Dear Editor, Last week in Bangkok, Thailand, Prime Minister Mark Brown rightfully criticised rich countries for not doing enough to control climate change and encouraged a shift towards grants (a gift that does not have to be paid back) to help ease the financial burden of poorer countries.

That’s all well and good but why doesn’t the PM practice what he preaches because when given the chance he won’t do the same for his own people.

The PM and his Executive Council are disabling the health and wealth of the Cook Islands people by refusing to grant immediately the right of meeting their medical necessity by growing their own cannabis in order for them to function well in our society in terms of health, wealth and happiness

By enabling patients to freely grow their own medicinal cannabis that would mean more money is being circulated into the public instead of patients being forced to meet the exorbitant price tag being put on their medicine by the black market who in turn are sending a great share of their profits to organised crime across borders that funds smuggling, corruption and tax evasion.

The non-performance of the PM to allow for the growing of medicinal cannabis by patients continues to result in a domino effect or a chain reaction of a series of bad events across the whole of the Cook Islands.

What the PM's lack of action does is take money out of the people’s pocket and the economy can't grow.

The public simply doesn't have that extra money they would have to spend on shopping that would help businesses to grow.

The taking away of our citizens money won't create income for others and won't help create more jobs.

The Government has failed to implement the basic sound fiscal responsibility of granting the registration and licensing of medicinal cannabis grown by individual patients and that has forced them to tighten their budget and that lack of spending has pushed prices even higher.

And the Government has been weakened by the loss of revenue and the capital outflow of the black market is leading to the ever-soaring debt of this nation.

The increasing combination of this bad state of affairs is the sole responsibility of the Prime Minister Mark Brown and he must act now to put an end to the deterioration of the health and wealth of the people.

Sincerely,

Steve Boggs