The newly-elected prime minister of New Zealand, Jacinda Ardern, is ready to change the country for good. After having won NZ over with her candidacy, she’s governing with a coalition of her own party (Labour Party), the Green Party of New Zealand, and a populist party called NZ First.
As soon as she took office she began to voice her concerns about New Zealand’s drug policy. She was influenced by the main concept of the Green Party Manifesto that said that “drugs should be legal for personal use, including possession and cultivation.”
Because of Ardern’s progressive outlook towards the country’s direction as well as the Green Party’s persistent push for reform, a discussion about whether or not cannabis should be legalized and available to the public was sparked among the country’s politics and its people.
“During the campaign, I’ve always been very vocal about the fact that I do not believe people should be imprisoned for the personal use of cannabis,” she says, “on the flip-side, I also have concerns around young people accessing a product which can clearly do harm and damage to them.”
The Greens not only want to introduce legal drug use into NZ’s policy, but also a legal age limit, and the ability to grow marijuana/cannabis legally if its purpose is for medication.
Ross Bell, the Executive Director at the New Zealand Drug Foundation states that the legalization of cannabis in their country is “long overdue”, as over 65 percent of its people in the polls that his organization has conducted have decided that their drug policy should be reformed.
He, along with Ardern, want the people to focus on the advantages of marijuana and what it could potentially bring to New Zealand.
As of right now, they’re looking at Canada’s model of cannabis legalization, their government promising Canadians July 1st, 2018 as the date of legalizing the drug that is spreading like wildfire in global governments and economies.
New Zealand hopes to use their model as an example of drug policy that they could possibly pursue, as they hope to have a referendum with binding votes by the year of 2020.
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