Nándor Tánczos. Photo by Emma Jean Skellern.
According to a recent survey commissioned by the NZ Drug Foundation, 67 percent of New Zealanders want cannabis decriminalised or completely legalised. For supporters of reform, those numbers coincide nicely with the upcoming referendum on cannabis law reform to take place before or with the 2020 election.For Nándor Tánczos, who as a Green MP from 1999 to 2008 was a consistent and loud voice for reform of our cannabis laws, it’s a case of politics having caught up to him. Now a member of the Whakatane District Council, Tánczos remains fixed in the public imagination as the dreadlocked MP who would skate to Parliament and as the country’s first and—to date—only Rastafarian Member of the HouseHaving helped start the new Cannabis Referendum Coalition and having been a vocal element of the discussion about drug reform for many decades, VICE wanted to get Tánczos’ take on the cannabis-reform conversation that’s currently taking place in the country’s halls of power.VICE: Marijuana law reform is now firmly on the agenda—do you feel personally vindicated?
Nándor Tánczos: I mean, yeah, I do. I certainly feel pleased that we're finally getting there, and this deep sense of anger and frustration I've had for many years has been starting to lessen as we get closer to getting this solved.But yeah, I'm just part of a whole wave that's been going for sometime, but I do feel vindicated in the sense that a whole lot of us have been working on this and we've known that it's going to happen sooner or later; the question has always been not if, but when. Because the evidence is so clear that prohibition is a complete failure on any terms. On any terms at all, from wasting huge amounts of public money, creating a bigger drug problem, to creating an illegal market: all the many, many evils of prohibition.What has changed in NZ that means reform is now politically viable?
As time goes on the evidence is just more and more obvious that cannabis prohibition is just ridiculous, people just see how much money is being wasted. The huge negative impact it has on the perception of the police because otherwise law-abiding people are treated like criminals. The racism inherent in the system has been made really apparent by cannabis because the search powers are so open to abuse that it's quite stark. Then also with that, you've got the methamphetamine epidemic. We have some real problems with hard drug use in this country, and a lot of people are looking at that thinking 'why are we still spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year, busting people for cannabis when we've got far more serious things to worry about?'.And now, America, which was spearheading the hardcore prohibitionist approach, enforcing it on everyone else, now has a number of states that have fully legalised cannabis and created a legal market for it. It's created this amazing evidence of what happens when you fully regulate the market and license it and treat it like you would alcohol or something like that, and the evidence says that it's really successful. You know, drug use doesn't go up, you create this brand-new revenue stream to deal with treatment, fund public services, you put in place age limits. So the evidence says that it works—it's not theoretical.What do you hope the referendum question will be, and why is the framing so important?
One of the things the coalition is concerned about is making sure the right questions are in place, so what we're saying is a two-part question. Because what we know is the vast majority of New Zealanders support the right of adults to use and possess cannabis. So there's a substantial majority for that, there's growing support for adults to be able to buy cannabis from a licensed premises, and the concern is, if you have a one part question, you either make it a very modest proposal, like "the right of adults to possess cannabis”—and that passes the line, but it's not very progressive, it's trailing behind the pack, internationally speaking. Or you go for a more progressive question, like: "Should adults be able to buy from a licensed premise?" But the danger is, you don't know if there's a majority support or not. And if you lose that, you don't get anything, so we're proposing a two-part question, asking both of those questions, the first we think will pass, and then the second question—we're not sure, there is support and it's growing—but whether we get a majority for that we don't know. So, we want to see reform that's as progressive as possible, consistent with what New Zealanders want. There's no point just going for the lowest common denominator.New Zealand is a wacky mix of conservative ideology and progressiveness: we’ve got a 37-year-old unmarried mother as our Prime Minister but it seems we’re struggling to talk about full legalisation of cannabis. What needs to change in our country’s dialogue to move this forward?
It’s critical that for people who support reform, first of all, to engage in the discussion. So this means getting into the media, talking with family, friends and workmates. Get the conversation happening. And next thing, make sure you vote in the referendum because this is our best chance for a very long time to get some real change. It's purely going to be up to up to us and whether we turn out and vote.
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Nándor Tánczos: I mean, yeah, I do. I certainly feel pleased that we're finally getting there, and this deep sense of anger and frustration I've had for many years has been starting to lessen as we get closer to getting this solved.But yeah, I'm just part of a whole wave that's been going for sometime, but I do feel vindicated in the sense that a whole lot of us have been working on this and we've known that it's going to happen sooner or later; the question has always been not if, but when. Because the evidence is so clear that prohibition is a complete failure on any terms. On any terms at all, from wasting huge amounts of public money, creating a bigger drug problem, to creating an illegal market: all the many, many evils of prohibition.What has changed in NZ that means reform is now politically viable?
As time goes on the evidence is just more and more obvious that cannabis prohibition is just ridiculous, people just see how much money is being wasted. The huge negative impact it has on the perception of the police because otherwise law-abiding people are treated like criminals. The racism inherent in the system has been made really apparent by cannabis because the search powers are so open to abuse that it's quite stark. Then also with that, you've got the methamphetamine epidemic. We have some real problems with hard drug use in this country, and a lot of people are looking at that thinking 'why are we still spending hundreds of millions of dollars a year, busting people for cannabis when we've got far more serious things to worry about?'.
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One of the things the coalition is concerned about is making sure the right questions are in place, so what we're saying is a two-part question. Because what we know is the vast majority of New Zealanders support the right of adults to use and possess cannabis. So there's a substantial majority for that, there's growing support for adults to be able to buy cannabis from a licensed premises, and the concern is, if you have a one part question, you either make it a very modest proposal, like "the right of adults to possess cannabis”—and that passes the line, but it's not very progressive, it's trailing behind the pack, internationally speaking. Or you go for a more progressive question, like: "Should adults be able to buy from a licensed premise?" But the danger is, you don't know if there's a majority support or not. And if you lose that, you don't get anything, so we're proposing a two-part question, asking both of those questions, the first we think will pass, and then the second question—we're not sure, there is support and it's growing—but whether we get a majority for that we don't know. So, we want to see reform that's as progressive as possible, consistent with what New Zealanders want. There's no point just going for the lowest common denominator.New Zealand is a wacky mix of conservative ideology and progressiveness: we’ve got a 37-year-old unmarried mother as our Prime Minister but it seems we’re struggling to talk about full legalisation of cannabis. What needs to change in our country’s dialogue to move this forward?
New Zealand as a whole is actually very progressive on this issue. Rather, we don't have the dialogue in Parliament, and that's the problem. We've got a whole load of MPs, possibly the majority of whom are way behind the public of New Zealand. You know, would the parliament have elected Jacinda Ardern as the Prime Minister from among their numbers if it had been left up to them? Well, maybe not, but New Zealanders did. I think the MPs are way more conservative than the public. The important thing about this referendum though, is it is a chance for the public to directly have our say. Getting a majority of MPs to vote for cannabis law reform I think has been a challenge for a very long time. But, if we get a referendum with a positive result, it's going to be very difficult for them not to implement the results of that.What are your hopes for the referendum?
It’s critical that for people who support reform, first of all, to engage in the discussion. So this means getting into the media, talking with family, friends and workmates. Get the conversation happening. And next thing, make sure you vote in the referendum because this is our best chance for a very long time to get some real change. It's purely going to be up to up to us and whether we turn out and vote.