The New Zealand Law Commission today released “Controlling and Regulating Drugs” which reviews the Misuse of Drugs Act 1975.

The NZ Drug Foundation has an overview of some of the salient points. More comment from us later after we’ve had a chance to read the report ourselves, but at least they recognised how antiquated the law is, being drafted in the wake of moral panic about psychedelics.

In the mean time, I invite you to head over to read the documents yourself and have your say. Please make a submission or comment if you feel the current drug laws are ineffective at dealing with what we feel should be a health and education issue.

You may remember the government advisor Prof. Nutt who got sacked for reporting relative harms of various drugs and promoting evidence based drug reform. Nutt has gone on to found the The Independent Council on Drug Harms with 20 other specialists, some of whom were on the British Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) before they quit in retaliation to Prof. Nutt’s removal from the advisory council.

Context from the BBC article: “Prof Nutt was sacked by Home Secretary Alan Johnson last October after publicly disagreeing with the government’s decision to re-classify cannabis as a Class B drug and not to downgrade ecstasy.”