justice – Page 33

Cannabis Is Considered An Essential Medicine in America – But Kiwis Still Can’t Get It

With New Zealand entering “level 4” of the new Coronavirus national response system, commercial activity is being scaled back to essential services. This has led to some confusion as to what counts as an essential service. An unpalatable truth facing Kiwis is that, by the standards of several places in America, we are having an essential service denied to us.

The COVID-19 alert level is currently set to 3, out of a maximum of 4. This is similar to the American DEFCON system and refers to the current alarm level. A level 3 means that all non-essential services have been forced to close by Government decree, part of a schedule of restrictions laid out on the Government’s own COVID-19 response website.

What counts as an essential service is also listed on that website. The list covers all the skeleton services required to keep a no-frills society running: healthcare operations, food production and sales, security services, postal and courier services etc. The logic is that, despite the coronavirus risk, it would cause even more suffering if these services were stopped, so they have to be kept open.

Most countries worldwide are now moving into some kind of lockdown with movement or trading restrictions as a result of the pandemic. What’s interesting to note is that although all countries agree on the importance of, for example, social distancing, they don’t all agree on what constitutes an essential service.

Access to medicinal cannabis is not considered essential in New Zealand – the New Zealand Government considers growing medicinal cannabis to be criminal conduct. If you have one of the dozens of ailments that can be helped by cannabis, you can go fuck yourself. You’re not allowed to use it, and if you grow it yourself, you go in a cage.

In several places in America, however, medicinal cannabis is considered essential.

In Los Angeles, county officials declared medicinal cannabis dispensaries to be ‘essential services’ on the grounds that they are healthcare operations like any pharmacy. These officials understand that it is grossly immoral to deny suffering people a medicine that would help them – so immoral that, even in a time of national crisis, cannabis dispensaries need to be kept open.

It’s similar in San Francisco, where cannabis dispensaries are kept open on the grounds that cannabis is a medicine like any other, and that people’s need to access medicine during this time is the same as during any other time. The Dutch also allowed their cannabis cafes to remain open throughout the lockdown, reasoning that closing them would create additional health risks as well as empowering the criminal underworld.

Although the issue is not yet taken seriously by the majority of New Zealanders, accessing medicinal cannabis is a life or death issue for a number of people here. Studies have shown that introducing a medicinal cannabis law decreases the overall suicide rate, and by as much as 11% for men aged between 20 and 29. If one adds to this the lives saved by the application of cannabis to physical medicine, it shows that withholding it from people is causing a significant number of deaths.

It’s incredible that, in some places, the medicinal uses of cannabis are so widely accepted as to be understood by all, yet in New Zealand it’s still impossible to access it. This ongoing denial is a completely unnecessary form of sadism, and one that is entirely unjustifiable given the current state of scientific knowledge about the cannabis plant and its uses.

It’s most galling for those who currently sit in prison for an act deemed to be an “essential service” in other places. New Zealand must seem like a medieval shithole to those who are in cages right now for growing medicinal flowers, when that same act is considered an essential service in more enlightened parts of the world.

Cannabis prohibition is an act of cruelty that only continues because those with the power to change it hate cannabis users, and are indifferent to their suffering. The morally correct thing to do is to recognise that cannabis is a medicine, that people have a legitimate right to use it, and to legalise it straight away.

Vince McLeod is the author of The Case For Cannabis Law Reform, the comprehensive collection of arguments for ending cannabis prohibition.

If you enjoyed reading this essay, you can get a compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2019 from Amazon for Kindle or Amazon for CreateSpace (for international readers), or TradeMe (for Kiwis). A compilation of the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2018 and the Best VJMP Essays and Articles of 2017 are also available.

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New Zealand Should Legalise Cannabis For The Coronavirus Lockdown

It seems inevitable now that the country will soon end up in lockdown on account of the COVID-19 pandemic. This will cause a great deal of stress not only to our society and to our economy, but also to the minds of individual Kiwis. This essay discusses a simple, easy way that the Government could help the nation avoid much of the suffering coming our way: legalise cannabis.

When the lockdown happens, people are going to be trapped inside their houses for a long time. This sudden, forced, close proximity is going to sharply increase the stress levels of a great number of them. Kiwis are an outdoors people – for us community is found on the sports fields, the tramping trails and the beaches, not inside churches or auditoriums. Being stuck inside will be highly unnatural for us.

The Playstation will help for a while – a few days at most – but that will wear thin quickly. The lockdown will lead to sharply elevated levels of boredom and stress – emotions which, if felt for a prolonged period of time, lead to chaos and destruction.

New Zealand already has a serious problem with domestic violence, mostly due to the fact that alcohol is promoted while more peaceful alternatives are suppressed. In our culture, where most lack the self-confidence to speak eloquently, bashing someone is considered an acceptable way to discipline someone misbehaving.

We can predict, sadly, that the enforced proximity created by the lockdowns will result in a sharp rise in domestic violence. Having to live on top of each other for weeks will lead to more nagging and fighting, especially when some turn to alcohol to beat the tedium. As tempers fray, fists will fly. Because children will be at home from school, they will be exposed to it all. In some cases, this will cause long-term trauma.

The Government could pre-empt a great deal of this suffering today, if they had the wit and will to legalise cannabis.

One of the foremost benefits of cannabis is that it makes boredom easier to deal with. As Doug Stanhope said: “Boredom is a disease. Drugs cure it.” Cannabis can make all kinds of dull things exciting, and can make ordinary things seem interesting. Cannabis enthusiasts have found that weed adds to the appreciation of life in much the same way that salt adds to the appreciation of a meal.

If cannabis were to be made legal today, people could make plans to use it during the lockdown. Although it will not be possible to institute retail sales on such short notice, people could take measures to acquire it from those who already have it, who could themselves be temporarily authorised to sell it while a proper recreational system was being set up (although not to people under 18).

Such a move would ease a great deal of the extraordinary stresses to which Kiwis will be subjected in coming months.

The Government is going to have to deal with the prospect of civil unrest over the next few months. There has already been looting in London, if limited, as a result of the increased tensions. Although the nation is pulling in behind the Government now, this is only because the state of alarm is keeping people in line. As the lockdown wears on, people’s dissatisfaction will change their sentiments.

Legalising cannabis would make this much easier. It would provide relief to the great number of New Zealanders who will be suffering heightened stress and anxiety from the lockdown and from its economic consequences. It would provide relaxation to those disturbed by the disruption to normal life. Not least of all, it would allow for different patterns of thinking in these times of panic and despair.

Jacinda Ardern has already proven that the country is willing to accept extraordinary measures in this time of crisis. We have already accepted a shutdown of the national borders, despite the fact that this measure condemns to bankruptcy a proportion of our tourism, transport and hospitality operators. The general mood is akin to a siege mindset. It’s the perfect time to take bold measures.

A majority of New Zealanders have already accepted that legal cannabis is inevitable. The only holdouts are clinging to prohibition out of stubbornness, spite or malice. The COVID-19 lockdown offers the perfect opportunity to bulldoze through these last recalcitrants and to repeal cannabis prohibition.

Over and above all this, repealing cannabis prohibition would free up some $400,000,000 of Government spending and tens of thousands of Police man hours that is currently wasted every year on enforcing cannabis prohibition. Both of those things will be in desperate short supply over the coming months – time to acknowledge that they’re not well spent persecuting weed smokers.

If the Sixth Labour Government thought intelligently about it, they would understand that the COVID-19 epidemic had temporarily slapped the nation out of its usual slumber, and they would use this opportunity to do things that had previously been made impossible by obstinacy and cowardice. The Cannabis Control Bill that is scheduled to be put to a referendum this September could simply be passed into law by majority vote.

Vince McLeod is the author of The Case For Cannabis Law Reform, the comprehensive collection of arguments for ending cannabis prohibition.

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Let It Die – We’ll Build A New One On The Ashes Of The Old

As stockmarkets plummet across the globe, many fear that the end of the world is upon us. It may well be – but this is no reason to be afraid. Much better to embrace this new destiny. It’s time to let the old order die; it’s time for good people to step into the light of the new century. Let the old order die so that we can build a new one!

Panic spreads as the stockmarkets collapse. Emergency measures have been taken to halt trading. Let the stockmarkets collapse! They measure nothing but how much wealth can be wrung out of the sweat of the nation’s workers. Let them collapse, then demolish the buildings they were run out of, break the rubble into gravel and turn the empty lots into gardens.

Will globalism survive the coronavirus? Who cares – let it die! Globalism sees the common man worked to breakdown and then chucked on the garbage heap, his productivity siphoned away to fund the importation of his replacements. Good riddance to the global economy! Good riddance to globalism!

Let the world die – its current order is worth less than nothing anyway. In its stead, let’s build a system where productivity is rewarded more than dumb ownership, and where the objective is to spread the wealth, not to extract it. Let’s build a system where the fundamental basis of solidarity is being raised on the same soil, drinking the same water, breathing the same air, under the same Sun.

Today’s system is rotten to the very core. The only way to advance is to lie and cheat, or to fasten one’s fangs into the back of some working-class man target and to suck wealth from them. Rent-seekers are lionised; truth-tellers are shunned. Lottery winners and inheritors of fortunes are prized as highly as great entrepreneurs and inventors.

Let it die!

Instead of hailing the financial swindlers, the planet rapers, the producers of stupefying drugs and those most adept at slithering up the greasy pole of politics, in the New Century we will hail those whose effort brings a reduction to the suffering of other sentient beings. Those who meet other people’s needs for food, for medicine, for shelter, for companionship, for knowledge and for entertainment will be our heroes!

Some argue that the Internet needs to be regulated on account of that “the proliferation of fake news” has led to people losing faith in the mainstream media. Let the public lose faith in the mass media and in the political institutions! Since forever the mass media have been paid propagandists for the Establishment, surpassed only in wretchedness by politicians. Let this be known by all!

Since forever the political institutions have pushed honest people away and promoted liars, grifters, horse-traders, palm-greasers and teleprompter-readers of all stripes. The political institutions are happy to promote people of any race, creed, sex or sexual orientation, so long as they maintain strict adherence to the one moral truth: money is God.

Corona-Chan can take the whole wretched system! Let a new one arise – one in which the truth is valued, and where statesmen are hired to do a job for the people, not to them. Let a culture arise in which tellers of truth are no longer ridiculed but admired. Let the liars be shunned!

Most ridiculous of all are the lamentations of the impotent old fools and superstitious cowards who think that appeasing the God of Abraham in this world will grant them an absence of suffering in the worlds to come, and that our loss of faith in this miserable slave doctrine is the reason for our current woes. These execrable weaklings have it that all suffering in the world comes from a failure to grovel obsequiously enough before the priests of this slave ideology.

Let the public lose faith in religion!

Our “Judeo-Christian” heritage is worth less than nothing; at best a safety blanket for resentful egomaniacs, at worst an intoxicating set of delusions that rot the soul. There’s no reason for Westerners today to follow a book that tells them to kill non-believers and homosexuals in the hope of spending eternity with the rabbi in the sky.

Let it get flushed down the S-bend of history.

In the New Century, women stand alongside men as interdependent forces that work together to reduce the suffering of everyone. No longer shall any filthy book of hate cause violence and discord between natural allies. No-one is to be killed unless they unrepentantly cause suffering to other sentient beings.

We will build a new world, one based upon an honest and real connection to God. Let the Abrahamist piss his pants at the thought of spiritual sacraments like cannabis, psilocybin and dimethyltryptamine – we will consume them all, at the same time! In our new world, knowledge of the divine and the sacraments that reconnect us to it will be common.

There is no fear that the collapse of the rotten old order means that we will rush blindly into the unknown. Those who have long hated that order have thought for many years about a better one.

It’s time for an order that puts the elimination of human suffering first. Not profit, not equality, not adherence to the twisted moral tenets of an inhuman desert cult but the elimination of actual human suffering – directly, not in the abstract.

Let us have a system that feeds rather than starves, which heals rather than sickens, which enlightens people instead of making them more ignorant. Let the coronavirus destroy the stockmarkets so that the whole filthy charade finally ends. Let the old world die, so that we can get to work building a new!

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Understanding The “Justice” System

Judicial verdicts frequently provoke confusion among observers. In some cases it’s extremely difficult to understand why judgments are handed down, as punishment seems so random and arbitrary. As this essay will explain, understanding our “Justice” System is literally as simple as ABC.

In this context, ‘ABC’ refers to an algebraic formula that could also be expressed a*b*c = x, where x is the severity of the punishment.

a is the degree of inconvenience caused by the offence. The greater the inconvenience, the greater the punishment.

Murder causes a great deal of inconvenience, not least to the person killed. The family and friends of murder victims are also greatly impacted. It is for this reason that murder is also referred to as “the ultimate crime”. Other crimes like manslaughter, rape and kidnapping also cause great inconvenience, and these also carry heavy punishment.

Lesser crimes are things like theft and assault. Neither of these crimes kill anyone, and neither do they regularly cause long-standing psychological damage. Consequently, such crimes carry light punishments. Note that a equals the amount of inconvenience caused, not the amount of suffering caused, because an offence does not have to cause suffering in order to attract judicial punishment (growing medicinal cannabis is one such example).

All this seems very straightforward, and it would be, if the formula didn’t have b and c. The sad reality is that the amount of suffering caused by an offender is not the only factor that the “Justice” System takes into account. Far from it.

b is the social status of the person impacted by the offence. The higher the social status, the greater the punishment.

The highest social status is that of the Crown (or the Government). Therefore, offences that impact the Crown are punished the most severely. This is why offences that cause a minimum of suffering, but which inconvenience the Government, are punished heavily. Julian Assange is the foremost example of this today, as are the aforementioned cannabis users.

If the person impacted by the offence is of a low social status, the punishment will be low. It might be difficult to secure a conviction, because a complainant with low social status might not be considered a trustworthy witness in court. The case might not even go that far. It’s common for the Police to refuse to hear complaints from working-class people, giving them an excuse such as that they don’t have enough evidence to pursue a complaint.

Despite the bleating of social justice warriors, social status is a far more important factor than race. A case in New Zealand last year saw a man sentenced to a mere eight months’ home detention for killing a white man – a verdict easily understood once it’s realised that the victim was homeless. It can be guaranteed that if a Member of Parliament had been beaten to death in similar circumstances, the punishment would have been life imprisonment.

c is the social status of the person who committed the offence. The higher the social status, the lower the punishment.

If the person committing the offence is of a high enough social status, they simply won’t be charged for it. Jimmy Savile is the best example of this. If you can get to a high enough social status, you can rape hundreds of children and the “Justice” System simply won’t charge you. Likewise, Mike Sabin in New Zealand got off scot-free with what he did.

As David Icke has extensively written, the Western Establishment is full of pedophiles – and their high social status prevents the Police from charging or investigating them. Lesser members of the Establishment might not be able to avoid being charged or convicted, but they will nevertheless get a much lighter punishment than a working-class person would for the same offence.

Further examples are the high-profile sportsmen who are given name suppression and who avoid criminal convictions because of “promising rugby careers” or similar. The New Zealand Herald even managed to compile a playing XV of rugby players who had escaped conviction after committing a criminal offence. One player even did so despite breaking another man’s jaw.

A person of a low social status, by contrast, will get smashed for even the most minor infringement. If you’re working-class, you can expect to get a year in prison for stealing a few dozen trout. Middle-class people, like Phil Goff’s daughter, can get away with being found in possession of ecstasy, while working-class people get nailed to the wall for sharing videos, provided it inconveniences the Government enough.

The basic formula, then, for determining the severity of a judicial punishment is as follows: take the total inconvenience caused by the offence, multiply it by the social status of the person inconvenienced, and multiply this by the inverse of the social status of the person committing the offence.

The maximum theoretical punishment would come, according to this formula, from a common working-class man killing the Queen, President or Prime Minister of their political system. Whether legal or not, such an act is almost bound to result in the death penalty, and will at the least incur life imprisonment.

The minimum theoretical punishment would come from an act taken by the Government to inconvenience a common citizen. It is all but certain that no member of the Establishment will ever have to pay for the crime of conducting a War on Drugs against their own people, even though the people did not consent to it. Likewise, an immigration official allowing a murderer into the country who then murders someone will not be punished.

What best explains all of this is the fact that the ruling class ultimately invented the Justice System to protect their position. Therefore, the point of it is to smash down challengers to the ruling class and to their interests. That’s why the Justice System hardly cares at all when the Government commits crimes against its own people, or when members of the working class harm each other.

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