Recent years have seen organised crime become more dominant in the cannabis industry, while every few months someone else is killed over a drug deal gone wrong. Creating the potential for corruption at all levels and in many forms Alienating people from the 'rule of law', eroding respect for our police and criminal justice system, and creating conflicts within communities. Endangering our natural environment by forcing illicit drug cultivation to occur in New Zealand's most pristine and untouched places, with resulting damage to sensitive ecological systems and danger to trampers, tourists, land-owners and conservation workers. Preventing the commercial cultivation of hemp, thereby denying New Zealand the economic and environmental benefits that domestic cultivation of the hemp plant can bring. Ten percent of all convictions are given for drug offences, compared with nine per cent for all violent crime put together.
Police arrest someone for illegal drugs every twenty minutes somewhere in New Zealand.
Drug abuse is a social and public health problem not a legal one. Isolating users of currently illicit drugs from helping agencies and their social support networks, making it hard to reach them with education messages about protecting themselves and others from infection. Increasing malnutrition and other health deficits related to poverty by forcing users to pay inflated black market prices for drugs. Harm reduction policies and programs must be part of a public health approach to managing drug use. Protecting the health of the community must include protecting the health of drug users.