Kerre Woodham: Revisiting drug laws

New Zealand's drug laws are in the spotlight again and with good reason. Despite record police busts, we're still seeing record methamphetamine use, we're seeing increasingly dangerous street drugs, and rising overdose deaths, three a week from drug overdoses.

There have been calls to overhaul the 50-year-old Misuse of Drugs Act and the call comes from a number of different organisations. The Drug Foundation wants drug use decriminalised and the law rewritten to make it a health issue, not a criminal issue, and they have been very consistent in their approach on this.

Melanie Phillips: No trace of objectivity

The BBC Today programme has long been a shill for liberalising the drug laws. This morning’s edition, however, ran an item at 0810 which almost caused me to fall off my chair.

The item was pegged to the collapse of the prosecution case against people accused of supplying nitrous oxide (the “laughing gas” used by dentists). This has called into question a law passed last year banning such so-called “legal highs” which are considered a loophole in the drug laws. All too predictably, the discussion was soon steered from this specific issue into “bringing fresh thinking to bear on the whole problem” (code for drug liberalisation).