October 27, 2025 • 20 mins
New research suggests our drug laws are stuck in the 70s – and that Kiwis want to see a more health-based approach to tackling the country’s drug issues.
This month marks 50 years since government passed the Misuse of Drugs Act.
The Helen Clark Foundation and University of Otago researchers estimate that drug harm costs close to $2 billion annually – at least half a billion alone on responding to drug use.
Today on The Front Page, lead researcher Dr Rose Crossin is with us to take us through New Zealanders’ changing attitudes towards drug policy.
Follow The Front Page on iHeartRadio, Apple Podcasts, Spotify or wherever you get your podcasts.
You can read more about this and other stories in the New Zealand Herald, online at nzherald.co.nz, or tune in to news bulletins across the NZME network.
Host: Chelsea Daniels
Editor/Producer: Richard Martin
Producer: Jane Yee
See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.
Mark as Played
Transcript
Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:05):
Kiota.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. New research
suggests our drug laws are stuck in the seventies and
that kiwis want to see a more health based approach
to tackling the country's drug issues. This month marks fifty
(00:29):
years since government passed the Misuse of Drugs Act. The
Helen Clark Foundation and University of Otago researchers estimate that
drug harm costs close to two billion dollars annually and
at least half a billion dollars alone. On responding to
drug use Today on the front Page, lead researcher doctor
(00:51):
Rose Cross, and it is with us to take us
through New Zealander's changing attitudes towards drug policy. Right, so
tell me about this report. It focuses on three key areas,
So where our drug funding is being spent, how people
would prefer to see that money be allocated, and whether
(01:14):
a deliberative democracy process to engage citizens is effective. Now,
first off, rows tell us where is that money being spent?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
So at the moment, the New Zealand government spends about
half a billion dollars a year responding to illegal drugs,
so this doesn't include alcohol and tobacco. These are drugs
that are illegal under the Misuse of Drugs Act. Of
that money, over two thirds of it goes to law enforcement,
so sixty eight percent approximately is spent on enforcing our
(01:47):
drug laws. Treatment, so this is treatment for people who
have use disorders, is almost a quarter of that funding,
whereas prevention is much smaller at about five percent, and
high reduction is even smaller and again at just over
one percent of current funding.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Wow, and how would people prefer that money being spent?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
So we asked a randomly selected representative set of New
Zealand citizens, if one hundred dollars of your tax was
to be spent responding to illegal drugs in New Zealand,
how would you like that to be allocated between those
different policy areas? And they came back with something that
was very different to the actuality. So what they said
(02:32):
was they actually wanted to have just over just over
a cert going to law enforcement. They allocated twenty four
percent two treatment, so somewhat similar, they allocated twenty five
percent to prevention and sixteen percent to harm reduction. So
what that means is they wanted much more money going
(02:53):
towards the health based approach rather than a criminal justice
approach to drugs.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
And what does help based approach mean? And what's the
difference between U suppose prevention and harm reduction?
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (03:07):
No, those are good questions, So I'll answer the second
question first. So prevention are the things that we try
to do to stop people from initiating drug use in
the first place. So this might be things that we
do at a population level, like intervention the education sorry
for example, or this might be early support or family interventions,
(03:29):
but the things that we do to try and prevent
drug use from beginning. In contrast, harm reduction is how
do we reduce harm for people who were using drugs
without necessarily requiring that they become abstinent. So that's things
like the needle exchanges where people can access safe injecting equipment.
(03:51):
Drug checking is a great example of harm reduction in
New Zealand overdose prevention medication to loxowine. So that's harm reduction.
So coming back to that first question about what is
a health based approach, What it effectively recognizes is that
drug use should be responded to as a health issue
rather than a criminal justice issue. That's what is at
(04:15):
the very core of a health based approach. It tries
to stop seeing drug use as a moral failing or
some kind of issue that must be punished in people,
and tries to respond in ways that recognizes that not
all drug use actually results in harm, but that for
the people who are experiencing harm, the best ways in
(04:38):
which we can help them are to respond to their
health and social needs rather than punishing them.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, and I can imagine in this country as well,
it would be quite difficult to seek help if you
are addicted.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Say, there's lots of reasons why people might choose not
to seek help, one of which, of course, is it's illegal,
and people are frightened they come forward and say I'm
really struggling with this. They're actually admitting to a legal behavior.
And the other issue is that drug use is really
is often really stigmatized, and so they're worried that people
(05:14):
don't want to seek help because they're worried about how
they might be treated, or how they might be judged,
or how other people might see them in respond to them.
So it is quite a big barrier to help seeking
What does deliberative democracy mean? Yeah, So deliberative democracy is
(05:34):
a way of engaging citizens more in our policy processes.
And what it is is more than just participation. It's
this idea that people to engage in policy discussions actually
need time to deliberate and try to build a group consensus.
So it's this idea that if we've got really big, complex,
(05:56):
tricky problems like drug use, but the best way which
we can resolve them is to come together and learn
together and deliberate and talk and try and reach group consensus.
So examples of deliberateive democracy are things like citizens assemblies
or citizens' juries or participatory budgeting. So there's all these
(06:18):
different ways in which deliberative democracy can be brought to life,
but it's really seen as a way of actually unpicking
some of these big, complex problems that societies face.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
That leads me on to another question that I had.
What is a citizens assembly?
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, so a citizen's assembly as a type of deliberate
of democracy. And so the idea with a citizens assembly
is that we would appoint a group of randomly selected
representative citizens who would come together to try and resolve
a complex policy problem like, for example, drug use and harm.
(06:58):
The real important things about a deliberative democracy is that
it would be the citizens themselves who would get to
set the agenda and say, well, here are the experts
that we'd like to hear from, here's what we'd like
to learn about, here's how we would like to engage
with each other. Then they'd come together and they would
hear from experts, they would seek more information, But the
(07:19):
really important part is that they would learn together and
debate and engage with the evidence and deliberate to try
and reach some conclusions in a set of recommendations.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Do you think people will be shocked to learn how
little is actually being invested in health based prevention, treatment,
and harm reduction at the moment.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
I think it would be quite surprising to people. I
think the biggest gap was really in prevention. And the
thing about prevention is it was almost universally supported. So
in that polling data, there were demographics, so we could
look at say the difference between males and females, or
the differences by age group, or by political by voting preferences.
(08:04):
Everyone supported prevention was it was just across the board,
And so I think that people would be both surprised
and disappointed that we're putting a lot of money into
law enforcement, but not a lot of money into actually
preventing this from happening in the first place. If you
(08:29):
could weave a magic wand on drug reform in New Zealand,
what would it look like?
Speaker 4 (08:33):
It would look quite a lot like the recommendations that
were made by the Law Commission back in twenty ten,
of which one of their first ones was to repeal
the Misuse of Drugs Act and replace it with legislation
administered by the Ministry of Health. To add to that,
if I had a magic wand, I would also replace
all of the people who've spent their careers working in
(08:54):
a prohibition paradigm with people who are actually interested in
evidence based drug law and a law that is focused
around the well being of people and not just criminalizing people.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah. So one of the key recommendations is, of course,
that citizens assembly. What else are the recommendations?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
So the first recommendation was, as you say that, yet,
we should hold a citizens Assembly on drugs in New Zealand,
And I'd like to point out so Ireland has recently
done something similar, so they held a citizens Assembly on
drugs as well. And the recommendations are really sensible and
nuanced and thoughtful and being considered by the government. So
we're not this isn't a something that hasn't been done
(09:39):
before or try it not radical, not radical. No. The
other recommendations are that we should increase the funding for treatment, prevention,
and harm reduction so that they proportionally match the community preferences.
And I think it's really important to point out here
that we're not recommending that law law enforcement funding be cut.
(10:02):
So what we're saying is that if we could hold
the proportion the amount of law enforcement funding the same,
but just increase those other areas so that proportionally it
looked like more towards the community preferences. Because I'm sure
that you know this shouldn't be seen as a cost
saving on police, that there are other things that that
(10:25):
money could be could be spent on by those law
enforcement agencies. So we're not recommending a cut. We're recommending
increasing that funding for the health based responses. We're also
in recommending that for prevention and harm reduction in particular,
we need to have a really evidence based program of responses.
(10:49):
This is more than just saying, oh, we're going to
run a national ad campaign that says, don't do drugs.
This is prevention, and harm reduction in particular should be
looked at from a system's perspective, and we should have
a program that has a whole set of interventions that
(11:09):
are proven to work and that work together. So we
kind of say, yes, they need money, but they need
more than money, They need a programmatic, planned approach.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
If there has been significant and growing evidence that enforcement
alone isn't an effective approach to reducing harm from drugs,
then why do you think that is still the approach?
Speaker 3 (11:36):
I think so. Obviously, I'm not a politician myself, not
a decision maker in this space, so I am somewhat speculating.
I think it comes back to some of the ideas
that we were previously talking about about stigma and about
the ways in which we see people who use drugs.
And I think that there is potentially a fear or
(11:59):
ae that we need to be tough on crime. You know,
it's that really strong, that's that narrative, right that we're
going to be that we're going to be tough on
crime without really stopping and thinking, but is this working?
Is this is this effective? Is this the way in
which we can achieve positive change. So I think that
(12:22):
drugs drugs are such a evalue lating area to work in.
We all we all think that we that we that
we know things, or that we've experienced things, that we've
seen seen movies about people who use drugs, and we've
we're kind of grown up in the war on drugs
and we've we hold this within ourselves, which means that
(12:44):
people have really strong moral judgment about drugs and the
people who use them. But the evidence is really clear
health based approach is what is effective at reducing harm.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
What surprised you the most about the responses the data
that you collected.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
So the third part of the project, which we didn't
really talk about as much yet, was the was the
deliberative workshops with a group of citizens in christ Church.
And these were ten retirees who were living in christ Church.
It was incredibly heartening to me to see where that
group got to. They decided to produce a consensus statement
(13:26):
about how they thought the government should respond to drugs
in New Zealand, and it was it was wonderful, it
was nuanced, it was thoughtful, it was compassionate, it was
evidence based. And this was a group of people who
had come together just out of interest, and they'd said
to me in the first session, Oh, I don't know
(13:47):
if I can be in your group because I don't
know enough. I don't know enough about drugs. And I said, no,
that's the that's the point, right, This is this is
about being willing to learn and being will to engage
in conversation and to deliberate together to try and reach
a common good. And what happened watching those that group
(14:10):
have those conversations over seven weeks was it was really
heartening to see how people could come together and in
this age that we live in where dialogue can get
a bit vexed and that you know, I sometimes worry
that we've lost the art of civilized conversation, it was.
(14:33):
It was wonderful to see this play out week after
week where people respectfully disagreed with each other or changed
their minds or ask tricky questions and really came together
as a group to say, actually, let's try and solve
this reach something good together. And never could have predicted
how lovely that process was going to be and how
(14:55):
how wonderful it would be to watch it.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Nice. Yeah, it's just the ability and openness of being
able to change one's mind with more information, I think
is something that we've probably lost a little bit as well.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
But yeah, and then seeing it in action, it reminded
me that we can we can do this, We can
solve complex problems together.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
The Czech Republic, for example, thought that some of their
drug problems were being caused by decriminalization. Then they realized
things actually got worse when they recriminalized, except you stayed
the same, but all of the more acute harms got worse,
and so they reversed it again. What we think is
or what we know to be the case from the evidence,
(15:46):
is that where countries have gone too far and gone
too liberal, introduced more of a commercial model, the harms
can increase. And I think that's one of the reasons
we're seeing a little bit of concern around the world
is that we have in parallel some commercial models that
have gone a bit too far, as well as just
(16:07):
a burgeoning international drug supply.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Has anyone in government responded to the research.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
No, not at this stage. I would very much. I
would hope that they would. And what I think we're
calling for and what we're trying to demonstrate, is that
there's some really good opportunities for consensus on this and
to not use drug policy as a political football. For example,
there's a lot of room to move for our politicians
(16:38):
to be able to move closer to a health based approach.
The community preferences are there, there's a lot of willingness
from the community to be able to move in this direction.
So I think that there is space there that's been
created by this research. But I'd really like to see
some consensus on this research. And I think one of
(17:02):
the areas that there is the ability to achieve some
good consensus is around prevention and harm reduction, because they
are so underfunded compared to community preferences, and particularly for prevention,
people across the political preferences all supported prevention, so I
(17:26):
think there's a real an opportunity there to build consensus.
I also think that the Citizens Assembly should be something
that all political parties could get behind. Is effectively that
saying you know this is this is a tricky, complex
area that affects all kinds of people in New Zealand.
(17:47):
So's so let's see what a group of citizens can
come up with. Let's let's put this to the people
and support them to develop recommendations and conclusions. Important part
of that, of course, needs to be a commitment from
the government that if they get a set of recommendations
from a citizen's assembly, to act on them. What I'd
(18:09):
hate to see is for all this effort to be
put into a citizen's assembly and for then a government
to say okay and put the recommendations on the shelf
and not act on them. Because that's happened before with
drug policy reform in New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
And given the sheer amount of volume of drugs coming
to our shores at the moment, how urgent is just
doing anything right now?
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Yeah? I think globally the drug supply is changing, It
is increasing, and it is becoming more volatile, and we
do not want to end up in a position, say,
for example, like the US or Canada have been in
terms of the overdose crisis from synthetic opioids. So the
(18:54):
world has changed. The modern drug supply has increased, it
has changed, it has become much more coordinated, and as
you say, there is increasing amounts of drugs, particularly methanphetamine
and cocaine at the moment reaching New Zealand. We've still
got drug policy settings that are over fifty years old.
(19:15):
The world in which those drug policies were made doesn't
exist anymore, and so I think it's really important that
we're ready for the drug supply that we're currently facing,
but also just a bit of a reality check to say,
there's almost no policy I can think of that's going
to be exactly the same fifty years on. It's time
(19:38):
for a reset.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Thanks so much for joining us, Throws.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
That said, for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzadherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
produced by Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who is also
our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page
on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune
(20:09):
in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.
Kiota.
Speaker 2 (00:05):
I'm Chelsea Daniels and this is the Front Page, a
daily podcast presented by the New Zealand Herald. New research
suggests our drug laws are stuck in the seventies and
that kiwis want to see a more health based approach
to tackling the country's drug issues. This month marks fifty
(00:29):
years since government passed the Misuse of Drugs Act. The
Helen Clark Foundation and University of Otago researchers estimate that
drug harm costs close to two billion dollars annually and
at least half a billion dollars alone. On responding to
drug use Today on the front Page, lead researcher doctor
(00:51):
Rose Cross, and it is with us to take us
through New Zealander's changing attitudes towards drug policy. Right, so
tell me about this report. It focuses on three key areas,
So where our drug funding is being spent, how people
would prefer to see that money be allocated, and whether
(01:14):
a deliberative democracy process to engage citizens is effective. Now,
first off, rows tell us where is that money being spent?
Speaker 3 (01:22):
So at the moment, the New Zealand government spends about
half a billion dollars a year responding to illegal drugs,
so this doesn't include alcohol and tobacco. These are drugs
that are illegal under the Misuse of Drugs Act. Of
that money, over two thirds of it goes to law enforcement,
so sixty eight percent approximately is spent on enforcing our
(01:47):
drug laws. Treatment, so this is treatment for people who
have use disorders, is almost a quarter of that funding,
whereas prevention is much smaller at about five percent, and
high reduction is even smaller and again at just over
one percent of current funding.
Speaker 2 (02:04):
Wow, and how would people prefer that money being spent?
Speaker 3 (02:08):
So we asked a randomly selected representative set of New
Zealand citizens, if one hundred dollars of your tax was
to be spent responding to illegal drugs in New Zealand,
how would you like that to be allocated between those
different policy areas? And they came back with something that
was very different to the actuality. So what they said
(02:32):
was they actually wanted to have just over just over
a cert going to law enforcement. They allocated twenty four
percent two treatment, so somewhat similar, they allocated twenty five
percent to prevention and sixteen percent to harm reduction. So
what that means is they wanted much more money going
(02:53):
towards the health based approach rather than a criminal justice
approach to drugs.
Speaker 2 (02:58):
And what does help based approach mean? And what's the
difference between U suppose prevention and harm reduction?
Speaker 4 (03:07):
Yeah?
Speaker 3 (03:07):
No, those are good questions, So I'll answer the second
question first. So prevention are the things that we try
to do to stop people from initiating drug use in
the first place. So this might be things that we
do at a population level, like intervention the education sorry
for example, or this might be early support or family interventions,
(03:29):
but the things that we do to try and prevent
drug use from beginning. In contrast, harm reduction is how
do we reduce harm for people who were using drugs
without necessarily requiring that they become abstinent. So that's things
like the needle exchanges where people can access safe injecting equipment.
(03:51):
Drug checking is a great example of harm reduction in
New Zealand overdose prevention medication to loxowine. So that's harm reduction.
So coming back to that first question about what is
a health based approach, What it effectively recognizes is that
drug use should be responded to as a health issue
rather than a criminal justice issue. That's what is at
(04:15):
the very core of a health based approach. It tries
to stop seeing drug use as a moral failing or
some kind of issue that must be punished in people,
and tries to respond in ways that recognizes that not
all drug use actually results in harm, but that for
the people who are experiencing harm, the best ways in
(04:38):
which we can help them are to respond to their
health and social needs rather than punishing them.
Speaker 2 (04:43):
Yeah, and I can imagine in this country as well,
it would be quite difficult to seek help if you
are addicted.
Speaker 3 (04:51):
Say, there's lots of reasons why people might choose not
to seek help, one of which, of course, is it's illegal,
and people are frightened they come forward and say I'm
really struggling with this. They're actually admitting to a legal behavior.
And the other issue is that drug use is really
is often really stigmatized, and so they're worried that people
(05:14):
don't want to seek help because they're worried about how
they might be treated, or how they might be judged,
or how other people might see them in respond to them.
So it is quite a big barrier to help seeking
What does deliberative democracy mean? Yeah, So deliberative democracy is
(05:34):
a way of engaging citizens more in our policy processes.
And what it is is more than just participation. It's
this idea that people to engage in policy discussions actually
need time to deliberate and try to build a group consensus.
So it's this idea that if we've got really big, complex,
(05:56):
tricky problems like drug use, but the best way which
we can resolve them is to come together and learn
together and deliberate and talk and try and reach group consensus.
So examples of deliberateive democracy are things like citizens assemblies
or citizens' juries or participatory budgeting. So there's all these
(06:18):
different ways in which deliberative democracy can be brought to life,
but it's really seen as a way of actually unpicking
some of these big, complex problems that societies face.
Speaker 2 (06:31):
That leads me on to another question that I had.
What is a citizens assembly?
Speaker 3 (06:36):
Yeah, so a citizen's assembly as a type of deliberate
of democracy. And so the idea with a citizens assembly
is that we would appoint a group of randomly selected
representative citizens who would come together to try and resolve
a complex policy problem like, for example, drug use and harm.
(06:58):
The real important things about a deliberative democracy is that
it would be the citizens themselves who would get to
set the agenda and say, well, here are the experts
that we'd like to hear from, here's what we'd like
to learn about, here's how we would like to engage
with each other. Then they'd come together and they would
hear from experts, they would seek more information, But the
(07:19):
really important part is that they would learn together and
debate and engage with the evidence and deliberate to try
and reach some conclusions in a set of recommendations.
Speaker 2 (07:31):
Do you think people will be shocked to learn how
little is actually being invested in health based prevention, treatment,
and harm reduction at the moment.
Speaker 3 (07:40):
I think it would be quite surprising to people. I
think the biggest gap was really in prevention. And the
thing about prevention is it was almost universally supported. So
in that polling data, there were demographics, so we could
look at say the difference between males and females, or
the differences by age group, or by political by voting preferences.
(08:04):
Everyone supported prevention was it was just across the board,
And so I think that people would be both surprised
and disappointed that we're putting a lot of money into
law enforcement, but not a lot of money into actually
preventing this from happening in the first place. If you
(08:29):
could weave a magic wand on drug reform in New Zealand,
what would it look like?
Speaker 4 (08:33):
It would look quite a lot like the recommendations that
were made by the Law Commission back in twenty ten,
of which one of their first ones was to repeal
the Misuse of Drugs Act and replace it with legislation
administered by the Ministry of Health. To add to that,
if I had a magic wand, I would also replace
all of the people who've spent their careers working in
(08:54):
a prohibition paradigm with people who are actually interested in
evidence based drug law and a law that is focused
around the well being of people and not just criminalizing people.
Speaker 2 (09:11):
Yeah. So one of the key recommendations is, of course,
that citizens assembly. What else are the recommendations?
Speaker 3 (09:17):
So the first recommendation was, as you say that, yet,
we should hold a citizens Assembly on drugs in New Zealand,
And I'd like to point out so Ireland has recently
done something similar, so they held a citizens Assembly on
drugs as well. And the recommendations are really sensible and
nuanced and thoughtful and being considered by the government. So
we're not this isn't a something that hasn't been done
(09:39):
before or try it not radical, not radical. No. The
other recommendations are that we should increase the funding for treatment, prevention,
and harm reduction so that they proportionally match the community preferences.
And I think it's really important to point out here
that we're not recommending that law law enforcement funding be cut.
(10:02):
So what we're saying is that if we could hold
the proportion the amount of law enforcement funding the same,
but just increase those other areas so that proportionally it
looked like more towards the community preferences. Because I'm sure
that you know this shouldn't be seen as a cost
saving on police, that there are other things that that
(10:25):
money could be could be spent on by those law
enforcement agencies. So we're not recommending a cut. We're recommending
increasing that funding for the health based responses. We're also
in recommending that for prevention and harm reduction in particular,
we need to have a really evidence based program of responses.
(10:49):
This is more than just saying, oh, we're going to
run a national ad campaign that says, don't do drugs.
This is prevention, and harm reduction in particular should be
looked at from a system's perspective, and we should have
a program that has a whole set of interventions that
(11:09):
are proven to work and that work together. So we
kind of say, yes, they need money, but they need
more than money, They need a programmatic, planned approach.
Speaker 2 (11:21):
If there has been significant and growing evidence that enforcement
alone isn't an effective approach to reducing harm from drugs,
then why do you think that is still the approach?
Speaker 3 (11:36):
I think so. Obviously, I'm not a politician myself, not
a decision maker in this space, so I am somewhat speculating.
I think it comes back to some of the ideas
that we were previously talking about about stigma and about
the ways in which we see people who use drugs.
And I think that there is potentially a fear or
(11:59):
ae that we need to be tough on crime. You know,
it's that really strong, that's that narrative, right that we're
going to be that we're going to be tough on
crime without really stopping and thinking, but is this working?
Is this is this effective? Is this the way in
which we can achieve positive change. So I think that
(12:22):
drugs drugs are such a evalue lating area to work in.
We all we all think that we that we that
we know things, or that we've experienced things, that we've
seen seen movies about people who use drugs, and we've
we're kind of grown up in the war on drugs
and we've we hold this within ourselves, which means that
(12:44):
people have really strong moral judgment about drugs and the
people who use them. But the evidence is really clear
health based approach is what is effective at reducing harm.
Speaker 2 (12:57):
What surprised you the most about the responses the data
that you collected.
Speaker 3 (13:01):
So the third part of the project, which we didn't
really talk about as much yet, was the was the
deliberative workshops with a group of citizens in christ Church.
And these were ten retirees who were living in christ Church.
It was incredibly heartening to me to see where that
group got to. They decided to produce a consensus statement
(13:26):
about how they thought the government should respond to drugs
in New Zealand, and it was it was wonderful, it
was nuanced, it was thoughtful, it was compassionate, it was
evidence based. And this was a group of people who
had come together just out of interest, and they'd said
to me in the first session, Oh, I don't know
(13:47):
if I can be in your group because I don't
know enough. I don't know enough about drugs. And I said, no,
that's the that's the point, right, This is this is
about being willing to learn and being will to engage
in conversation and to deliberate together to try and reach
a common good. And what happened watching those that group
(14:10):
have those conversations over seven weeks was it was really
heartening to see how people could come together and in
this age that we live in where dialogue can get
a bit vexed and that you know, I sometimes worry
that we've lost the art of civilized conversation, it was.
(14:33):
It was wonderful to see this play out week after
week where people respectfully disagreed with each other or changed
their minds or ask tricky questions and really came together
as a group to say, actually, let's try and solve
this reach something good together. And never could have predicted
how lovely that process was going to be and how
(14:55):
how wonderful it would be to watch it.
Speaker 2 (14:57):
Nice. Yeah, it's just the ability and openness of being
able to change one's mind with more information, I think
is something that we've probably lost a little bit as well.
Speaker 3 (15:10):
But yeah, and then seeing it in action, it reminded
me that we can we can do this, We can
solve complex problems together.
Speaker 1 (15:24):
The Czech Republic, for example, thought that some of their
drug problems were being caused by decriminalization. Then they realized
things actually got worse when they recriminalized, except you stayed
the same, but all of the more acute harms got worse,
and so they reversed it again. What we think is
or what we know to be the case from the evidence,
(15:46):
is that where countries have gone too far and gone
too liberal, introduced more of a commercial model, the harms
can increase. And I think that's one of the reasons
we're seeing a little bit of concern around the world
is that we have in parallel some commercial models that
have gone a bit too far, as well as just
(16:07):
a burgeoning international drug supply.
Speaker 2 (16:11):
Has anyone in government responded to the research.
Speaker 3 (16:14):
No, not at this stage. I would very much. I
would hope that they would. And what I think we're
calling for and what we're trying to demonstrate, is that
there's some really good opportunities for consensus on this and
to not use drug policy as a political football. For example,
there's a lot of room to move for our politicians
(16:38):
to be able to move closer to a health based approach.
The community preferences are there, there's a lot of willingness
from the community to be able to move in this direction.
So I think that there is space there that's been
created by this research. But I'd really like to see
some consensus on this research. And I think one of
(17:02):
the areas that there is the ability to achieve some
good consensus is around prevention and harm reduction, because they
are so underfunded compared to community preferences, and particularly for prevention,
people across the political preferences all supported prevention, so I
(17:26):
think there's a real an opportunity there to build consensus.
I also think that the Citizens Assembly should be something
that all political parties could get behind. Is effectively that
saying you know this is this is a tricky, complex
area that affects all kinds of people in New Zealand.
(17:47):
So's so let's see what a group of citizens can
come up with. Let's let's put this to the people
and support them to develop recommendations and conclusions. Important part
of that, of course, needs to be a commitment from
the government that if they get a set of recommendations
from a citizen's assembly, to act on them. What I'd
(18:09):
hate to see is for all this effort to be
put into a citizen's assembly and for then a government
to say okay and put the recommendations on the shelf
and not act on them. Because that's happened before with
drug policy reform in New Zealand.
Speaker 2 (18:24):
And given the sheer amount of volume of drugs coming
to our shores at the moment, how urgent is just
doing anything right now?
Speaker 3 (18:33):
Yeah? I think globally the drug supply is changing, It
is increasing, and it is becoming more volatile, and we
do not want to end up in a position, say,
for example, like the US or Canada have been in
terms of the overdose crisis from synthetic opioids. So the
(18:54):
world has changed. The modern drug supply has increased, it
has changed, it has become much more coordinated, and as
you say, there is increasing amounts of drugs, particularly methanphetamine
and cocaine at the moment reaching New Zealand. We've still
got drug policy settings that are over fifty years old.
(19:15):
The world in which those drug policies were made doesn't
exist anymore, and so I think it's really important that
we're ready for the drug supply that we're currently facing,
but also just a bit of a reality check to say,
there's almost no policy I can think of that's going
to be exactly the same fifty years on. It's time
(19:38):
for a reset.
Speaker 2 (19:39):
Thanks so much for joining us, Throws.
Speaker 3 (19:41):
Thank you very much for having me.
Speaker 2 (19:46):
That said, for this episode of the Front Page. You
can read more about today's stories and extensive news coverage
at enzadherld dot co dot nz. The Front Page is
produced by Jane Ye and Richard Martin, who is also
our editor. I'm Chelsea Daniels. Subscribe to The Front Page
on iHeartRadio or wherever you get your podcasts, and tune
(20:09):
in tomorrow for another look behind the headlines.
Popular Podcasts
On Purpose with Jay Shetty
I’m Jay Shetty host of On Purpose the worlds #1 Mental Health podcast and I’m so grateful you found us. I started this podcast 5 years ago to invite you into conversations and workshops that are designed to help make you happier, healthier and more healed. I believe that when you (yes you) feel seen, heard and understood you’re able to deal with relationship struggles, work challenges and life’s ups and downs with more ease and grace. I interview experts, celebrities, thought leaders and athletes so that we can grow our mindset, build better habits and uncover a side of them we’ve never seen before. New episodes every Monday and Friday. Your support means the world to me and I don’t take it for granted — click the follow button and leave a review to help us spread the love with On Purpose. I can’t wait for you to listen to your first or 500th episode!
The Joe Rogan Experience
The official podcast of comedian Joe Rogan.
Stuff You Should Know
If you've ever wanted to know about champagne, satanism, the Stonewall Uprising, chaos theory, LSD, El Nino, true crime and Rosa Parks, then look no further. Josh and Chuck have you covered.