Your Friday paper reported that the Government is looking to legalise medicinal cannabis by Christmas because they find it too difficult to get the job done before that.

The only reasons I can think of why the Government thinks it’s too difficult is:

They don’t understand the Ministry of Health and Drugs Act laws, they understand them but they lack the intestinal fortitude to implement them or worst of all they are treating the patients and the whole of the Cook Islands people as a dysfunctional familia and a bunch of out of control cowboys. The Government has no trust in its people to do the right thing.

The fact of the matter is medicinal cannabis could have been legalised shortly after the August 2022 medicinal cannabis referendum within the Executive Council.

The pathway and blueprint for legislation is right there in black and white starring them in the face just waiting for them to act in order to put an end to all the madness that the criminalisation of medicinal cannabis entails.

Simply put, under the regulations of the Drugs Act the Government can provide for the issue of licenses by individuals, commercial growers and dispensaries for the import, export, possession, production, manufacture, processing, supply, administration and use of controlled drugs and cultivation of prohibited plants.

And the Government can prescribe the form, duration, terms and conditions of any license under the Act and enable additional conditions to be imposed.

But this solution is a problem for the Government.

Sincerely,

Steve Boggs