Thursday, February 11, 2010

Law Commission favours more realistic drug laws

The Law Commission has released its review of the Misuse of Drugs Act. The full report is here. At 408 pages, it's a bit early for me to report how great it art. Fortunately, TVNZ sez:
The commission's Issues Paper on Controlling and Regulating Drugs canvasses a range of options for dealing with offences including a formal cautioning scheme, an infringement notice regime and a greater use of diversion into education and treatment.

"These more flexible approaches are likely to be much more effective at reducing drug harm than simply punishing drug users," says Palmer.

I'll blog more once I've had a dig through the document, but it sounds like some good ideas are in there. Mind you, there were some quite good ideas in the Tax Working Group report and look where that ended up.

The Law Commission is calling for public submissions with an April 30 deadline. Their message board at TalkLaw is also accepting feedback. Get in there.