My Questions for Russel Norman – Green Party.

NBR have an ‘Ask Me Anything’ Thursday segment; this week, Russel Norman. I have sent in the below questions:

You blocked me on Twitter merely for respectfully taking you up from time to time on your dodgy economics: especially pointing out the often contradictions between your words, policy, and the classical liberal philosophy which once, before it was destroyed, made Western civilisation the peak of human achievement.

If you gain the ministerial bench, will you run the country in this same manner: that is, unaccountably, opaquely, and economically disastrously? Re the latter, if you were ever finance minister, do you believe that government interventions in markets (including the money supply) can achieve better outcomes than the spontaneous order which arises from the individuals in a society transacting voluntarily with one another, as they pursue their happiness? In your opinion does the fist of state thump the voluntary society to a bloodied second place?

Finally, an Act built on cruelty to an animal is a cruel Act, no matter how noble are its aims. With the only poll I've seen showing 97% of Kiwis implacably opposed to animal testing merely so adults can 'choose' to get high on party pills - animal torture for human recreation – why did the Green party not make the striking down of their excellent amendment to have no animal testing  a game-changer for their vote on the Psychoactive Substances Bill? This is not, as Minister McClay states, a public health issue, it’s adults making choices on what to do Friday night, so why did your party, knowing the evil of animal testing in these nonsense circumstances, still vote for it?

Also, outside of the technicality that scheduler substances cannot be considered ‘safe’ under the Psychoactive Substances Act, given cannabis has been tested by humans, voluntarily, for at least 6,000 years, without a single recorded death, it is non-toxic in other words, then why, scientifically, is cannabis not ‘safe’ under this Act? For those of us appalled at animal testing for this trite purpose, we are especially confused that the ‘ends’ of this cruel Act could be achieved by decriminalising cannabis, without a single animal being abused.

PS: What happened to the other ‘l’?


Update 1:

Obviously NBR truncated the above, but I'm very happy to see the final two paragraphs have made the cut of the twenty questions put to Russel (here, scroll down). Will we finally get an answer to why cannabis doesn't qualify as safe, and why decriminalisation wasn't considered as reaching the sames ends as the Psychoactive Substances Act without animal testing? I'll post cross post answers once he puts them up.