeak and senseless rape of the English language.
Tracinski’s ratchet
The last time I stood as a candidate for the Libertarianz Party was in the 2008 general election. We gained 0.05% of the party vote. We needed to gain 5% of the party vote to reach the MMP threshold and get 6 libertarian MPs in Parliament.
We needed to be 100 times more popular with voters. But then what? What if we gained 5% of the vote and ended up with 6 libertarian MPs in Parliament? What would we actually do once we got in there?
To be honest, I didn’t give the question a great deal of thought at the time. But Peter Cresswell did. He advocated a principled rule of thumb which I’m going to call Tracinski’s ratchet.
Writing in the Intellectual Activist (July 1995), Robert Tracinski says
In judging a measure, one cannot hold it responsible for all aspects of a mixed economy – only for those aspects it changes. These changes can be evaluated by a straightforward application of the principle of individual rights: Does the reform remove some aspect of government control or does it add more control? … It is not a compromise to advocate reduced government control in one sphere even if controls in other spheres are left standing. It is a compromise, on the other hand, if one seeks to purchase increased freedom in one area at the price of increased control in another.
PC called this rule of thumb a ratchet for freedom. Or, more freedom with no new coercion. Or (as I remember it, anyway), new white, no new black.
It looks almost like a corollary of the Libz slogan More Freedom Less Government, doesn’t it?
Here’s what PC says in his post Transitions to freedom: Shall we kill them in their beds?
Start with what you find, and design the means to work step by step towards your goal, without ever purchasing increased freedom at the expensed of increased coercion. This is what is meant by the phrase ‘ratchet for freedom.’
A principled opposition — call them ‘Party X’ — would promote such policies. … The principle with each policy must be clear: More freedom with no new coercion.
PC then gives a couple of examples of policies that pass the test (including my own Transitional Drug Policy) but also some that fail. Here are a couple of the proposals that fail.
Flat Tax: Here’s another example of this same error. A “low flat tax” would reduce taxes for some, true, but this reduction would be purchased at the expense of increased sacrifice by those whose present tax rates are below the chosen flat rate. Far preferable is the Libertarianz transitional proposal (and Green policy) to offer a threshold below which no tax at all is paid, along with the slow and gradual increase in the level of this threshold.
School Vouchers: The idea of school vouchers is popular (not least with the purveyors of twilight golf and the owners of Wananga o Aoteaora). Vouchers do purchase wider choice, it’s true, but only at the expense of either bringing private schools even more under the Ministry’s boot (as a once relatively free early childhood sector now understands), or of throwing the taxpayer’s money away on bullshit. Best just to give the schools back and be done with it.
Two policies very popular with the libertarianish ACT Party. You can now see why Lindsay Perigo dubbed them the Association of Compulsion Touters. Not pure enough! Pragmatism over principles and how soon until we arrive at the bottom of the slippery slope?
The problem with Tracinski’s ratchet is that it doesn’t work. If Tracinski’s ratchet doesn’t allow us to move from an oppressive, progressive tax regime to a low, flat tax then what use is it, really? If Tracinski’s ratchet doesn’t allow us to move away from one-size-fits-all state factory farms of the mind to a school voucher system any time soon, then patience is a virtue.
Here’s a thought experiment to illustrate the general nature of the problem.
Suppose we were lucky enough that we already lived in a prosperous country with a low, flat tax rate. (The opposite of the actual case, but just suppose.) And suppose that the Libz got elected to Parliament and found themselves in opposition to a fiscally irresponsible socialist “tax and spend” government. Suppose that the government tables legislation—let’s indulge in some newspeak and call it the Fair Tax Act—that would replace the low, flat tax rate with an oppressive, progressive tax regime but with the sweetener of a tax-free income threshold of, say, $25,000. How would the Libz vote?
The new tax system means some new freedom. Low income earners will find themselves paying less tax. More of their own money staying in their own pockets. But the new tax system also means lots of new coercion. Middle to top income earners will find themselves paying a lot more tax. So, some new freedom but also some new coercion. The measure fails to pass the Tracinski’s ratchet test. Libz vote against it.
But the government passes the measure anyway. And, over the next Parliamentary term, the economy suffers. (Predictably enough.) All the economic indicators are bad. So bad that the main opposition party campaigns on the platform of repealing the Fair Tax Act. And wins the election! The Libz also sneak back in, too.
Now suppose that the new government tables legislation—let’s call it the Fair Tax Repeal Act—that would simply revert to the previous low, flat tax regime. Gone is the oppressive, progressive tax regime but so, too, is the tax-free income threshold. How would the Libz vote?
Reverting to the previous tax system means lots of new freedom. Middle to top income earners will find themselves paying less tax. More of their own money staying in their own pockets. But reverting to the previous tax system also means some new coercion. Low income earners will find themselves paying a lot more tax than they were before. So, some new freedom but also some new coercion. The repeal measure fails to pass the Tracinski’s ratchet test. Libz vote against it.
So there’s the problem right there. Nearly always, Tracinski’s ratchet means that bad legislation cannot be straightforwardly repealed. Unless it is really, really bad legislation. Bad through and through. Didn’t give anyone any new freedoms at the time, so repealing it isn’t going to take any new freedoms away, just restore old ones.
(PC does offer a partial defence of Tracinski’s ratchet, but I’ll get to discussing that in a future blog post. I’m not done with Tracinski’s ratchet yet! Spoiler. A partial defence isn’t good enough, and the whole concept of Tracinski’s ratchet is deeply flawed.)
The Psychoactive Substances Act is really, really bad legislation. Bad through and through. Pure evil, in fact. It meant plenty of new coercion (thousands of previously legal recreational drugs banned) and no new freedom. Some manufacturers and retailers were allowed to continue to sell products they were already legally selling, but only if they applied for and were granted interim product licences at $10k a pop. No new freedom, just more new coercion. And now the Act has been amended. All interim product licences have been revoked. Yet more new coercion.
So Tracinski’s ratchet would, at least, allow Libz MPs to vote to repeal the Psychoactive Substances Act. But only because it is thoroughly bad.
The Misuse of Drugs Act is thoroughly bad legislation, too.
Repeal the PSA! Repeal the MODA! End the War on Drugs™!
Oh, wait. That’s right. I almost forgot that over the past year I’ve changed tack and sailed off course and become an apologist for Socialist Statism. We can’t just repeal our draconian drug laws, damn it. Because that would be way too much freedom all at once. People might overdose and put pressure on the public health system and we can’t have that. Got to keep costs down and taxes up.
It is my personal view that we should legalise all drugs. But in an orderly, paternalistic, supervised fashion. Starting with cannabis. Let’s see how cannabis legalisation goes, and take it from there. If it were up to me, I’d rank all drugs in order of safety, and legalise them in that order, over an extended period of time. That’s my policy. Obviously, most of the recently banned synthetic cannabinoids would be some way down the list …
Disposable heroes
I made a list of my top 10 all-time heroes.
A paedophile, a philanderer, an anti-semite, a slave-owner, a shoplifter, a misogynist, a mass murderer, a devil worshipper, a guerilla ontologist and a backgammon player.
So much for human role models.
RIP Alexander Shulgin
Psychonaut Alexander Shulgin has died.
Kua hinga te tōtara o te wao nui o Tāne
Thank you and God bless you, Sasha.
Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You shut the door of the kingdom of heaven in people’s faces. You yourselves do not enter, nor will you let those enter who are trying to.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You travel over land and sea to win a single convert, and when you have succeeded, you make them twice as much a child of hell as you are.
“Woe to you, blind guides! You say, ‘If anyone swears by the temple, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gold of the temple is bound by that oath.’ You blind fools! Which is greater: the gold, or the temple that makes the gold sacred? You also say, ‘If anyone swears by the altar, it means nothing; but anyone who swears by the gift on the altar is bound by that oath.’ You blind men! Which is greater: the gift, or the altar that makes the gift sacred? Therefore, anyone who swears by the altar swears by it and by everything on it. And anyone who swears by the temple swears by it and by the one who dwells in it. And anyone who swears by heaven swears by God’s throne and by the one who sits on it.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You give a tenth of your spices—mint, dill and cumin. But you have neglected the more important matters of the law—justice, mercy and faithfulness. You should have practiced the latter, without neglecting the former. You blind guides! You strain out a gnat but swallow a camel.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You clean the outside of the cup and dish, but inside they are full of greed and self-indulgence. Blind Pharisee! First clean the inside of the cup and dish, and then the outside also will be clean.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You are like whitewashed tombs, which look beautiful on the outside but on the inside are full of the bones of the dead and everything unclean. In the same way, on the outside you appear to people as righteous but on the inside you are full of hypocrisy and wickedness.
“Woe to you, teachers of the law and Pharisees, you hypocrites! You build tombs for the prophets and decorate the graves of the righteous. And you say, ‘If we had lived in the days of our ancestors, we would not have taken part with them in shedding the blood of the prophets.’ So you testify against yourselves that you are the descendants of those who murdered the prophets. Go ahead, then, and complete what your ancestors started!
“You snakes! You brood of vipers! How will you escape being condemned to hell? Therefore I am sending you prophets and sages and teachers. Some of them you will kill and crucify; others you will flog in your synagogues and pursue from town to town. And so upon you will come all the righteous blood that has been shed on earth, from the blood of righteous Abel to the blood of Zechariah son of Berekiah, whom you murdered between the temple and the altar. Truly I tell you, all this will come on this generation.
“Jerusalem, Jerusalem, you who kill the prophets and stone those sent to you, how often I have longed to gather your children together, as a hen gathers her chicks under her wings, and you were not willing. Look, your house is left to you desolate. For I tell you, you will not see me again until you say, ‘Blessed is he who comes in the name of the Lord.’” (NIV)
Distracting from
your deficiencies
while you point at others.
(Once) enlightened
you judge and execute.To be the only one
to discover the seven,
(To) toss open and pass
the gates to heaven.
Harm minimisation vs. harm elimination
It’s important to say what you mean and mean what you say.
If you don’t say what you mean and mean what you say, you will likely be misunderstood.
The trouble is, even if you do say what you mean and mean what you say, you will still likely be misunderstood!
Sad but true.
It all goes back to the Babel incident recorded in the Book of Genesis.
Then they said, “Come, let us build ourselves a city, with a tower that reaches to the heavens, so that we may make a name for ourselves; otherwise we will be scattered over the face of the whole earth.”
But the Lord came down to see the city and the tower the people were building. The Lord said, “If as one people speaking the same language they have begun to do this, then nothing they plan to do will be impossible for them. Come, let us go down and confuse their language so they will not understand each other.”
So the Lord scattered them from there over all the earth, and they stopped building the city. That is why it was called Babel—because there the Lord confused the language of the whole world. From there the Lord scattered them over the face of the whole earth. (NIV)
Later, much later … we have modern telecommunications technology. We have the Internet and language translators such as the Babelfish). Microsoft readies real-time language translator for Skype. Is anything we plan now possible for us?
No, it’s not. Our language is still confused! People can’t seem to speak clearly. Ambiguity is ubiquitous. Even if we do say what we mean and mean what we say … it takes two to tango. Communication is as much the listener’s responsibility as the speaker’s. People can’t seem to speak clearly, and they can’t seem to listen clearly either. They’ll hear you say what they thought you meant. Even before you said it.
Even if what you meant is what you said and what you said is what you meant, you will still likely be misunderstood!
Here’s a recent case study. It’s an edited snippet of a conversation I had on Facebook with a libertarian friend. (No prizes for guessing whom!)
Do you agree that a government should minimise the unjust harm the government actively inflicts on its own citizens? Yes or No?
No it must be absolutely eliminated…and it is *we the people* who do this…. not the government itself. *they dont make the rules. We do. They merely enforce the duties we delegate to them…. Government for the People… by the people.
Their Duty is to *uphold our rights*….. whether or not we Harm ourselves to a greater or lesser extent…. via ignorance or choice.
When you say Governments unjust harm should be ‘minimised’ rather than eliminated, you are saying that there is a tolerable level unjust harm that is allowable….
That’s not what I’m saying at all. Or is it?!
verb: minimise
reduce (something, especially something undesirable) to the smallest possible amount or degree.
To minimise harm is to reduce harm to the smallest possible amount or degree.
To eliminate harm is to reduce harm to zero.
To minimise harm or to eliminate harm completely? These come to the exact same thing if it turns out that the smallest possible amount of harm is zero! The question is, consistent with its ongoing role as a properly functioning proper government, what is the smallest possible amount of unjust harm the government can actively inflict on its own citizens? Is it, in fact, zero?
It’s not zero.
What is the proper function of a proper government? My friend says that government’s duty
is to *uphold our rights*
but what the hell does that even mean? Uphold? Wat.
According to my understanding of libertarianism, the government really has only two proper functions, viz., defence of the realm and administration of justice.
For defence of the realm, we have the Ministry of Defence … and (arguably) the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (but not Trade).
For administration of justice, we have the Ministry of Justice … and the subsidiary Ministry of Police and Ministry of Corrections (so-called).
The police are there to apprehend those who infringe our rights. The prison system is there to punish the perpetrators, according to principles of justice. To “uphold” our rights is merely to apprehend those who infringe our rights and bring them to justice … after the fact. Strictly speaking, according to my libertarian philosophy, the police have no business preventing crime. That’s what private security companies are for.
Now, let’s consider the government’s proper function of administering justice. Because of the very nature of earthly justice systems, it turns out that the smallest possible amount of unjust harm a government may inflict on its own citizens is greater than zero.
Sad but true.
In administering justice, earthly justice systems are prone to two basic kinds of error. Punishing the innocent and letting the guilty walk free. These two errors are not independent.
We could eliminate the first kind of error—punishing the innocent—by letting everyone walk free. But that would be a cop-out. It would not be administering justice at all.
We could eliminate the second kind of error—letting the guilty walk free—by locking everyone up. But that would be to unjustly harm the innocent en masse. It would not be administering justice at all.
In practice, our justice system is heavily weighted towards avoiding the second kind of error. As a result, very few innocent people are ever sent to prison. As a result, very many guilty people walk free.
Governments harm people. Even proper libertarian governments. Unfortunately, there is a tolerable level of unjust harm that is allowable. It’s just a harsh fact of life but one that we must accept.
Memories of Peter Dunne
Wednesday night last week I was at the Backbencher pub on Molesworth Street, across the road from Parliament Buildings, for the filming of the first episode of the 2014 season of Back Benches.
Back Benches is a political panel discussion show. Hosted by Wallace Chapman and Damien Grant, it airs on Prime TV 10:30 pm Wednesday evenings, having been filmed earlier in the evening. It’s a great show. (You can watch it here.)
Last week’s political panel featured Labour MP Trevor Mallard, National MP Mark Mitchell, Green MP Jan Logie … and Peter Dunne. Topics included cannabis law reform … and animal testing.
Animal testing has been a hot topic in New Zealand in the last couple of years because of the Psychoactive Substances Act. The Psychoactive Substances Act, which became law in July last year, made provision for the testing of new psychoactive substances on animals. Peter Dunne, the National government’s Associate Health Minister, was the bill’s main architect and front man.
Earlier this month, in a surprise (to some) move, Parliament enacted the Psychoactive Substances Amendment Bill. The amendment, drafted by Peter Dunne himself, rules out the prospect of any testing of psychoactive substances on animals being incentivised by the government. This is very good news.
Section 12 replaced (Duty of advisory committee relating to use of animals when evaluating psychoactive products)
Replace section 12 with:
“12 Advisory committee not to have regard to results of trials involving animals
“(1) In performing the function set out in section 11(2)(a), the advisory committee must not have regard to the results of a trial that involves the use of an animal.
“(2) However, the advisory committee may have regard to the results of a trial undertaken overseas that involves the use of an animal if the advisory committee considers that the trial shows that the psychoactive product would pose more than a low risk of harm to individuals using the product.”
Wednesday night last week, Peter Dunne made the following remarks.
Can I just say two things.
I’m in favour of testing for medicinal purposes on low down the stratum [sic] sets of animals.
With regard to psychoactive substances I ruled dogs and that level out as long ago as November 2012. They were never, ever in the frame. The debate subsequently was about rodents and more latterly rabbits …
Well, that’s not how I remember it. I remember a headline from December 2012 which told a very different story.
Last year hundreds marched against animal testing. With their beagles. It’s not how they remember it, either.
Is still my opinion.
But how do we best square what Peter Dunne said last week with what he apparently said and thought back in December 2012?
Let’s canvas the possibilities.
1. The Sunday Star Times misreported.
2. Peter Dunne misspoke.
3. Peter Dunne is in denial about what he said.
4. Peter Dunne is trying to rewrite history.
Politicians lie. We know this because their lips move. Peter Dunne is a consummate politician. So I’m rooting for option (4). Otherwise, it’s hard to explain why Dunne is so specific about the date. “I ruled dogs out as long ago as November 2012.” Except that he didn’t.
Here’s what I think really happened. I think Peter Dunne lacks empathy. Otherwise, how to explain this? And he simply forgot to remember that normal people consider the gratuitous poisoning and killing of household pets to be morally unacceptable.
Back to basics
This meme has been doing the rounds of drug law reform social networks. Regular readers may have seen it once or twice already.
In this post I want to consider the message that this meme is sending to young people. And what this meme means for drug law reformers in general and for libertarians in particular.
Drugs can ruin your life
For sure. Drugs can, and do, harm people. Drug harms can be measured. See, for example, the Nutt scale. And drug harms can be prevented.
so if I catch you with them I’m sending you to jail and ruining your life.
One way to prevent drug harms is to prevent people from taking drugs. One way to prevent people from taking drugs is to send them to jail. But being sent to jail ruins your life.
The harms caused by criminalising drug use can also be measured and it turns out that the cure is worse than the disease. Prohibition doesn’t work. The War on Drugs™ is an expensive, epic failure. The harms caused by criminalising drugs outweigh and/or add to and exacerbate the harms caused by the drugs themselves.
So say the majority of drug law reformers. In the interests of harm minimisation, we must abandon the failed policy of prohibition and try a new approach to preventing drug harms. The three pillars of harm minimisation are demand reduction, supply control and problem limitation. So we must educate (to reduce demand), regulate (to control supply) and treat (to limit problems).
But wait! Who’s being forced to pay for all this harm minimisation? Asks the libertarian. Since when was harm minimisation a proper role of government? The proper role of government is to uphold our rights, not to save us from ourselves.
Drugs can ruin your life
The stock libertarian response is, if you’re worried that drugs can ruin your life, don’t take them. In other words, so what?
so if I catch you with them I’m sending you to jail and ruining your life.
It’s the bottom bit of the message that ought to make libertarians sit up and take notice. The proper role of government is to uphold our rights, not to save us from ourselves, and certainly not to violate our rights by sending us to jail! Governments can and do catch people with drugs, send them to jail and ruin their lives. Governments harm people by doing that. Governments shouldn’t harm people. So it turns out that harm minimisation is a proper role of government, after all.
I briefly looked at the types of harms governments should try to minimise in a previous post.
The overarching goal of the [New Zealand government’s National Drug] Policy, to prevent and reduce the harms that are linked to drug use, is a noble one. However, we must distinguish between three main kinds of drug-related harms
1. Harms which individuals inflict upon themselves, or inflict upon others with their consent
2. Harms which individuals inflict upon others without their consent
3. Harms which governments inflict upon their citizensLibertarianz says that the government should not seek to save people from themselves, and most certainly should not harm its own citizens. The government should seek to bring to justice those who commit thefts, assaults, rapes and murders, whether such criminal acts are drug-fuelled or not.
It’s by focussing on this third category that I believe we can, as libertarians, make a contribution to National Drug Policy while maintaining our philosophical integrity.
Harm minimisation is a proper role of government, but only the minimisation of certain harms and not others. Minimising the harms we inflict upon ourselves is not the legitimate business of the state. Minimising the harms the state inflicts on its own citizens is very much the legitimate business of the state. Governments ought to be forced to take the Hippocratic Oath! Above all, do no harm.
Last year, the New Zealand government did what seemed to be a very libertarian thing. It stood back and let us get on with the business of harming ourselves by smoking untested, unsafe, novel synthetic cannabinoids. This month, the New Zealand government apparently reverted to its authoritarian ways and banned the sale and use of all synthetic cannabinoids until further notice.
All is not as it seems. By allowing us to harm ourselves, the government was inflicting harm on us!
How so? What I just said is bound to sound paradoxical, or even duplicitous, unless you stand back and get the bigger picture. In my previous post, syndicated from Life Behind The IRon Drape, Mark Hubbard stands back and gets the bigger picture.
This is what the 119 that I declared a philosophical war upon, have done. They legalised a line of hardcore addictive drugs in the league of P or heroin, nothing similar to the non-toxic, non-addictive, medicinal cannabis that many other countries are sensibly legalising, and then by keeping cannabis criminalised they successfully addicted possibly thousands of mainly young Kiwis to the equivalent of heroin, because by taking the legal heroin they would not face the force of the law, or lose their jobs, unlike smoking cannabis for which they would be convicted in the government war on drugs. So government policy addicted them to heroin, and I’ll keep making this point …
Context is important. He who would trade safely implemented and lasting drug law reform for some temporary liberty, deserves neither. Sometimes, a little freedom is a dangerous thing.
I’m given to understand that this revised meme is what most of my fellow drug law reform activists are fighting for. Well, being sent to rehab is better than being sent to jail, isn’t it? I suppose so.
Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Libertopia any more.
The police officer in the picture is Anthony DiPonzio of the Rochester Police Department in New York. DiPonzios is both a perpetrator and a victim in the War on Drugs™. In 2009
DiPonzio, 23, was shot in the back of the head on a city street after questioning a few people about alleged drug activity on Saturday, Jan. 31. Tyquan Rivera, 14, of 65 Dayton St., Rochester, turned himself in to Rochester police Tuesday, Feb. 3. He will be tried as a juvenile and could face up to 10 years in prison if convicted.
“We are pleased to share that officer DiPonzio continues to make significant progress in recovering from his serious wound. He is speaking this morning, and we are very pleased with his notably improving condition, which is far ahead of where we expected him to be at this point.”
“He has made such significant progress that – based on his current condition – we anticipate he will be able to transfer from Rochester General Hospital to Unity Health System’s Brain Injury Rehabilitation Unit early next week.”
Legal Heroin Ban: PSA and the Evil of Politics.
It’s a great relief to me that at least one of my libertarian friends gets it.
This compelling piece on the diabolical Psychoactive Substances Act by atheist blogger and fellow freedom fighter Mark Hubbard is so good, I’m syndicating it.
Be sure to check out more of Mark’s blog. I wish I had more time to read his posts.
Legal Heroin Ban: PSA and the Evil of Politics.
I wish I had more time to write this post.
Search this blog for the Psychoactive Substances Bill, animal welfare, or animal testing, and you’ll see around the time that 119 of New Zealand’s 120 members of Parliament were enacting infamy, their egos driving them for a world first, I was warning them of the inhumanity they were about to force on us. Although now that the results of legalising synthetic, toxic poison – on the heinous principle of animal testing for our human recreation- has been in place for less than a year, even I am left breathless at the devastation and misery that has been caused.
This is what the 119 that I declared a philosophical war upon, have done. They legalised a line of hardcore addictive drugs in the league of P or heroin, nothing similar to the non-toxic, non-addictive, medicinal cannabis that many other countries are sensibly legalising, and then by keeping cannabis criminalised they successfully addicted possibly thousands of mainly young Kiwis to the equivalent of heroin, because by taking the legal heroin they would not face the force of the law, or lose their jobs, unlike smoking cannabis for which they would be convicted in the government war on drugs. So government policy addicted them to heroin, and I’ll keep making this point, heroin, which is what I’m calling it from now on, because that’s what this drek is: these MP’s have been hiding behind the euphemisms legal high and synthetic cannabis for too long. They legalised a hardcore, psychosis forming, addictive drug while keeping the harmless option criminalised.
And then much worse. Because it’s election year, and Campbell Live has been exposing the ruined lives that have been addicted to legal heroin, Labour decided it would be a vote catcher to announce a policy of banning it. Not to be outdone, merely minutes before Labour announcing its ban yesterday, the instigator of legal heroin, Peter Dunne, whose son, remember, is the foremost legal representative to the legal heroin industry, in a knee-jerk political action announced his own ban of all 41 legal brands of heroin currently on sale, from two weeks hence.
Now, hands up those who understand addiction, who believe that these new government created addicts are going to miraculously stop taking their heroin fix in two weeks? Of course they’re not: they can’t. No what Dunne has done with the ill-thought out ban, as the solution to his incompetent, ill-thought out legislation, is deliver a brand new customer base to organised crime; the violent gangs whom will happily take up supply at some magnitude of the current price, meaning a burglary crime wave is also headed our way. (Perhaps young James Dunne better line up his legal aide application.)
Has there been a better example of the evil transacted by government in New Zealand in our recent history? Noting an important point made by one tweeter that opposition to the Psychoactive Substances Act, is still consistent with the belief I hold that prohibition does not work: it’s just that in this case government policy actually forced users to take the most harmful of drugs, by keeping harmless cannabis criminalised. As I write in too many of my posts; you can’t make this stuff up. Thousands of lives ruined chasing world first law-making – that is, one man’s ego – which is a disaster, and yet still, despite the evidence world-wide, including the states in the US seemingly experiencing no problems with cannabis legalisation, not a single MP in New Zealand talking of legalising non-toxic, non-addictive cannabis, to perhaps keep some of these new heroin addicts out of the clutches of the gangs while the ban is on. (Or forget the PSA, at the very least, to look at putting cannabis into hospitals to help manage the side-affects of cancer treatments, and many other of the medicinal uses cannabis has.)
I revise my former oft used epigraph by saying we’re something a lot worse than a kindy of a country.
There are some questions I will quickly recite to end, but first another principled point. This post is all about ethics, but the MSM and majority of the political blogs will cynically write this up as part of the political game: who announced the ban first, how will it affect election chances et al. Most, other than John Campbell – and good on you John – will forget the addicts. This blog is probably considered by most as a political blog, which is ironic, as I hate politics, and politicians who are taking us all at pace from the free, civilised society, to their brave new world of politick, which is a slave pit where the masses are kept chilled with legal heroin. Aldous Huxley got it right. Was Peter Dunne concerned with the addicts here? Hell no, his reply to Labour MP Iain Lees-Galloway on that party’s proposed bill:
@IainLG @caffeine_addict @manstaneditor and do you really think the government would have given you a victory on this?— Peter Dunne (@PeterDunneMP) April 27, 2014
There’s no victory here Peter, we’re all losers. If there is one bit of justice out of this it will be your disappearance after this year’s general election.
Questions for the 119 MPs:
Dunne has stated all current 41 heroins will be banned until they pass the test of ‘low or no risk’: however as the legal heroin industry pointed out last night in a tweet, there are still no guidelines set out by our inept law makers as to what constitutes low or no risk. So what is this criteria? And after that, show factually why the plant cannabis does not comply, because I’m willing to bet it does, and you won’t need to test a single animal for that, just look at cannabis use by humans over the last 6,000 years, with not one recorded death from toxicity.
I originally wrote on this Act when in bill form from the point of view of the cruel animal testing it proposed, which via a series of nationwide protests, Kiwis thankfully showed themselves to be implacably against, to the extent that to this stage no animals have been tortured for our recreation under the Psychoactive Substances Act. However in the last tweet from Mojo Mathers to myself, she stated that the expert advisory panel set up to look at the testing of this heroin was still stuck on – the barbarity – of using animals for reproductive testing, thus animal testing is still on the laboratory table.
I suspect there will now be huge pressure to use animal testing as a way to get one of these heroin brands back into the shops, and the economics of this has been changed. Formerly the cost of testing was prohibitive, however that cost is now tempered by the carrot of getting a single heroin to market, and so a legal monopoly.
Will every one of the infamous 119 MP’s who voted for this monstrosity, please put on record if you are going to allow a single animal to be harmed under the Psychoactive Substances Act. Don’t you worry responding Peter Dunne: I’ve realised via this you’re a vainglorious, ego driven man who couldn’t care less about an animal’s welfare (or a human’s as it has ended up.)
Signing off in my usual disgust.