New Zealand votes to keep Cannabis illegal.

It's very disappointing, there is a glimmer of hope, the special votes are still being counted final results are being released tomorrow and they tend to favour progressive parties/policy if approximately 68% of the specials say "Yes" then it will pass but with 53.1% saying "No" in the preliminary results it's highly unlikely.

The worst part is despite 46.1% saying "Yes" and conservative groups including those who are running the "No" campaign saying they support decriminalisation, our government has ruled out ANY reform while it's in power if the referendum fails and our current government is our progressive party, if the other guys get back in next term there is zero hope of reform, infact they have hinted they may start cracking down harder on cannabis.

Due to the imminent failure of this referendum it is highly unlikely New Zealand will see any form of cannabis law reform for at least the next 6-10 years, unless something drastic happens that changes things.
 
Well, if Biden is elected here in the US (they are still counting votes and he is on the margin) he has made it a lifetime political career to be anti drugs and anti-weed. His Veep also oversaw 1900 marijuana convictions in San Fransisco and she actively fought a ballot measure for recreational pot legalization in California in 2010. Yet they claim to be progressives? Sure. Different day, same old shyte here at the federal level.

Also Mexico is still dragging its feet for legalization there. In early October they said it was a done deal, but it is still not on the books. Palabras, palabras.
 
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There was legalization improvement in the US at the state level though. Arizona, Montana, South Dakota and New Jersey all passed legal recreational ballot measures. So there will now be 15 legal recreational weed states in the US. Mississippi and South Dakota also passed a legal medical weed measure bringing the number of legal medical weed states up to 35.
 
@musashi Major total bummer braddah !

I wish we had some Politicians with courage of their convictions, our Prime Minister voted in favour of reform, so did our Minister of Health and our Minister of Justice but they wouldn't campaign for reform or reveal their opinions until after the votes were cast, I assume out of fear of losing some votes or being on the wrong side of history, end in the they won the election by a record breaking landslide and are the only majority government formed since MMP was introduced into NZ in 1993.

Ultimately the referendum also had unfortunate timing, Covid drastically changed our political landscape, this election was dubbed the Covid election and all other matters took a back seat, their was also another referendum held for euthenasia this election but it passed by a landslide.

Legal to kill yourself but illegal to smoke weed, that's NZ for ya !

Had the referendum for cannabis been held a year earlier I have no doubt it would of passed in a landslide, our polling is reasonably accurate here and it showed on average 60-65%+ support for legalisation but as they say Life goes on and it's business as usual, I know a few commerical growers who are very happy with the outcome of our referendum.

@Big Sur That's very interesting, I would of assumed Joe Biden supported cannabis liberalisation and other drug law reform.

I saw that a few more states had legalised cannabis this election cycle and some had even decriminalised other drugs, I think a state legalised Mushrooms too ?

Congratulations to those states, every state that legalises is a win and hopefully helps end this arachic war on drugs at a more global level.
 
@Fish You beat me too it ! If a vote this close isn't mandate for some form of cannabis law reform I don't know what is.

The referendum was for a specific bill, one that allowed commerical sale of cannabis and that's the part that a lot of people had worries about, people in NZ don't care if adults grow and smoke weed for their use but they do have concerns about a commerical market and the normalisation of cannabis use.

IMO this is a very clear mandate from the people that at the very least cannabis cultivation and possession should be decriminalised for adult personal use.
 
@Fish You beat me too it ! If a vote this close isn't mandate for some form of cannabis law reform I don't know what is.

The referendum was for a specific bill, one that allowed commerical sale of cannabis and that's the part that a lot of people had worries about, people in NZ don't care if adults grow and smoke weed for their use but they do have concerns about a commerical market and the normalisation of cannabis use.

IMO this is a very clear mandate from the people that at the very least cannabis cultivation and possession should be decriminalised for adult personal use.
Yes I fully agree. The vote has gotta show them that there has to be some sort of change in our laws.
 
Prime Minister has just delivered a speech, she will NOT be reforming our cannabis laws in any formal way.

This is unbelievable, if just 34000 people were to change their vote from No to Yes it would of passed !
 
@Big Sur That's very interesting, I would of assumed Joe Biden supported cannabis liberalisation and other drug law reform.

I saw that a few more states had legalised cannabis this election cycle and some had even decriminalised other drugs, I think a state legalised Mushrooms too ?

Well, Biden has made his political career coming down hard against drugs. Harris oversaw more than 1900 marijuana convictions as San Francisco district attorney. So do not assume anything will happen at the federal level. Marijuana remains a schedule 1 narcotic. So as a result medical research still cannot be done. And the Big Pharma lobby wants it to remain that way.

Oregon legalized mushrooms. Which is OK in my book. Oregon also decriminalized hard drugs, which is not. Making heroin, cocaine and meth use OK will just attract more hard drug addicts and the cartels that feed them. And as Neil Young wrote, "I've seen the needle and the damage done..." Heroin, crack and meth do very bad things to your brain, and very fast. I have seen way too many go off the deep end on this stuff. Portland is already a shooting gallery. The Willamette River is littered with needles. It will just get worse now.
 
@Fish You beat me too it ! If a vote this close isn't mandate for some form of cannabis law reform I don't know what is.

The referendum was for a specific bill, one that allowed commerical sale of cannabis and that's the part that a lot of people had worries about, people in NZ don't care if adults grow and smoke weed for their use but they do have concerns about a commerical market and the normalisation of cannabis use.

IMO this is a very clear mandate from the people that at the very least cannabis cultivation and possession should be decriminalised for adult personal use.

Unfortunately the people of NZ didn't give a mandate for legalisation because the majority voted no. It doesn't matter how small that majority was the vote was no to legalisation. Leading into the election and referendum there was a huge amount of misinformation, disinformation and fear mongering going on surrounding cannabis legalisation. This pretty much sums up the drug war in general and it was obviously enough to sway the vote towards no. I'd like to see a referendum in Australia. I think the vote might go the other way.
 
Well, if Biden is elected here in the US (they are still counting votes and he is on the margin) he has made it a lifetime political career to be anti drugs and anti-weed. His Veep also oversaw 1900 marijuana convictions in San Fransisco and she actively fought a ballot measure for recreational pot legalization in California in 2010. Yet they claim to be progressives? Sure. Different day, same old shyte here at the federal level.

Also Mexico is still dragging its feet for legalization there. In early October they said it was a done deal, but it is still not on the books. Palabras, palabras.

Mexico is online. I'm in Mexico now and the laws are all coming in as we speak. I'd say Covid has slowed everything up - Mexico being number 3 in the world for cases. Done deal, just a case of when but I think they are claiming the new laws come into effect Dec or Jan. https://technical420.com/cannabis-a...e-edge-of-nation-wide-cannabis-legalization/#

Bit about the laws and what's happening here (in Spanish so use Google translate if you don't speak Spanish) https://ladosis.org/articulos/los-r...BW7vLHuG-Y_t8zIcJ8m1jI800mKms1b1s-AbVZUpZwTcg

Oh and safe to say US Med and Rec laws are safe under Biden and Kamala Harris. It's more about a respect for democracy and governance of the States now. Any Fed leader who attacks these laws will be seen to be undermining democracy and voted out of office very quickly. The horse has bolted.
 
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