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Local Grey Power support going ‘green’

 

Weed, herb, pot, dak or dope – whatever the name, cannabis sativa continues to light up debate on whether it is high-time to remove the controversial plant from the binds of law.

One of the latest groups to add their voice in support of the seven-fingered leaf is a group of Kaipara’s residential seniors.

Grey Power Otamatea (GPO) have been discussing and researching the medicinal benefits of cannabis at their regular meetings and, via unanimous vote, initiated a petition in May to re-legalise growing small quantities of the plant for health benefits.

President of GPO, Beverley Aldridge, believes it is a basic human right to have the option to decide to use marijuana for medicinal reasons.

“What we are wanting is the right to grow small amounts of cannabis for health reasons,” she says. “The plant has been around for ten thousand years, even Queen Victoria was prescribed it for relief of PMT. We ask that every person who can garden, be free to grow this amazing plant and have access to its many medical benefits.”

Aldridge says discussion on the health benefits fired up when GPO members talked of the pain their loved ones had endured while suffering from cancer.

“It seems until you have been confronted with agonising pain from cancer, you don’t really get how bad it can get,” she says. “To see someone you love doped up on pharmaceutical medication, barely conscious and to not be able to say goodbye to them properly, is heart-breaking.”

Aldridge says, in her wide reading of the subject, medical research shows that cannabis has benefits in the treatment of cancer, easing pain yet allowing the person to still retain awareness.

“We have also heard of people who have cured themselves of colitis and breast cancer with hemp products,” she says. “We are simply saying that there has been enough scientific research to prove that the whole cannabis plant is useful for health benefits.”

Grey Power Otamatea appears to be a group who show no reticence when it comes to controversial subjects and Aldridge says the Grey Power meetings often have lively discussions and are pro-active on a wide range of issues including fluoridation of water and the Natural Health and Supplementary Products Bill.

The petition was sent nationwide to the other 32 chapters of Grey Power in an attempt to gain support, however their stance has not been well received by the

associations national President Tom O’Connor, who recently accused cannabis law reform organisations of influencing the members of GPO.

Aldridge denies O’Connor’s allegations saying the members made up their own minds about cannabis and appears unconcerned about going against the fold.

“People were once persecuted and killed for daring to oppose their current scientists, doctors and churches’ stance that the world was flat,” she says. “We like to fight for the underdog, for our rights and not be dictated to. We don’t know how long we’ve got until we shuffle off into this mortal coil, so we want to leave this world a better place. We just want freedom of choice.”

Cannabis was only declared illegal by many administrations worldwide in 1961 and, ‘like the TPPA’ there was no mandate or referendum for New Zealand’s government to make cannabis illegal Aldridge says.

“The government needs to right this wrong and re-legalise it immediately. If they then want to criminalise it, under our democratic process it needs to be taken to the people by referendum for the people to make the decision.”

The petition will be presented to Northland MP Winston Peters in September who says he is happy to present it to parliament and says that New Zealand First has always maintained that after a two-year debate, the country should go to a referendum on the issue.

“It would be a democratic process and whatever the outcome is, New Zealand would have to live with it,” Peters says.
Food for thought
Who really benefits/profits from the current laws around medicinal cannabis?


n For more information view facebook.com/nzlegalise
n To support the petition toko.org.nz/petitions/petition-to-re-legalise-growing-small-quantities-of-cannabis-for-health-benefits

n New members welcome. Enjoy lively debates and help make decisions to make NZ a safer, freer place in which to live, greypowerwhangarei.nz/grey-power-otamatea/

- BY JULIA WADE


 

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