Dear Editor, New Zealand Drug Foundation executive director Sarah Helm told this newspaper over a year ago that in New Zealand both the industry and patients have struggled with our medicinal cannabis regulations because they are overly restrictive.

But that warning was never headed by the Cook Islands government because instead of looking at the policies of Canada and the United States who are light years ahead of New Zealand's infantile medicinal cannabis laws and regulations, that is exactly what they are doing.

It's incomprehensible the government wants to import NZ medicinal cannabis products when here we are in the middle of paradise with some of the most fertile ground in the world for growing cannabis, and it hasn't been taken advantage of in the past year where we could have already harvested three crops.

This failure by the government to act in a timely fashion to allow for the cultivation of medicinal cannabis by individuals and commercial growers has unnecessarily and cruelly prolonged the pain and suffering of thousands of Cook Islands patients, namely, the elderly and the infirmed, those suffering from debilitating physical and emotional diseases, and families and caregivers seeking relief of the torment that Parkinson disease and Dementia has inflicted on their lives.

All the while the government is trying to implement some airy fairy utopian policies for medicinal cannabis that doesn't suit the people of the Cook Islands.

So instead of going into the Executive Council to hammer out simplistic and effective medicinal cannabis regulations that would transform this nation's health and wealth, the government went ahead and imposed further ineffectual immigration regulations.

While the government continues to dither around, our people continue to pay through their nose for the price of medicinal cannabis on the black market and the police keep up their ridiculous surveillance of patients seeking relief.

Sincerely,

Steve Boggs