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The President of the Cannabis Party Tells Us Why He's Standing In The Mt Albert By-Election

Abe Gray's dream of cannabis reform in New Zealand isn't over yet.

The Mt Albert by-election, to be held on February 25 seems a foregone conclusion. Labour's perennially rising star, Jacinda Ardern, unopposed by National, is standing in a seat that has been safe for the party for 70 years. Expect talk of the housing crisis, more police on the streets, public transport. Don't expect, at least from the mainstream candidates, much mention of cannabis legislation reform.

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For that, you need to start listening to Abe Gray, 34, the Cannabis Party's candidate for Mt Albert. After moving here from the US 15 years ago, Abe has been highly active in agitating for reform, both politically and through direct action, even opening the country's first marijuana museum, Dunedin's Whakamana. We caught up with Abe at Auckland's Hemp Store to chat about activism, the failure of politicians to enact the public will, his hopes for the by-election, and how the process of reform could attract those who feel mainstream politics has nothing to offer.

VICE: Hey Abe, so what's your history of marijuana reform in New Zealand?
Abe: I came from the US in 2002 because I had been led to believe that New Zealand was about to legalise cannabis. Nandor Tanczos was at the height of his popularity and there had been quite a few articles in High Times and Cannabis Culture about how New Zealand had elected the first Rastafarian member of Parliament in the world and how they had held justice and health select committees that found that the harms created by prohibition were greater than the harms of cannabis itself, therefore they recommended decriminalisation. That was really inspirational.

I was a student of botany and I thought I would move here and finish my studies and start growing legal cannabis for the industry here. The same week I arrived was the week of the 2002 election when Peter Dunne got a surge of popularity late in the piece and all the cannabis momentum was taken off the table in the form of Dunne's single coalition demand of no change to the legal status of cannabis. From the moment I arrived, this dream of legal cannabis [was over]. I thought I was fleeing a police state that was never going to get better. Fifteen years later, it's gone backwards here and it's now better there.

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"The next year we went back with 100 people and we really hot-boxed the police station, and again no one was arrested."

I was really frustrated that there was all this anti-weed rhetoric that wasn't being countered so I joined up with the Dunedin NORML group and we held protests—we had J Day once a year and on my first one we were led into the police station and we hot-boxed it, and no one was arrested. The police said they had more important things to do, and we agreed with them. So the next year we went back with 100 people and we really hot-boxed the police station, and again no one was arrested. We realised that if it's a peaceful protest, the police will let you away with cannabis because they didn't want to be seen busting it up, even inside the police station. So, instead of having a protest once a year, we had a protest once a week. If science has shown that prohibition is more harmful than the drug itself, and there's still no political will to legalise, then we have to resort to civil disobedience. If we create these times and spaces where you're allowed to consume cannabis socially without facing persecution then we need to expand those territories and those times, and basically grow the de facto legalisation until such time that the politicians actually listen.

It sounds like you have little faith in a political solution. Why run for Parliament?
The Cannabis Party has contested every election and every by-election since MMP was created, and the idea behind the Cannabis Party is that there have been all these traditional methods used to try and lobby the government and they've all come out on our side, but this hasn't translated into political change. There's this bottleneck of the actual politicians themselves having all the evidence in front of them but not being willing to do what is required. The only way to circuit-break that is to get our own people in there.

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Cynics would say you've got no chance. How's your support?
Well, when you look the traditional New Zealand political polls you'll see that United Future doesn't even register. ACT, sometimes they get up to 0.5, sometimes they don't register. Then there's this category called 'Other' that is consistently one whole percent or 1.5 percent. Problem is, there aren't any other political parties that they list. They list ACT, they list United Future, they list the Conservatives. That 'Other', or at least a significant portion of that 1.5 percent, is the Cannabis Party. We've contacted polling companies to ask why they report these other minor parties' names and not ours and they basically said, 'If you pay us $5000 to prepare a special report on specifically how much of this "Other" belongs to your party, then we could consider reporting your party in our future media releases. We don't have the money to do that.

"The only thing that works to split society down the middle and get people all paranoid and secretive and against each other politically is cannabis."

New Zealand has the highest per capita rate of marijuana use in the world—what's holding up reform?
The only thing that works to split society down the middle and get people all paranoid and secretive and against each other politically is cannabis. Because of the stigma against it, middle New Zealand can't admit its marijuana use. Anyone with anything to lose can't publicly show their support because they might lose their job or they'll be pilloried in the media—the same reasons politicians are so overly cautious about it.

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Despite that, it does seem like there's been some progress of late, whether that's news from the US or the streamlining of access to medical marijuana here?
Yes, but that change has come under great duress. All of these changes through the Ministry have been so slow and incremental—I mean, why did they have to wait for [influential unionist] Helen Kelly to die to essentially do what she was asking? The evidence has always been there. Everything that Peter Dunne has done in his position as Associate Health Minister has basically been under duress. When Kelly applied to get the medicinal cannabis and was denied, her and another lawyer fired off a whole bunch of Official Information Act requests, asking how the decision was made and why was it denied. It was only then that Dunne's ministry released what criteria you need to meet to be approved. You have to be dying, you have to be in the hospital, you have to have tried every single other available treatment—these are really onerous guidelines. The change that was made a couple of days ago means that you still have to meet all those guidelines, it's just that Peter Dunne doesn't have to personally sign it off anymore.

Do you expect cannabis reform to be an election year issue?
I would like it to be. I've been trying to make it an election year issue ever since I arrived in New Zealand, but the major parties are so reluctant. All of this stuff we're talking about in the news and Julie Anne Genter [the Green candidate for the by-election] making these great statements wasn't because of the Greens deciding to push it, it was because National—National!—changed the law. It took National to change the law for medical cannabis to get Labour and the Greens to even talk about it. I only stood as a candidate in the by-election because I thought cannabis would be omitted from the entire debate. Labour and Greens are holding hands and agreeing on everything—well, one thing they agree on is not talking about cannabis too much because that might make them look too hippy.

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Why should other political parties take up this issue?
We are an export-led agricultural economy, we have scientific innovators that punch above their weight, we have the highest per capita use rate in the world, we have a huge alcohol problem for which we need to find a silver bullet. Cannabis reform in Colorado has reduced alcohol consumption by 20 percent. We have this perfect storm. Legalising would solve a lot of problems. Imagine if NZ had legalised 15 years ago. Imagine if we had billion-dollar tech surpluses every year. Imagine if our rivers were still swimmable because dairy hadn't expanded.

"Labour and Greens are holding hands and agreeing on everything—well, one thing they agree on is not talking about cannabis too much because that might make them look too hippy."

What needs to happen for the paradigm shift the country needs to put reform on the political agenda?
What we really need is all the people—I could say their names but maybe I shouldn't—the All Blacks, the celebrated New Zealand actors, the high-powered business investors, all those people who smoke cannabis to speak up. We need people to say what everybody is thinking and not just sit there and try not to rock the boat.

Other than cannabis legislation reform, why should a Mt Albert voter give you their vote?
Essentially, the Mt Albert voter has the opportunity to be as powerful as the voters of Ohariu or Epsom [where United Future and ACT, respectively, hold their only seats], because they will have their own party that—has its own agenda, yes—but second to that is the will of the people of Mt Albert, [so they have] someone in Parliament able to exercise influence for things that are better for Mt Albert.

Follow James Borrowdale on Twitter.