Poet Calls for ‘truce’ on Marihuana

Marihuana could help to save the lives of drug users, the New Zealand poet James K. Baxter said in Auckland today.

Mr Baxter has been working to rehabilitate drug users in Auckland this year and has set up a Narcotics Anonymous group in which former drug users are helping ‘junkies’.

‘I don’t think marihuana would be legalised, but a truce should be called on present police activities and “prosecutions”,’ he said.

‘This should be done because many peopled are weaning themselves off dangerous drugs with marihuana, and this may save their lives.’

Mr Baxter said the truce should also be called because marihuana was widely used and was less harmful than cigarettes.

‘Police are not helping drug users to recover – they only search for drugs,’ he said.

‘I have also learned from doctors and nurses that mental hospitals have no facilities to offer which are successful in breaking drug habits.

‘The whole public attitude to drug-using is loaded with fear, fantasy and punitive legalism.’

Mr Baxter said the most harmful drugs in New Zealand were amphetamines, which were also the most readily available and could kill page 57 people in four years.

‘I believe the use of drugs in New Zealand will increase one hundredfold, as the mental dungeons of our society become more oppressive,’ he said.

The most positive and effective approach to the problem of drugs in New Zealand would be the setting up of community centres in which people who had freed themselves from drug habits could help others who wished to free themselves, said Mr Baxter.

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