Drugs and Social Resistance

At a time when the country's economy is going from bad to worse and unemployment is beginning to reach dangerous levels discontent is growing rapidly. State powers to spy on anyone who is likely to be effectively critical of the situation are required, but it is bad politics to say so. Thank God for heroin abuse! If it did not exist our politicians would have had to invent it.

Say "drugs" and anything goes. Panic can be whipped up about drugs as and when required to keep the rebels in line. Very obviously it is required now, so hey presto: phone tapping, bugging, mail interference and life sentences by courtesy of Muldoon, Wilkinson, Kirk, Brill, McCready, Rowling, Malcolm and Co.

What are the other likely results of the proposed police state measures? Obviously, as many people and organisations (including Dr Fraser McDonald of the Drug Treatment Centre in Parnell) have pointed out, heroin dealers will go for a shootout if cornered, because dealing carries a higher penalty than killing, so we are going to see more police-widows.

Meanwhile such "Mr Bigs" as do exist (if any) outside the legal trade in addictive drugs have been warned and will relay their communications by coded telephone messages, coded letters and by word of mouth via messengers. Of course, with increased penalties many small operators (typical for New Zealand) will lack the resources to provide for them and they will move into other fields.

For a while government supporters will crow that they have won but then there will be a dramatic increase in attacks on pharmacies and doctors. After this the slack will be taken up, never fear, but it will be taken up by criminals who can work with the new laws, at a higher price for the product of course. Inevitably this will let in Kuornintang tongs, Corsican syndicates or the Mafia, organisations who have some real Mr Bigs who can ensure that very few if any convictions against them will occur.

Of course with panic carefully contrived by press articles such as the "Insight" series and "Parents' guide to drugs" in the Dominion, most people have not been asking so far how "effective" the proposed laws are likely to be for their stated purpose. Wellington papers, for example, have made sure that little informed opposition has been heard at this crucial stage. They have done so by the simple expedient of suppressing every letter from the Cannabis Research Unit of the New Zealand Science Foundation and every press statement from the Marijuana Party on the subject.