Those people calling for a prohibition on piperazines face one major obstacle. There simply is not any objective evidence on which to do so.

Benzylpiperazine (BZP) and Trifluromethylphenylpiperazine (TFMPP) are essentially energy tonics. Like other stimulants such as coffee, guarana and mountain dew, people take them to boost and sustain their energy levels while working and playing, including at dance parties.

Their use is becoming more and more common in New Zealand. They have been sold for many years all over the country with few problems. Recently, however, they have come to public attention because of an incident where some young Dunedin locals took too much and ended up taking themselves to hospital.

A thorough search to see what the international studies say about piperazines doesn't turn up a lot. There is no obvious evidence which shows that they cause harm, or that they present any sort of public health danger.

When the U.S. Food and Drug Administration temporarily banned them in 2002 they made no verifiable argument that they are dangerous. Their decision seems to have been taken because they were finding its use increasing in the dance party scene. On those grounds the USA should ban bottled water as well.

The only cause for concern in the literature was a single European case where a young woman died after taking BZP. Further investigation shows she had also taken Ecstasy and that she died after drinking a large volume of water - a classic ecstasy related death.

In the Dunedin case, some evidence is now emerging that it could have been a backyard concoction rather than an over the counter product that was taken. It seems that the people involved had also taken an excessive dose. This will occasionally happen regardless of what the law says.

In fact, if piperazines are banned, such incidents will become more likely. Young people will not stop using BZP, but they would no longer have information about the ingredients, the correct dose or possible side effects. Potentially toxic adulterants will be the norm.

This is not to say that we have it right at the moment. Although a voluntary R18 regime was put in place by manufacture and retailers when piperazines first became available in this country, more recent times have seen a number of cowboy operators get involved in the business. BZP is now available at petrol stations and at the corner dairy with no clear guidance on age or use.

Last week the Expert Advisory Committee on Drugs (EACD) resisted the calls to recommend that BZP and TFMPP be banned immediately. It would have been a totally unnecessary and potentially dangerous over-reaction if it had. The law requires that a recommendation to ban a drug be based on an objective evaluation of harm, according to strict criteria. The EACD is a professional body and it seems unlikely that they would make a recommendation to classify without an objective basis on which to do so. None exists.

But the committee faces a real dilemma. At the moment they can only recommend a ban or leave it as open slather. They have no ability to make a recommendation for more sensible restrictions such as an age limit or restrictions on which outlets can sell the product.

The Green Party is calling for an amendment to the Misuse of Drugs Act to include new 'D' and 'E' schedules. These would allow sale to be illegal while personal use is permitted (D Class) and for sale to be legal but restricted to R18 (E Class). This would provide a more sensible and consistent framework for dealing with different drugs.

Unfortunately, when it comes to people going to dance parties and wiggling til dawn, there is always going to be an element of sensationalism. Dancing all night shouldn't be a crime, but it seems to provoke amazing reactions. I recently read a report that was commissioned by the New Zealand parliament into incidences of youth deviant culture. It claimed that young people were having sex at ever-younger ages and indulging in mind-altering substances with abandon. Older readers might have heard of it - it's the Mazengarb Report, which celebrates its 50th anniversary later this year.

Within its pompous sneerings at young people in the post-war era are the revelations that young women were developing the nerve to ask men to dance, and that young couples were (gasp) kissing. I fear that the same preoccupations are driving this issue today. The tempo of the dance may have increased, and young people are choosing alternatives to liquor (often safer) to accompany the night, but the moral panic remains the same.

What do you think about amending the Misuse of Drugs Act to allow for non-prohibited categories?
Have your say>>

It could be a case of 'one law for all drugs' this year, with the Green Party urging that the government adopt a consistent approach to regulating alcohol, tobacco, cannabis and other stimulants.

Health spokesperson Sue Kedgley and Drug Policy spokesperson Nandor Tanczos are presenting a united front to tackle the wildly inconsistent approach to the regulation of drugs that has developed ad hoc over many years. They are proposing a major overhaul of the Misuse of Drugs Act to cover all recreational drugs, including alcohol and tobacco with those already covered by the Act's schedule.

"Over the years we've developed bits and pieces of legislation to cover the use of drugs," said Ms Kedgley. "It's time we had a consistent and co-ordinated national strategy to reduce the harm of all drugs.

"Not nearly enough is being done to warn young people of the harm that alcohol can cause, yet the hysteria surrounding cannabis use prohibits valid information getting through to young people - neither approach has ever acted as an effective deterrent."

Currently alcohol is covered by the Sale of Liquor Act 1989, drugs such as cannabis, ecstasy and methamphetamine (P) are covered by the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975 and Tobacco is now under the Smokefree Environments Amendment Act 2003.

Green MP Nandor Tanczos said the Misuse of Drugs Act could be amended to include all drugs under one umbrella, in order to facilitate effective education and a consistent approach to aspects like advertising.

Although tobacco advertising has been banned in many forms since as far back as 1963, alcohol advertising has actually been relaxed since voluntary codes fell victim to deregulation of the media industry in the 1980s. "The Misuse of Drugs Act only has the ability to ban products entirely," said Nandor. "New schedules such as 'D' and 'E' classes where drugs were restricted but not criminalised should be introduced to give the Act flexibility to control all drugs from alcohol to the new wave of pepper-based party stimulants."

Ms Kedgley pointed out the hypocrisy of the current situation, where cannabis was outlawed and its users prosecuted while alcohol consumption continued to be encouraged through open-slather advertising laws.

"Both the World Health Organisation and the US Institute of Medicine have acknowledged that cannabis use is less harmful than alcohol or tobacco," she said. "Yet we continue to maintain prohibition against the adult use of cannabis when it has been demonstrated time and time again that alcohol and tobacco cause far more significant health and social problems."

Now is the time for students to get loud. The budget decisions that will affect the 2005 election year lolly scramble will be made this year. The government poll rating is starting to look shaky for the first time. Students have become important again.

So the NZUSA petition for a universal student allowance is well timed. A coordinated campaign to raise awareness in the community about student hardship must be part of the strategy, and student unions look set to make that happen.

The biggest obstacle to progress on student loans, however, remains student disbelief. Most students cannot remember the virtually free tertiary education that I and many other MPs enjoyed through the 1980's. Those that recall it often seem to think it is no longer affordable.

The Green Party says that a universal student living allowance is not only affordable, but crucial. The only question is what priority the government chooses to give it.

Having just finished an O-Week tour of the campuses along with my fellow Green MP Metiria Turei, I am excited by the growing level of student political participation on the campuses. While many students seem to have resigned themselves to a few decades of debt as a consequence of their tertiary education, more and more see the possibility of change.

That optimism is what will bring victory. The increased student activism of the past few years is paying off with a core of student leaders who are experienced and determined, and an increasing number of students willing to take some steps to create change. This is the year to springboard off that and put student demands on the government agenda.

This year student debt is set to exceed $7 billion. That's a mortgage on the nation's future, outstripping our national income from international tourism. At the same time the government surplus topped $4 billion last year. The money is buried where the government's head seems to be - in the sand - because that surplus is going nowhere.

This is not just a student problem. This is long term debt - 28 years for females and 15 years for males for the average three-year degree. It will affect your spending power for the next two or three decades. It's the equivalent of paying an extra ten per cent tax for, on average, twenty years. Combined with regular income tax, that represents about 40 per cent of your income. So much for saving money, goodbye to buying a house for another ten years, sayonara to a comfortable retirement and having children can wait... and wait.

The spending power of more than a generation of New Zealanders has been slashed by successive Governments who lack the foresight to realise the consequences. All New Zealanders suffer the results of the scheme. It is important that students draw the connections for them.

Get involved in this campaign. Make sure your parents are aware of the hardships students face and get them involved in the campaign as well. A concerted campaign by parents standing in support of their children would have the Labour government refocusing its priorities in no time. Getting parents to write to their local MP, explaining to your local councillors how student debt affects spending in local businesses, making employers aware of the loss of graduates overseas, these are all ways of increasing community awareness about the student loan scheme. Students need to build allies in the community so when Steve Maharey and Michael Cullen sit down to write up the tertiary budget for this year and beyond, they are sick of hearing about student debt from their constituents and their fellow MPs.

So support the NZUSA petition (available through your student association offices) calling for a reintroduction of a universal student allowance so all students can receive a living allowance comparable to the benefit. Take it around home, work, playcentre or whatever. It's a good opportunity to discuss the loans scheme with non-students. Don't leave it to the student unions leadership. Change will not happen without you.

Do you think the govt should give tertiary student's a living allowance? Does the benefit outweigh the cost?
Have your say>>

Like the Treaty of Waitangi itself, the current 'Maori Rights' debate is not a Maori issue because it is not primarily about Maori. It is about the place of Pakeha in this land.

Unlike some Pakeha, I cannot claim that my ancestors have been here for six generations. I am a first generation New Zealander. Nevertheless many of us share a common, almost unconscious, anxiety: what right do Pakeha have be in Aotearoa?

That anxiety has grown as Pakeha dominance of political and cultural affairs has lessened. The recent re-examination of history by such scholars as Belich, Walker, Salmond and Binney has threatened our simplistic views of the past. Waitangi Tribunal hearings and reports have made public a number of tragic stories previously kept private. The promises of the Treaty of Waitangi have become familiar in our minds.

Accounts of the past indicate that Pakeha have long held a tenuous position in Aotearoa. We probably underestimate today the psychological effect of the fear of war in many early Pakeha communities. With the constabulary's invasion of Rua Kenana's peaceful community in 1916 those fears would have largely come to an end. The place of Pakeha in New Zealand seemed settled.

Growing awareness of the injustices of the past, along with a growing Maori population, has again threatened the peace of Pakeha. It was, after all, a peace built on the myth of exemplary race relations and "One New Zealand". Most Pakeha seemed simply unaware during the 1940's to 1980's of constant Maori agitation for the rights affirmed to them from the beginnings of Pakeha settlement here.

No Pakeha is today unaware of those demands. It creates in us a difficult cognitive tension. We know that the past has been characterised by gross injustices. We know that as a result Maori feature in the worst health, education, and imprisonment statistics. Many of us do feel guilty about it, and we resent that.

One way of dealing with our painful and difficult past is to return to historical amnesia. Arguments that "it was all a long time ago" and that we should "just get on with it" are part of that strategy. Ultimately such an approach is doomed to failure. Too much knowledge is now in the public domain, Maori culture is flowering anew, and if we haven't managed to destroy all traces of it over the past 164 years, the chances of doing so in the next 160 are basically zip.

In fact until Pakeha are able to feel certain about our place here we will continue to show signs of anxiety, defensiveness and intolerance, always underlined by the question "when do I become tangata whenua?"

Pakeha do belong here in Aotearoa. One reason that I use the term Pakeha proudly is because it denotes that very thing. People can have pedantic and irresolvable etymological arguments about the origin of the term Pakeha, but they are irrelevant. Pakeha is an indigenous word that refers to New Zealanders of primarily European descent. The word indicates our place here.

Pakeha do have a right to be in Aotearoa. The Treaty of Waitangi confers that right on us. That is why I argue that the Treaty is not primarily a Maori issue. It is a Pakeha one. Maori have a right to be here as tangata whenua. Pakeha have a right to be here because we signed a treaty giving us that right. But the right carries an obligation. It means we do not get to be here 100 per cent on our own terms.

When Tariana Turia said that "Maori have nowhere else to go" some misinterpreted it as saying that Pakeha should all go home. Many Pakeha pointed out (correctly, if unnecessarily) that this is home. I agree, so long as we honour the obligations we collectively agreed to when we moved here.

That means we do not need to feel guilty for the past, or for the actions of others. But we do need to take responsibility for the future. We dishonour ourselves as Pakeha New Zealanders if we allow injustices to continue. The foreshore and seabed policy is simply the latest and most blatant example of Maori being dispossessed unfairly of their property and the right to go to court to secure it.

It is time for Pakeha to secure our place in this land, and our relationship with its indigenous people. However, if we fail to honour the agreement that confers the right to be here, if we continue to locate our emotional, intellectual and institutional homeland on the other side of the planet, perhaps we really don't belong here after all.