poledriver
Bluelighter
- Joined
- Jul 21, 2005
- Messages
- 11,543
NZ - Cash in on green grass of home
You don't have to smoke it to know cannabis is here to stay - so why not make a buck from it?
Comments on the site....
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*** Edited out a few paragraphs to keep inline with the rules.
You don't have to smoke it to know cannabis is here to stay - so why not make a buck from it?
I go into the yard to hang out washing, and smell it. I walk my children to school through the leafy avenues of Mt Eden, and smell it. I walk past a group of guys operating highly dangerous construction equipment and, with some alarm, I smell it there too.
Now, either I'm walking around with a smouldering marijuana leaf about my person (unlikely, as my married-with-young-kids lifestyle is so lily-white it would make the Swiss Family Robinson vomit with disgust), or every second person in New Zealand is on the wacky-baccy. In fact, it's about 10 to 15 per cent of us, according to a recent study in the medical journal The Lancet. Kiwis and Aussies are among the world's highest users of cannabis.
To my mind, this drug is completely loathsome. It makes people talk a load of bollocks, for one thing, but also plays a starring role in cancers, lung disease and our appalling road toll. Teachers hate it for turning students into glassy-eyed no-hopers, parents hate it for turning unreachable teenagers into ... well, more unreachable teenagers; and young children growing up in tinny houses add immeasurably to the workload of the police and social workers.
But the pragmatic in me thinks something lucrative and, dare I say it, positive for New Zealand could be mined in marijuana. Don Brash was halfway there before the last election, in attempting to approach the issue like an adult (for which he got shot down in flames) - but where he advocated decriminalising pot for personal use, I'm thinking bigger, bolder.
What about the Government taking a (cannabis) leaf out of the California story and granting permits to a set number of marijuana growers throughout the country, who would sell it to licensed outlets for use by those with a medical need for the drug (or those wanting a bloody great high - either way), and steal a jump on the way the world is inevitably going?
It's an industry that could create so much tax revenue, given its inherent popularity; it would mean no digging up the Coromandel or deep-sea drilling, for starters. Instead of losing whole generations of wily entrepreneurs to this leafy green underworld, their business acumen would be harnessed to produce a legal, safe(r) product - with by-products like hemp and hydroponics technology creating still more industry.
As for me, I don't do marijuana, so I won't be contributing to the four-wheel drives of tinny house-owners or the higher tax take of a more liberal government.
I don't need to - if I want a free high, all I need to do is open my windows and inhale.
[email protected]
Now, either I'm walking around with a smouldering marijuana leaf about my person (unlikely, as my married-with-young-kids lifestyle is so lily-white it would make the Swiss Family Robinson vomit with disgust), or every second person in New Zealand is on the wacky-baccy. In fact, it's about 10 to 15 per cent of us, according to a recent study in the medical journal The Lancet. Kiwis and Aussies are among the world's highest users of cannabis.
To my mind, this drug is completely loathsome. It makes people talk a load of bollocks, for one thing, but also plays a starring role in cancers, lung disease and our appalling road toll. Teachers hate it for turning students into glassy-eyed no-hopers, parents hate it for turning unreachable teenagers into ... well, more unreachable teenagers; and young children growing up in tinny houses add immeasurably to the workload of the police and social workers.
But the pragmatic in me thinks something lucrative and, dare I say it, positive for New Zealand could be mined in marijuana. Don Brash was halfway there before the last election, in attempting to approach the issue like an adult (for which he got shot down in flames) - but where he advocated decriminalising pot for personal use, I'm thinking bigger, bolder.
What about the Government taking a (cannabis) leaf out of the California story and granting permits to a set number of marijuana growers throughout the country, who would sell it to licensed outlets for use by those with a medical need for the drug (or those wanting a bloody great high - either way), and steal a jump on the way the world is inevitably going?
It's an industry that could create so much tax revenue, given its inherent popularity; it would mean no digging up the Coromandel or deep-sea drilling, for starters. Instead of losing whole generations of wily entrepreneurs to this leafy green underworld, their business acumen would be harnessed to produce a legal, safe(r) product - with by-products like hemp and hydroponics technology creating still more industry.
As for me, I don't do marijuana, so I won't be contributing to the four-wheel drives of tinny house-owners or the higher tax take of a more liberal government.
I don't need to - if I want a free high, all I need to do is open my windows and inhale.
[email protected]
Comments on the site....
here
*** Edited out a few paragraphs to keep inline with the rules.
Last edited:
