New Zealand to Hold Marijuana Referendum in 2020

In mid-December it was announced that New Zealanders would get a chance to vote on recreational cannabis legislation. A referendum has been confirmed to coincide with the next general election in 2020. If the proposition is successful it would make New Zealand only the third country, after Uruguay and Canada, to legalize the drug. Although nine states, plus the District of Columbia, in the United States also allow recreational use of marijuana, it remains federally banned.

The main impetus for the decision to hold a referendum comes from an arrangement that the governing Labor Party made with the Green Party. The minority government promised the Greens the vote as part of the agreement over confidence and supply in the country’s parliament.

The referendum will be scheduled to coincide with the next general election in order to maximize turnout and encourage a wider public debate on the issue. Although voting is not compulsory in New Zealand like it is in neighboring Australia, public participation remains high, with 79 percent of the eligible public turning out for the 2017 election. A similar turnout at the next election would give the referendum solid legitimacy, should it be successful.

The announcement of the referendum to legalize the substance came just a week after a bill was introduced to the New Zealand parliament that would allow access to marijuana products for terminally ill people. The legislation also paves the way for the manufacture of medical marijuana products in New Zealand, with the hope of creating an industry to supply such products for both the local and international market.

Although only a handful of jurisdictions worldwide have moved toward the liberalization of laws regarding marijuana products – for both medicinal and recreational usage – there is a growing sentiment within many societies that both the traditional national and international approaches to combating drug distribution and usage are not proving effective. This perspective is confirmed by a recent report by the International Drug Policy Consortium – a network of around 170 NGOs that seeks to promote evidence-based analysis of drug policy – which has stated that the United Nations’ strategy toward illicit substances has had little effect on global supply, while having negative effects on health, human rights, local and international security, and development outcomes.

In terms of strategy for the potential legalization of recreational marijuana, it is likely that New Zealand will follow the lead of Canada. Canada’s approach has framed the legalization of marijuana as a way of regulating its sale to prevent access to the drug for teenagers, effectively treating the substance in the same way as alcohol, and attempting to displace the black market for the drug. The latter component is designed to remove a consistent revenue source for traffickers who also deal in other illicit substances.

The other element to the legalization of marijuana that proponents will advocate is the significant source of revenue it would create through taxation of the product. Research commissioned by the New Zealand Drug Foundation in October indicated that the legal growing and selling of cannabis would generate tax revenues up to $162 million per year. Alongside this new source of revenue, significant savings would be made to the operational costs of the country’s justice system, with fewer resources dedicated to the policing, prosecuting, and punishing people for possession and supply offenses.

New Zealand tends to be at the forefront of innovative policymaking. It was, for example, the first country to grant women the right to vote in 1893, and established its territory as a nuclear-free zone in 1987. While less significant than these two endeavors,  the referendum to legalize recreational marijuana does indicate that Wellington is active in the creation of new norms. At the same time, being able to use the evidence from similar societies like Canada, and the states in the United States where marijuana is also legal, will provide policymakers with significant guidance to approach the issue.

This evidence will also be able to be employed to provide the best possible information on the costs and benefits of the proposal, and the regulatory framework that will emerge if successful, to allow New Zealanders to be able to fully understand the implications of their vote.