Stuff asked the following question.
Senior police say the annual cannabis eradication operation, costing $700,000 a year, does nothing to reduce the supply or raise the price of cannabis on the street and distracts from targeting gangs, guns and meth. If even police have doubts about the worth of combatting cannabis, should parliament commit to another cannabis referendum in the next five years to once more test public sentiment on the topic?
Stuart Smith
National MP Kaikoura
Below is Stuart Smith’s response.
Members of Parliament are elected to make critical decisions on behalf of the constituents they represent, along with the wider New Zealand electorate. But from time to time, substantial issues need to be put to the public, like changing the flag, the legal use of euthanasia or legalising cannabis.
In 2020 we had our cannabis referendum. Half – 51.47 per cent of eligible New Zealanders – said that they did not support the proposed Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill. The public have had their say, independent of politicians, and the result although slim was a no.
No matter what side of the issue you sit on, we cannot continue to ask the same question time and again in the hope of getting a different answer. Referendums are expensive and it is not a tool that should be used repeatedly on the same issue.
Cannabis remains illegal and police operations into cannabis prevention still have to take place. It is up to the district police how they go about targeting cannabis operations.
Recently police seized 34,000 cannabis plants and almost 80 kilograms worth of dried cannabis, which is a total street value of $95 million. That is a significant amount of money, and based on those numbers I would argue that police are trying to get stuck into cannabis operations and hit organised distributors of the drugs hard.
More often than not, its gangs themselves that are peddling cannabis and making money off it. Gang membership has exploded as a result of a government that is soft on crime and those committing crime.
If we hit the gangs harder, seize their assets and take their firearms, they will have little to stand on.
As gang numbers have ballooned over the last four years, National has consistently said that we need to provide police with the resources and the support to combat gangs.
We also need to investigate the social drivers which are encouraging young people to join gangs, and how the government and society can provide them with a different path, through education.
The police are doing the best they can with the resources they have and the buck stops at the Minister.
The country has decided that the use of cannabis should remain illegal, and so police need to keep pushing to get it off the streets by targeting gangs where it hurts.