Russel Norman Responds – Animal Testing & Psychoactive Substances Act.

Regarding my previous post, Russell Normal, co-leader of the Green Party, replies to my queries relating to the Psychoactive Substances Act. I’m busy, so can’t comment for now, and his answer will at this stage more serve as grist to the mill in my reply to Minister McClay, but I will say one thing: ‘reasonable people’,  Russel, do not vote for the cruelty of animal testing for the sake of party pills. Cruel, uninformed people do. The Green vote here was not a 'rational approach' to drug policy, that would be decriminalisation: this was a cruel vote to torture animals for no good purpose at all. And in making this call, the Green Party has mis-represented more than 90% of rational, humane people in New Zealand. Below I’ll repeat the questions I asked, followed by Russel’s answers.

Before that though, important notice. HUHA (Helping You Help Animals), whom I seem to remember are doing sterling work in Christchurch with animals displaced by the earthquakes, are organising a series of marches in the main centres on 30 July,  against animal testing for party drugs. If you can, join them. In the meantime, keep up the letter writing campaign. We’ve got to let these uninformed  politicians understand the gravity of their mistakes with this rotten law.

With that, my questions to Russel Norman:

… 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.

Russel Norman, Green Party Co-Leader, replies:

By Russel Norman (verified) 17 minutes ago in reply to Mark Hubbard

Bills often have elements we like and elements we don't. This bill has some good elements around a more rational approach to drugs. We did our level best to fix up some of the elements we don't like, such as testing on animals, and made some progress but not as much as we would have liked. At that point, it's a judgement call as to whether you vote for the bill, and reasonable people of similar values can disagree about that.

Obviously, there is a logical contradiction in the treatment of natural and synthetic cannabis in the law, something the Greens have spoken about on many occasions.