Pubdate: Wed, 21 May 2014 Source: Dargaville & District News (New Zealand) Copyright: 2014, Dargaville & District News Contact: http://www.mapinc.org/media/2306 Author: Jared Dennis Page: 3 DIVIDED VIEWS OVER BAN DARGAVILLE'S illegal tinny houses may be the big winners after the government's U-turn on the legal sale of synthetic cannabis. With the change in the law that came into effect on May 8, Dargaville retailer Jonette Bartlett has stopped selling legal highs and has sent back all her stock to suppliers for a refund. But the B'arch Wear owner says she feels that new regulations will force her former customers to go back to smoking marijuana. '' A lot of them aren't happy,'' she says. ''They would like to see something happen around cannabis laws. ''They smoked synthetics so that they could pass drug tests for their jobs. ''It would be good to see cannabis legalised or decriminalised.'' Bartlett says the legal aspect of the law change worries her because people would now have to ''go find a tinny house''. ''There are some people who like to have their glass of wine in the evenings and there are others who like to have a smoke [of cannabis],'' she says. ''They all hop up to go to work the next day, but the smokers are labelled criminals and risk losing their job''. As well as the recreational aspects of the legal highs, Bartlett says her customers also experienced positive medical benefits from smoking synthetic cannabis. A person with back pain could cope with the side effects of their prescribed medicine, while another had fewer epileptic fits. ''Everyone was using it for different reasons,'' Bartlett says. ''It's not just young people who want to get out of it. ''People do not want to feel like criminals when they are using a natural remedy.'' She says she will sell legal highs again if the law changes to allow it. Phil Paikea says he agrees it is likely users will go back to tinny houses, but he does not want legal highs to be reintroduced. Paikea is a family violence intervention advocate for the Bream Bay Community Support Trust and says that everyone he has talked to is pleased to see the ban come into effect. ''We don't want to be dealing with out of control teenagers or adults driving under the influence of a substance that cannot be detected,'' he says. The anti-drug activist, who was a supporter of the protests in Dargaville about synthetic cannabis, says he had heard of a few people in the community who had been badly affected by legal highs and that it featured on violence reports he had seen from Whangarei. Cannabis, on the other hand, has been around for ''as long as I can remember'', he says. ''We are never going to get rid of it. ''This is one less drug (legal highs) that we have to contend with. ''We are losing the battle with so many of the other drugs that we didn't need another one to worry about.'' Paikea says he thinks there is some room to discuss decriminalising marijuana for medicinal use. ''But anything you smoke has got to be bad for you in my opinion. ''Except smoked fish.'' - --- MAP posted-by: Matt