Pubdate: Sun, 13 Aug 2000
Source: Sunday Star-Times (New Zealand)
Copyright: 2000 Sunday Star-Times
Contact:  1st Floor Press House 82 Willis St PO Box 11347 New Zealand
Fax: +64-4-473 3691
Author: Guyon Espiner

CANNABIS GROUP TO APPROACH BILLIONAIRE

A new group formed to advocate for cannabis law reform is to seek funding 
from the American billionaire who smuggled the drug into New Zealand during 
the America's Cup in January.

The Coalition for Cannabis Law Reform (CCLR) will be launched in Wellington 
on Sunday, bringing together MPs, doctors, students, Maori leaders and 
other pro-reform groups as parliament prepares to review the law.

Sarah Porter of the National Organisation for the Reform of Marijuana Laws 
(NORML) said the CCLR would approach the American billionaire caught 
bringing the drug into Auckland, to assist with funding. The 66-year-old 
businessman, whose name is suppressed, has previously backed a campaign to 
legalise marijuana for medical use.

Labour's Christchurch Central MP Tim Barnett, who as a former lobbyist in 
Britain is advising CCLR on funding, said it was up to the group who it 
approached but its sources were largely irrelevant as long as they were not 
seen as corrupt.

Barnett said the group aimed to provide a rational source of information 
and advocacy while the emotive issue was debated.

"You need an informed organisation to be working with MPs on complex issues 
and I think what this debate has lacked is . . . rational information and 
this group is aiming to provide that," Barnett said.

"I don't think this will settle until the basic unfairness and injustice of 
different treatment for people who use cannabis and who use alcohol and 
tobacco are actually dealt with."

Barnett will attend the launch with Green MP Nandor Tanczos and former 
Youth Affairs Minister Deborah Morris.

Other supporters include the Drug Policy Forum Trust, a group of 
professionals with legal, medical and police backgrounds, the New Zealand 
University Students Association, and the Aotearoa Legalise Cannabis Party.

Clinical psychologist Professor Max Abbott, the Dean of the Faculty of 
Health at Auckland University of Technology, and Peter Love of the 
Wellington Tenths Trust will also attend.

The spokesman for the group will be educational psychologist Les Gray who 
was infamously arrested for cannabis possession after appearing on 
Television New Zealand's Holmes show in 1989 to debate marijuana laws.

The CCLR says its aims include reducing the harm associated with cannabis 
use, ending the criminalisation of users, increasing spending on drug 
education and controlling the economic power of the marijuana black market.

Morris said the group would sharpen debate on the issue.

"It provides a new momentum, a new focus and our objective is to stimulate 
the debate and ensure it is high quality debate," she said.

"We will work with other organisations which feel strongly about the need 
for better controls on drugs in our society, people who have got concerns 
about the wellbeing of young New Zealanders. Our objective is to ensure 
there is a debate which is able to deliver in terms of getting drugs out of 
schools and ensuring any harm associated with cannabis is minimised."

The group has been formed as a review of cannabis laws, pledged by the 
Labour-Alliance government has been delayed as MPs play party politics with 
the issue. The laws are to be reviewed by parliament's health select committee.

National MPs have called on the government to stop the review and have 
joined with the School Trustees Association in running a petition against 
the law reform.
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