Students sick of marijuana

The big question at Easter Council this year will be that old standby, marijuana. After being tabled for more discussions last August, the motion is to be voted on at this session of NZUSA National Commission.

My guess is that the issue will go off like a lead balloon; the public are sick of it, the students are sick of it, and the country is just not ready to even conceive of the real issues at stake in the question.

Otago's referendum showed the amount of student interest in pot; 25 per cent. is hardly a sufficient sample to extrapolate from.

The other remits for discussion are the usual batch of time-worn chestnuts. Various idealists will try to stop the All Blacks, stop State aid to private schools, liberalise licensing and censorship laws, get America and Russia out of Vietnam and Czechoslovakia, try to get the Government to inquire into what the Americans are doing at Woodbourne and Mt John, ask for an inquiry into police actions over Agnew's visit, and call for more sex education.

These are all very laudable efforts, but when are the student politicians of our little world going to realise that no one gives a stuff what they think, especially not our country's leaders, bless their pointy little heads.

If NZUSA would stop making grand idealistic gestures and get down to their business of assisting the 30,000 students in New Zealand, perhaps we would start to get our money's worth out of the organisation. Considering the anti-intellectual bias of most New Zealanders, do they seriously think that the views of a small elite (this is how we look) will be considered worth following?

NZUSA meets in full council only twice a year; this time is too valuable to be spent in arguing about Vietnam or abortion laws. Bursary rises, decreased fees, course changes and accommodation problems are matters more deserving of the attention of the national student body.