Govt sending mixed drug message

United Future law & order spokesman Marc Alexander has charged the Government with sending mixed messages to the nation’s schoolchildren about drug use.

After raising the topic in Parliament today, Mr Alexander said “On the one hand, Justice Minister Phil Goff is telling us the Labour Government is tough on drugs, wants to take drug revenues off the gangs and stop the manufacture of methamphetamines to halt the P epidemic.

“On the other hand, the Ministry of Youth Development is sending out drug education booklets to schools that takes a harm minimisation approach, rather than giving a drug avoidance message.

“Indeed, the booklet avoids promoting abstinence because it “stigmatises experimentation with drugs as deviant behaviour”.

“So we have one arm of Government battling to halt the drug scourge while another government agency is telling our kids ‘a little bit’s OK’.

“The Government’s got to get its act together on this matter and it should do it soon,” said Mr Alexander.

© Scoop Media

Gordon Campbell: On the Sony cyber attack

Given the layers of meta-irony involved, the saga of the Sony cyber attack seemed at the outset more like a snarky European art film than a popcorn entry at the multiplex.

Yet now with (a) President Barack Obama weighing in on the side of artistic freedom and calling for the US to make a ‘proportionate response’quickly followed by (b) North Korea’s entire Internet service going down, and with both these events being followed by (c) Sony deciding to backtrack and release The Interview film that had made it a target for the dastardly North Koreans in the first place, then ay caramba…the whole world will now be watching how this affair pans out. More>>