The Government scored a P.R. victory last week with the release of their final position on Fee Maxima . The losers? Students (again) and in the long term, New Zealand. Once again Government is missing the point of tertiary education.

It was clever marketing. By announcing with great solemnity back in May that the three year old fee freeze was over and would be replaced by a matrix of maximum fees for tertiary courses, the Government had students braced for a return to the bad old days.

The Brad Sugar adage to "exceed your customers' expectations" is significantly easier to achieve when you have systematically depressed them. The fact that Steve Maharey had us all expecting the worse and then 'responded to student concerns' by giving up a bit of ground has obscured what this really means for students: That the Government has effectively locked in perpetual fee increases.

While post grad courses have been limited to a $500 increase, undergraduate course fees can now rise by a maximum of five per cent each year. The original proposal had no yearly rise limit and it is this concession that has apparently won over student associations.

Mr Maharey has faith that university administrators will be restrained about how they apply fee increases in the future. The hostile response from Vice Chancellors to the limits he has placed on annual increases suggests it would be wise to be suspicious about that.

In fact Universities are being squeezed. Caught between increasingly vociferous demands for pay increases, in order to bring NZ salaries a little closer to internationally comparative levels, and stretched infrastructure, the institutions are looking for room to manoeuvre.

At the same time government funding is being increasing geared towards a vocational approach. The basis of tertiary education has undergone a significant shift away from a love of learning and of wisdom, to a job ticket. Instead of learning new ways of thinking, critical analysis and creativity, graduates are now, more than ever, entering the workforce with a set of skills geared towards a pre-determined career path.

Without a broad approach to education that allows students to analyse, adapt and take advantage of new and changing circumstances, we are in danger of becoming followers rather than innovators. Right now, when so much is possible and so much is at stake, intelligence (as opposed to training) is more important than ever.

In that context the continued underfunding of tertiary education is doing our country a real disservice.

The money is there. Through overseas sharemarket investments, the Government has lost more than $120 million in two years by pouring money into the global casino economy. Over the next forty years the Government is investing tens of billions of dollars in offshore sharemarket funds, yet fails to adequately invest in Aotearoa, because it sees 'vote education' as a 'cost'. Ask students, or the institutions for that matter, what they could do with that money.

The Government's fee maxima policy fails students but it also fails our country by continuing to ignore the importance of education as the best investment available to us.

It's almost amusing to watch the United Future party trying to hold back the tide of cannabis law reform. Fortunately it is as futile as Canute.

But their smug smiles whenever the issue is raised just reinforces how the debate has been hijacked by petty politics.

In 2000 the Labour / Alliance Government and the Greens worked together to set up an inquiry into cannabis. This picked up the recommendation of the 1998 Health Select Committee report into the Mental Health Effects of Cannabis which said that the dangers of cannabis had been exaggerated, and that prohibition hindered helping the minority that did have problems with its use. It said that the Government should review its legal status.

The inquiry did not manage to report back before the 2002 election. As a result its findings have been heavily influenced by the election result. That saw Peter Dunne's United Future party win a surprising number of seats and negotiate a confidence and supply agreement to support a Labour Government. If you didn't vote, its your fault, because the agreement included a commitment that the Government would not introduce legislation to change the legal status of cannabis.

This by a man who admits having smoked cannabis as a youth, who admits that the law does not work and has said that we need a fresh approach. But except when voting to support the interests of tobacco and alcohol companies, consistency is not at the forefront of Peter Dunne's mind.

The challenge for the committee was producing a report that would have some value in the context of that agreement. It was clear from the evidence that doing nothing was not an option.

Look at the situation. Between 1990 and 2001 the number of 15 to 45 year-olds who admit (to a stranger in a telephone survey) that they have smoked cannabis increased from 40 per cent to 52 per cent. Figures from 1994 to 2000 show an average of 22,000 people each year are arrested for cannabis use. Prohibition has obviously not resulted in fewer people wanting to smoke cannabis.

It takes up about two per cent of the total police budget - hey, they've nothing better to do, right? – and costs New Zealand around $22 million a year to prosecute cannabis offences. Most of that is personal possession and use type charges.

We are tagging thousands of people with criminal convictions for something which is less harmful, according to the World Health Organisation, than alcohol or tobacco. And if you think 'they don't bust people for cannabis anymore', it depends who you are. Diversion, for example, is used only three per cent of the time, compared to the 70 per cent who are convicted and fined.

Some say cannabis use leads to hard drugs. My observation is that it just leads to raiding the fridge and talking philosophy.

Prohibition is the gateway to hard drugs, not cannabis. Check the situation of the Netherlands, where cannabis is available in coffee shops over the counter. 29 per cent of Dutch people said they had tried cannabis by the age of 15, compared to 34 per cent of Americans and 41 per cent in Britain. The Netherlands also has a lower rate of hard addiction than Italy, Spain, Switzerland, France, Britain and the US. Separation of the cannabis market from the market for hard drugs was a deliberate aim of the Dutch policy.

The question is not, should we change the law. The only question left is 'to what?'. The recommendations of the committee will probably be public by the time you read this. I strongly urge you to get a copy and read it, and give this debate the reasonable attention it deserves.


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What passes for political debate is usually no more than marketing, and good copy is more highly prized than good sense. That is especially the case for such an emotive debate as cannabis law reform.

So the Health Select Committee report on cannabis is an unusual beast. It puts substance before sizzle.

It may be because we spent three years on the inquiry, or it may because the committee was constrained by the political environment following the confidence and supply agreement between United Future and the Government. That agreement, which included a Government commitment not to introduce legislation to change the legal status of cannabis, staked United Future's credibility on holding off the inevitable.

The attempt to pre-empt the inquiry showed a very real disrespect of the select committee, of the almost two and a half thousand members of the public who made submissions to it and of the expert witnesses, some of whom flew from the other side of the world to present their evidence. It also showed a worrying lack of interest in what the evidence might say.

The select committee report has now confirmed just how inevitable change is. Without making headline grabbing recommendations or rash promises, the committee has well and truly set the scene for law reform. What the committee's findings show, in summary, is:

• Moderate adult use carries a low risk of harm, but heavy chronic and/or underage use is associated with health problems.


• A harm minimisation strategy is the most effective way of addressing the public health issues.


• The aim of legislation should be to prevent underage use, not to criminalise non-problematic adult use.


• Cannabis prohibition is not reducing cannabis use or abuse, but is causing significant problems of its own, including facilitating an illegal market and exposing cannabis users to hard drugs.


• Some progress towards decriminalisation can be made in this term of parliament, and further work is needed on the justice issues to identify the best model of legislative change.

The surprising thing about the process was the high level of general agreement between different submitters, including between the general public and the experts. In summarising and evaluating the evidence before it, the select committee has provided a very useful contribution towards an informed debate on this issue.

Parliamentary committees and commissions around the world have been doing just that. Cannabis law reform in Canada, Britain, Belgium and Australia has all been preceded by an inquiry process that allowed the evidence to be heard, evaluated and published. That is essential in order to sift the solid evidence from the spurious. What is evident is that when the facts are known, the case for change is overwhelming.

What most people want, I believe, is to find genuine solutions to the problems of drug abuse in our society, of underage use and of an increasingly rich and powerful drug distribution network. Most people, according to surveys, have long come to the conclusion that while cannabis law reform is not a silver bullet, it will remove one major obstacle to achieving those goals.

So the select committee report is in line with general opinion when it states that "The current high levels of use and the level of black market activity indicate that the current prohibition regime is not effective in limiting cannabis use. Prohibition results in high conviction rates for a relatively minor offence, which inhibits people's education, travel and employment opportunities. Prohibition makes targeting education, prevention, harm minimisation, and treatment measures difficult because users fear prosecution. It also facilitates the black market and potentially exposes cannabis users to harder drugs".

The committee also said that cannabis law reform in the Netherlands "has resulted in very low levels of cannabis use amongst youth and some of the lowest rates of hard drug addiction in the Western world". In light of public concern about the increasing use of methamphetamines, that should make us all stop and think.

While the agreement between United Future and the Government inhibits legislative change of that kind, it does leave some room to progress change. The committee has made a number of recommendations to that effect, including:

• Allow medical use of clinically tested cannabis products


• Expand the police diversion scheme for cannabis offences


• Divert minor cannabis offenders into compulsory health assessment for first possession and use offences, rather than a criminal conviction

Of greater significance is the recommendation that the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs give high priority to a reclassification of cannabis. This regulatory change would not breach the confidence and supply agreement as it would not entail legislation.

Cannabis is currently scheduled as a C1 drug. Reclassification to C2 or C3, which is likely to be the result, would retain the same penalties for illicit use and supply, but make it easier to regulate as a medicine. It would also remove the search without warrant powers of the police.

I believe that if the police are unable to body search for cannabis without a warrant the number of arrests would go down to a fraction of what they are now. When you think that on average about 22,000 people were arrested for all cannabis offences each year in New Zealand between 1994 and 2000 and that there were 9,399 prosecutions for the use of cannabis in 1999, that would free up considerable police resources for investigating real crime.

To reinforce this the report asks the Justice and Electoral Committee to look at the search without warrant powers of the police under the Misuse of Drugs Act, and in conjunction to consider an appropriate legal status for cannabis. This will ensure that the justice / civil rights issues will be at the forefront of any recommended legislative model that develops, despite Mr Dunne's best efforts.