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Russell Brown Profile picture
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14 Oct, 18 tweets, 4 min read
Kia ora. I have no quarrel with Twitter's decision not to run political ads – but it does mean We Do campaign posts featuring our lovely volunteers tend to disappear. So here's a thread of some of the people who stood up to say "We Do".

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Russell Brown Profile picture
15 Oct
Just about tapped out, but I'll have one last run at this: if you haven't already voted, please consider a "Yes" vote to support the Cannabis Legalisation and Control bill. As Professor Baker et al have written, it is a "once in a generation opportunity" to get things right.
The bill is good, thoughtful and detailed. It embodies the lessons of other jurisdictions and, crucially, addresses the needs of New Zealanders. It's built on public health principles. It offers order in place of the selectively-enforced mess that is our current cannabis law.
A "Yes" vote will send the bill to select committee, where it can be further shaped in response to public input. Its core features, and in particular its curbs on commercial activity in a new, regulated environment, will remain.
Read 9 tweets
Russell Brown Profile picture
14 Oct
1. A modest proposal: critics of the Cannabis Legalisation and Control bill should be required to read the bloody thing first. From David Menkes' absolute trainwreck of a column on Newsroom. **Both import and export are explicitly prohibited in the draft bill.** Image
2. The bill doesn't legally mandate CBD levels, but it does limit THC levels. The idea that CBD *couldn't* be similarly regulated is baseless. As it stands, higher-CBD (hence lower THC) strains would receive more favourable excise treatment, and be more accessible. Image
3. This plainly is not something that has happened – or, really, *could* happen – under prohibition. The breeding out of CBD over decades is an artefact of prohibition. That's currently accelerating with the entry of THC concentrates to the illicit market. Image
Read 11 tweets
Russell Brown Profile picture
14 Oct
1. Firstly, this column is written in good faith. The authors do clearly care. But it's full of bad arguments and in places, false claims. Let's go through some of them ...
2. The column places great weight on a quote from Sir Robin Murray that 8% of people who use high-potency cannabis daily will develop schizophrenia. Further down, this elides into being 8% of *all* users of high-potency (ie: modern) cannabis, which isn't what he said.
3. Sir Robin hasn't said this in any publication I can find. In this 2018 summary, he quotes an evidence review finding a fourfold risk of developing psychotic symptoms *for the heaviest users*, vs non-users. (The cited review doesn't define heavy use) researchgate.net/publication/32…
Read 11 tweets
Russell Brown Profile picture
5 Oct
The announcement of a nationwide return to Level 1 alert seems like a good chance to observe how effective our ready response was, and how well the contract-tracing ability we've built out of nothing this year has worked. 1/
You only need to look at the dysfunctional tracing network in the UK, or to see the US White House apparently unable to even look after its own tribe to get a sense of how bad these things can be. There were some curveballs, but our system worked. 2/
When the likes of David Seymour uttered their multiple screaming tweets declaring the system had "failed" it was just reckless political speech and it was insulting to the people doing the work. I guess Seymour et al won't be saying that today. 3/
Read 4 tweets
Russell Brown Profile picture
26 Sep
1. Some observations on the current kvetching about the prospects for a "Yes" vote in the cannabis referendum. The first is that the most consistent factor in voting intentions, in poll after poll, is political partisanship.
2. There are current National MPs who support cannabis reform, but they are forbidden to to say so and must now pretend their private vote will be in line with that order. National Party voters have got the message that this is not their bill.
3. But that's clearly not all of it, because even on this weekend's disappointing TVNZ poll, legalising and regulating cannabis is still more popular with the voting public than the National Party is.
Read 15 tweets
Russell Brown Profile picture
21 Sep
I *partly* agree with the complaints that the programme focused on extremes in its depictions of people who use and produce cannabis in NZ. But it's complicated. The truth is that most of the 300k+ past-year NZ cannabis users are too normal and boring to put in a documentary ...
Even the people who did appear aren't really quite as fruity as they looked on TV. When you're obliged to wear a masquerade mask, you look like a weirdo. If you have to hide your face, you look dodgy.
Rua Bioscience's head grower Brandon Wevers presented as a nice, open family man who happened to have spent decades growing illegal weed. We'd have perceived him differently had he been honking through a mask to evade identification. That's what the law does.
Read 16 tweets

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