New Zealand started off accepting cannabis as a medicine. The below article from the Auckland Star in 1871 reveals that it was used at the time as an alternative to more powerful drugs like opium.
ASTHMA. Auckland Star 6 May 1871
An ad in the Lyttelton Times in 1889 reveals that it was also thought to be helpful for asthma, nervous coughs, chronic laryngitis, hoarseness, loss of voice, facial neuralgia and insomnia.
Page 6 Advertisements Column 2 Lyttelton Times 12 August 1889
It was even used in a recipe for corns, which was something I suspect that a lot of miners who read the Pelorus Guardian and Miners’ Advocate suffered from.
GERMAN CORN CURE. Pelorus Guardian and Miners’ Advocate. 26 July 1907
TO RELIEVE CORNS. Rodney and Otamatea Times, Waitemata and Kaipara Gazette 3 April 1912
By the early nineteen hundreds, however, society’s view of the ‘medicine’ had changed dramatically.
THE DOPE OF THE EAST. Hastings Standard 9 May 1914
DRUNK ON DUST Alexandra Herald and Central Otago Gazette 16 January 1924
£15,000 WORTH OF DOPE SEIZED. Horowhenua Chronicle 30 September 1932
THE DRUG MENACE Waipa Post November 1935
Today we have a government wanting to turbocharge the cannabis industry by allowing it to be grown at a scale that has never been seen before. Only the very naive could imagine that tobacco companies are not going to invest heavily in cannabis once it has been legalised by this government. When it is being produced professionally at scale and when the black market has been given a false front of legitimacy to hide behind, stating that addiction will be treated as a health issue will be seen for the joke it is. Something tells me that there are going to be a whole lot more people suffering from ‘health issues’ if this law goes through and our society will be the worse for it. We will end up with more stoners not less.