Blog description.

Accentuating the Liberal in Classical Liberal: Advocating Ascendency of the Individual & a Politick & Literature to Fight the Rise & Rise of the Tax Surveillance State. 'Illigitum non carborundum'.

Liberty and freedom are two proud words that have been executed from the political lexicon: they were frog marched and stood before a wall of blank minds, then forcibly blindfolded, and shot, with the whimpering staccato of ‘equality’ and ‘fairness’ resounding over and over. And not only did this atrocity go unreported by journalists in the mainstream media, they were in the firing squad.

The premise of this blog is simple: the Soviets thought they had equality, and welfare from cradle to grave, until the illusory free lunch of redistribution took its inevitable course, and cost them everything they had. First to go was their privacy, after that their freedom, then on being ground down to an equality of poverty only, for many of them their lives as they tried to escape a life behind the Iron Curtain. In the state-enforced common good, was found only slavery to the prison of each other's mind; instead of the caring state, they had imposed the surveillance state to keep them in line. So why are we accumulating a national debt to build the slave state again in the West? Where is the contrarian, uncomfortable literature to put the state experiment finally to rest?

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Showing posts with label Animal Testing. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Animal Testing. Show all posts

Monday, April 28, 2014

Legal Heroin Ban: PSA and the Evil of Politics.



I wish I had more time to write this post.


Search this blog for the Psychoactive Substances Bill, animal welfare, or animal testing, and you'll see around the time that 119 of New Zealand's 120 members of Parliament were enacting infamy, their egos driving them for a world first, I was warning them of the inhumanity they were about to force on us. Although now that the results of legalising synthetic, toxic poison - on the heinous principle of animal testing for our human recreation- has been in place for less than a year, even I am left breathless at the devastation and misery that has been caused.


This is what the 119 that I declared a philosophical war upon, have done. They legalised a line of hardcore addictive drugs in the league of P or heroin, nothing similar to the non-toxic, non-addictive, medicinal cannabis that many other countries are sensibly legalising, and then by keeping cannabis criminalised they successfully addicted possibly thousands of mainly young Kiwis to the equivalent of heroin, because by taking the legal heroin they would not face the force of the law, or lose their jobs, unlike smoking cannabis for which they would be convicted in the government war on drugs. So government policy addicted them to heroin, and I'll keep making this point, heroin, which is what I'm calling it from now on, because that's what this drek is: these MP's have been hiding behind the euphemisms legal high and synthetic cannabis for too long. They legalised a hardcore, psychosis forming, addictive drug while keeping the harmless option criminalised.


And then much worse. Because it's election year, and Campbell Live has been exposing the ruined lives that have been addicted to legal heroin, Labour decided it would be a vote catcher to announce a policy of banning it. Not to be outdone, merely minutes before Labour announcing its ban yesterday, the instigator of legal heroin, Peter Dunne, whose son, remember, is the foremost legal representative to the legal heroin industry, in a knee-jerk political action announced his own ban of all 41 legal brands of heroin currently on sale, from two weeks hence.


Now, hands up those who understand addiction, who believe that these new government created addicts are going to miraculously stop taking their heroin fix in two weeks? Of course they're not: they can't. No what Dunne has done with the ill-thought out ban, as the solution to his incompetent, ill-thought out legislation, is deliver a brand new customer base to organised crime; the violent gangs whom will happily take up supply at some magnitude of the current price, meaning a burglary crime wave is also headed our way. (Perhaps young James Dunne better line up his legal aide application.)


Has there been a better example of the evil transacted by government in New Zealand in our recent history? Noting an important point made by one tweeter that opposition to the Psychoactive Substances Act, is still consistent with the belief I hold that prohibition does not work: it's just that in this case government policy actually forced users to take the most harmful of drugs, by keeping harmless cannabis criminalised. As I write in too many of my posts; you can't make this stuff up. Thousands of lives ruined chasing world first law-making - that is, one man's ego - which is a disaster, and yet still, despite the evidence world-wide, including the states in the US seemingly experiencing no problems with cannabis legalisation, not a single MP in New Zealand talking of legalising non-toxic, non-addictive cannabis, to perhaps keep some of these new heroin addicts out of the clutches of the gangs while the ban is on. (Or forget the PSA, at the very least, to look at putting cannabis into hospitals to help manage the side-affects of cancer treatments, and many other of the medicinal uses cannabis has.)


I revise my former oft used epigraph by saying we're something a lot worse than a kindy of a country.


There are some questions I will quickly recite to end, but first another principled point. This post is all about ethics, but the MSM and majority of the political blogs will cynically write this up as part of the political game: who announced the ban first, how will it affect election chances et al. Most, other than John Campbell – and good on you John - will forget the addicts. This blog is probably considered by most as a political blog, which is ironic, as I hate politics, and politicians who are taking us all at pace from the free, civilised society, to their brave new world of politick,  which is a slave pit where the masses are kept chilled with legal heroin. Aldous Huxley got it right. Was Peter Dunne concerned with the addicts here? Hell no, his reply to Labour MP Iain Lees-Galloway on that party’s proposed bill:







There’s no victory here Peter, we’re all losers. If there is one bit of justice out of this it will be your disappearance after this year’s general election.


Questions for the 119 MPs:


Dunne has stated all current 41 heroins will be banned until they pass the test of 'low or no risk': however as the legal heroin industry pointed out last night in a tweet, there are still no guidelines set out by our inept law makers as to what constitutes low or no risk. So what is this criteria? And after that, show factually why the plant cannabis does not comply, because I'm willing to bet it does, and you won't need to test a single animal for that, just look at cannabis use by humans over the last 6,000 years, with not one recorded death from toxicity.


I originally wrote on this Act when in bill form from the point of view of the cruel animal testing it proposed, which via a series of nationwide protests, Kiwis thankfully showed themselves to be implacably against, to the extent that to this stage no animals have been tortured for our recreation under the Psychoactive Substances Act. However in the last tweet from Mojo Mathers to myself, she stated that the expert advisory panel set up to look at the testing of this heroin was still stuck on - the barbarity - of using animals for reproductive testing, thus animal testing is still on the laboratory table.


I suspect there will now be huge pressure to use animal testing as a way to get one of these heroin brands back into the shops, and the economics of this has been changed. Formerly the cost of testing was prohibitive, however that cost is now tempered by the carrot of getting a single heroin to market, and so a legal monopoly.


Will every one of the infamous 119 MP’s who voted for this monstrosity, please put on record if you are going to allow a single animal to be harmed under the Psychoactive Substances Act. Don't you worry responding Peter Dunne: I've realised via this you’re a vainglorious, ego driven man who couldn't care less about an animal's welfare (or a human's as it has ended up.)


Signing off in my usual disgust.

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Sunday, April 13, 2014

Our MP’s Childishness around Suicide, Euthanasia, Cannabis – Self-censoring MP’s Threat to Free Speech & Basic Freedoms.

 

We are so badly served by every current MP in the New Zealand Fortress of Legislation. This post links directly to my last, because when MP’s choose to self-censor themselves, then issues that are important cannot be debated in the only place were law-making can be enacted around the discussion. And that means such issues, in this case, our basic freedoms, are forbidden us.
 

I’ll start this post by going back a few months to when I told MP Peter Dunne, infamous instigator of one of the most heinous Acts I’ve seen – after every tax act – that I would never let up hounding him over the Psychoactive Substances Act (PSA) which has legalised psychosis forming, artificial, toxic crud, and created the barbaric principle that animals can be tested – tortured – for what amounts to only our recreation, when a harmless, medicinal even, alternative exists in cannabis which remains criminalised; (and I note there still looks to be animal testing under the PSA coming out of the special committee overseeing the public protest against that). Not once has Dunne ever responded to me; as happened again this morning:
 


 


 


 

Response? Nothing. And this now all begs a more ominous phenomenon coming out of the Fortress of Legislation, confirming not only Labour MP Maryann Street’s statement to this blogger that MP’s weren’t adult enough to discuss euthanasia in an election year, but they’re too immature to discuss issues that provide our basic freedoms at all. Our MP’s remain experts only on legislation that takes those freedoms away from us – proof? Read this blog.



 





 


 


 

In his reply to me, Minister Todd McClay, current minister overseeing the toxic PSA, studiously avoided mentioning or referring to all of my logical points in favour of cannabis over the PSA, childishly answering my post by trying to ignore every reference to this, and concentrating only of the fluff stuff, and animal testing concerns.
 

For the MP’s, don’t panic: uttering the word ‘suicide’ isn’t magic or mystical, people won’t rush to the act because you’ve spoken it. In a movement starting with the Enlightenment, we use reason now. Same with cannabis and euthanasia. Indeed nothing beats open, un-censored adult discussion of all problems, real and perceived, and those basic freedoms such as the three dealt with in this post, which despite being no purview of the Fortress in a free land, we must prostrate ourselves sycophantically in front of our masters to be allowed.
 

I note a series of MSM and blog posts against monarchy this morning, given Kate and William’s current tour: afraid I just can’t get excited about that when a bunch of power enabled babies are running my life from Wellington.


From our institutions up, there needs to be a Western Spring: let’s start by paring the size of government back to the civilising Westminster Principle.

 

 
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Monday, February 17, 2014

PSA and Animal Testing – We’ve Been Sold a Mutilated Pup, Again.


Many would think my libertarianism doesn’t sit well with my animal welfare posts: I couldn’t care less. Animal welfare comes first, albeit I could say the minarchist, voluntary society will only exist where humans have inculcated a humane treatment of animals … join the dots as you wish, I've written enough in here for you to do so.
 

If you search this blog for PSA (Psychoactive Substances Act), or look at some of the animal welfare links on my right-hand menu, you’ll see I’ve written post after post against the 119 members of the Fortress of Legislation who voted for this Act and its barbaric principle that it is acceptable to cruelly test animals so that teenagers can get stoned Friday night on toxic, synthetic cannabinoids (when simply legalising cannabis, which I support, would have achieved the same results safely - cannabis isn’t toxic - and without a single animal being harmed.) It was heartening that for once, when the PSA was still in bill form, Kiwis rose up and took to the streets in protest against its animal testing component, the result of which we were told by Minister McClay there would be a special commission of experts set up to ensure no animal would be tested under this ludicrous legislation. At least that's what we thought we'd been told, so the protest stopped.
 

Well I think it better start again. It appears Minister McClay was only trying to placate us, hoping we would forget. Back to a central theme of this blog, never trust politicians.
 

From the below Twitter exchange, just this last Friday, with Green member Mojo Mathers  -and despite her party’s luddite economics of the slave state, I like Mojo for the work she is doing for animals, and despite still being one of the 119 infamous bastards voting for this pointless Act, (never trust politicians) - I am one hundred percent convinced there will indeed be animals tortured, before they are killed, for what amounts only to our human recreation, smoking this dreadful, synthetic crud legal under the Act, while harmless cannabis remains criminalised.

 





 





 





 





 





 





 




 
 

Note two things from Mojo’s posts:
 

Firstly, I read her replies to mean there will definitely be animal toxicity testing:
 

 
 

… we just don’t know if this will include reproductive testing. Perhaps Mojo can dissuade me of that one if false.
 

Secondly, reproductive testing is also definitely on the table. If you don’t know what that is, it’s this:
 

Reproductive toxicity includes the toxic effects of a substance on the reproductive ability of an organism and the development of its offspring … Animal tests include evaluating the effects of prenatal exposure on pregnant animals and their offspring [OECD Test Guideline (TG) 414]. … The test substance is administered orally, the pregnant animals are killed just prior to delivery, and the fetuses are examined for toxic effects. … [In] Reproductive/Developmental Toxicity Screening Assay) … the test substance [is] administered orally for 4-9 weeks. Pathological effects are determined by daily observation, necropsy, and microscopic histopathology. … Offspring are evaluated for neurotoxic effects including "gross neurologic and behavioural abnormalities, and the evaluation of brain weights and neuropathology during postnatal development and adulthood."
 

As for the instigator of this obscene Act, which I don’t see as having achieved anything of value, the conflicted and contradictory PeterDunne, he does not deserve to be given his seat again this election.
                  

I know there are more than two readers who follow my animal welfare posts: please link this and spread the word. And when you get a moment perhaps it might be a good idea to drop Minister McClay, aka, Minister Invisible, a line letting him know nothing has changed for the many opponents of this Act, and that we are still here watching: start your email or letter with any form of animal testing for human recreation is unacceptable, especially legislation legalising a toxic synthetic slugde, when a harmless cannabis is kept criminalised. Finally, in a properly functioning democracy, the results of the Advisory Committee would be known by this year's election, so Kiwis can hold the minister responsible in the voting booth for any animal testing under the PSA. Politicians need to understand the PSA will be as toxic to them, as it's going to be to those animals put to torture, then death, by it.

 
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Monday, August 12, 2013

Fonterra: The Free Market is the Solution. Why Has Fall-Back For Everyone Become More Statism?

There currently exists a desperate need for a contrarian view of the Fonterra food contamination debacle. Although some commentators are coming out with their predicable viewpoints, there’s far too many turncoats finding all the wrong words in their scrabble sets and spewing them over their op-eds. It frightens me the majority of journalists seem to think the state must step in with inquiry and oversight, for answers to problems created by the state in the first place. No, nationalisation of Fonterra is not the solution here, free markets are.

As a quick overview, Chris Trotter, famous for his unblinkered view of free markets - that's irony, John Drinnan - opines how Fonterra’s problems this last week proves we can’t be unblinkered about free markets. No surprises there. Fran O’Sullivan; I respect Fran, but she does the statist misstep far too often, to which end I cite the near-nationalisation of Christchurch call after the earthquakes, then gender quotas in politics (fine) and legislated in private boardrooms (not fine), and now telling John Key that a full inquiry on Fonterra is the only option. Then one of my heroines has come out with this shocker:



And to top it off, National stalwart Matthew Hooton,  assuming the need for an inquiry also, ends his piece with this:

Fonterra exists only because of the support of the government, parliament and ultimately the New Zealand people – which gives all three the right to demand it performs a hell of a lot better than this.

In this paragraph Matthew has unwittingly found the problem, but then driven his $160,000 farm Jeep right by it and up the well-worn old hill track leading to that vertical cliff of farm debt too much of our dairy industry is built on. The view from the top of that cliff is scary, because conscious of economist Tyler Cowan’s great stagnation thesis, which I shall post specifically on at a later date, applying it to our dairy industry, we might hypothesise the major productivity gains, the low hanging fruits of profit, have been made already by this capital intensive agriculture, noting as proof there’s a ballooning $82 million plus, beyond schedule irrigation scheme being built not thirty minutes drive from where I’m writing this. I believe it will be dubious when interest rates are in double figures again, whether return on the asset will outweigh the cost of debt, and when Labour get in and start taxing equity, the party is definitely over. Given the dairy debt cliff, an alarmist could forecast a bust coming, given the right circumstances, to rival 1987. Milk is a commodity, and commodities follow cycles, and even on these historically high payouts, many corporate dairy farms are still hurting: before moving to the contamination scare, that's the major alarm bell in this industry. So, if or when such a bust happens, and everyone will be, as in this debate, blaming free markets, remember you read it here: Fonterra was stillborn of crony capitalism which is to capitalism as sea horses are to horses - which is not the same at all, in case I need to make that clear. Fonterra is not a beast of free markets at all, but a beast of burden.

And that’s the sleight of hand in this debate.



The debate lines have been drawn mistakenly assuming this is an issue between private enterprise and what Orwell called state capitalism, with some commentators pressing the need, even, for semi-nationalisation of Fonterra: no. This truly is Irish, as free enterprise has never had a look in with Fonterra. Matthew stated that earlier: Fonterra is a monopoly product of government, parliament, and the herds at the voting booths.

I’m not a journalist, I write this blog mainly because I enjoy putting one word from my scrabble bag after the other, thus I can’t remember the full regulatory narrative – for the farmers, narrative is a word smart people use, apparently, read feminist discourse - … I can’t remember the full regulatory narrative of Fonterra’s set up, but Matthew’s quotation reminds me of the broad strokes of it, plus Kiwiwit has this great piece on the monopoly powers granted this firm, explaining why, from its inception, I disagreed with my dairy clients over the formation of Fonterra because it was in essence a state granted monopoly, and thus there would be no transparent free market pricing mechanism – for either farm suppliers or the consumers of milk -  or the resource allocation system of a free market, that miracle of economics. That is, no true market signals. These US farmers complaining about Fonterra’s monopoly are correct in essence, although such a claim is 100% pure cowshit when considering how the US farmer is one of the world’s most protected.

This is what I know. A government messes with the resource allocation of a free market with peril. Given the size of the numbers involved in the dairy industry, then as we have gleaned with even this contamination hiccup – and that’s all it was actually – extreme peril. So, think about this: the monopoly given Fonterra gave it an edge over other land use that the banks with their fiat money and cheap credit were then given the confidence to bankroll, and bankroll it they certainly did, even as the cost of conversions rose ludicrously, as did underlying land values unrealistically. Thus dairy grabbed a bigger allocation of resources than it could have under free markets, which would have allocated resource, land, capital, et al, in a far slower manner. That’s one thing the spontaneous order arising from markets is relatively good at: coordination. We have all seen the price of this too rapid expansion: degradation of the environment in New Zealand, and a PR sales machine caught flat-footed in China – bet Fonterra wishes they had more than a single science degree (the CEO is a food technologist) on the board now, and in the PR team.

If readers of this stop and keep very still, you’ll hear a huffing and a puffing: I have just breached Austrian school economics orthodoxy by professing an implied worry over externalities. I confess to being conflicted on this matter, and willing to announce so publicly, because as I mentioned in this earlier post on literature, of all things, I seem embarked in this self-indulgent blog on a futile odyssey to match that of the little fella in Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy, trying to piss everyone off; albeit he was doing it alphabetically, I’m being a bit more random.

Dairy’s quick and artificial growth - artificial because government initiated and protected - looks to have done harm; real harm. It has led to an allocation toward this single agriculture at the expense of diversified land use by a range of complementary, biodiverse agricultures that couldn't catch the banker's eye, given they were so smitten by the big sad bovine eyes of the large herds. Dairy has outpaced its resources of capital and skills, despite how it has saved our economy through the world financial crisis – and all the naysayers don’t ever forget that or that it remains the lynch pin of our economy.

Speaking personally, though hypocritically, as I have done well off the cows back also, I would love to still be living in at least a partially pastoral landscape in South Canterbury; a landscape of fields, woodlots and carefully planned hedgerows for stock to shelter behind. I’ll repeat that for the factory farmers reading this:

FOR STOCK TO SHELTER BEHIND. That is, humane animal husbandry - (remember that; it's what real farmers do).

I say the above because instead of the pastoral idyll, driving around I see a War of the World’s movie set with giant pivot irrigators striding across paddocks denuded of trees and shelter, and far too many reports, lately, and growing, of starving and abused herds because of the lack of skill-set in farm labour, and sometimes just straight cruel bastards. Look at my posts against animal testing over last month, and you’ll see that animal welfare is the chink in my rationalist armour. Though more than that: I can’t think of a quicker way to destroy milk sales in all of our markets other than images of animal neglect.

That’s my spleen vented. From it, the answer to this latest Fonterra debacle becomes obvious.

The way to ensure Fonterra takes on rigour, right down to the basics, is to take away every piece of law delivering them any sort of monopoly, whatever those rules, regulations and laws are – I’m not looking them up, I only need to know they exist. Look at how well competitive private enterprise in New Zealand handles food safety issues in the dairy sector. My little township of Geraldine has a cheese-maker, one of many hundreds across the country: they’ve poisoned no one. On my apple pie this Sunday lunch-time I’ll be eating Clearwater’s – the original organic dairy co, ten minutes drive away – glorious new clotted cream product, and Mrs H has been eating their organic yoghurts for years without being poisoned also. Private enterprise lives by the fact that the best way to keep a customer, is not to kill them, or even piss them off.

In league with this, I suspect one thing the commentators have got right, is looking askance at the culture of Fonterra, remembering further its a co-op, not a private company, and the culture may well be more in the nature of a bureaucracy protecting its statutory monopoly, than using its full resources for innovation; and its eye may be too much on Parliament, not enough on its customers, suppliers and basic processes. Think, even, when Campbell Live was covering escalating dairy prices for consumers, how much energy this firm had to expend explaining its idiotic price setting book: hint, no company needs to run a little red pricing formula book where you have pricing under the transparency of competitive free markets. And speaking of a nascent competition, it exists already, just let it live: I’ve heard of Fonterra suppliers shifting to Synlait before this scare, based on little more than an annoyance with the arrogance from Fonterra's head office over sharing-up issues.

So don’t go the nationalisation route. Fonterra doesn’t require more oversight, and I don’t want my taxpayer money wasted on government inquiries. In a free market, the government has no place at all in Fonterra governance issues. Simply open the Co-op up to full competition and management will realise pretty quickly, just like the cheese-maker and the clotted milk makers down the road, the importance of a food testing regime that delivers the test results before product leaves the factory, rather than when it’s being bought off the supermarket shelves. And if proof were needed on why government would be no help with that, well this is the government that has just set up an expert panel to assess the necessity or not of animal testing for stoners, after they have passed an Act enacting animal testing for stoners. You can no more sell food on such an uninformed basis than you can pass legislation.

In ending, just so I can truly offend every party in this: to the Chinese Embassy councillor on The Nation this Sunday: you idiot. Some important final facts on this current issue:

Number of people who have died: none.

Number of people who got a tummy ache: none.

Indeed, Fonterra’s main incompetence may well end up there was no harmful contamination at all. So I enjoin the Chinese councillor to leave Fonterra product on the shelf, if he is so worried about their food safety record, and consume instead Chinese dairy products: perhaps you could buy them from that part of your country where you displaced millions of your own people to build that dam; or any of the villages in China I saw on some doco or other recently the inhabitants of which were dying from pollution.  The land of the world’s biggest state monopoly is only drinking Fonterra milk, because they don’t trust anything produced in their own country.

Right, let’s see:

Journos pissed off – tick.
John Drinnan - tick (not above, some sort of free hit on Twitter last night via John not being able to see into the depths from the shallows he must be writing his op-eds on).
Fonterra – tick.
My farming clients – tick. (Nah, not really: by clients are 'real farmers' to a last one).
Government – tick.
US farmers - tick.
Libertarians – tick.
Statists – tick.
Statists and socialists – tick.
Statists and Gareth Morgan - tick.
China - tick.
Ireland - tick.

Yep, my work is done. It’s an Oyster Bay 2013 for lunch.

Oh, Deborah, I forgive ya ... this time. Outside of that, I've really got to start pushing some work through, so my blogging has to be scaled back for a little bit.


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Wednesday, July 24, 2013

Reply to Minister Todd McClay - Animal Testing Under Psychoactive Substances Act.


To: "Hon. Todd McClay"
Subject: RE: Animal testing for human recreation.


Mr McClay



Thank you for your emails regarding the Psychoactive Substances Bill.


And thank you for answering my original concerns with the below, although please note you never answered to the substantive questions I raised, so in responding to you, I shall raise them again. An Act built on a cruelty is a cruel Act, no matter how noble, or in this case, nebulous it's aims, and regarding the Psychoactive Substances Act I am appalled at how uninformed have been those members of parliament interacting with me, that have voted for this dreadful nonsense.


Before continuing, however, I note that the charity, HUHA (Help You Help Animals), has organised street protests against the animal testing that 'will' occur under this legislation, and, as importantly, against the principle legislated (see below); the protests are in the main centres on 30 July, with the Wellington protest ending on the steps of the Fortress of Legislation: I hope you are planning to front up to that protest and be accountable to those you supposedly represent, but whom you have fallen so short of.



You have said that this legislation is being passed so children can get high. This could not be further from the truth. Parliament has been emphatic that no such products should be used by minors, and upon taking over responsibility for this Bill I quickly moved to clarify that supply to a minor under 18 in any circumstance is an offence, regardless of where it takes place. The high degree of accessibility via dairies that has existed to date is also removed from the point of enactment, so children will not continue to see such products in these environments, removing the ˜normalising context.



I've not googled your age, Todd, but unless you've weathered well, you're about my age, and from that perspective, eighteen year olds are kids. Although if you think about it, the fact we are talking about adults here, makes the vote of the 119 uninformed members who've enacted this infamy even worse.



While your position on animal testing is clear and I appreciate the concerns you have raised, I believe that the issue of human health needs to be carefully and continuously considered. As Associate Minister of Health I have a duty to consider all aspects of human health and have sought expert medical and scientific advice.



Let's stop you there for a start. This is not a public health issue. We have already established this is about adults choosing, note that word, choosing to get stoned on the weekend. That is not a matter of public health, that is a matter of individual choice, and as the mainstream party that supposedly represents small government and individual responsibility, it is significant you don't understand that.

No humane human will agree torturing animals is acceptable for 'safe' use of party pills: humans must take responsibility for their recreational choices, not animals whom can't speak for themselves. So from this point, let's ditch the public health aspect, I don't want a National government nannying me, and I want to debate this with you like adults do. Warning, in the next part, this means you are going to have to mention two words you have studiously avoided uttering: decriminalisation and cannabis.



The issue of animal testing has had a high profile, and appropriately so. I am not a supporter of animal testing, nor are any of my colleagues. Any testing regime will be determined by an expert advisory group, tasked with identifying all possible alternatives to animal testing, and will be required to review these tests frequently and at least on an annual basis. It is my hope that a testing regime can be established, if not now, then in the near future, that will not involve any animal testing. During consideration of the Select Committee I proposed an amendment that where a test that does not require animals is available then it must be used. This amendment was adopted unanimously by the Committee and means that where the outcome of an alternative test offers the same certainty then tests on animals cannot be used. The law as adopted by parliament means that manufacturers will not have a choice to use animals in place of another test agreed by the Expert Committee.


I am not aware of any previous process that has so explicitly set out a requirement for alternatives to animal testing to be identified and for this process to be an ongoing requirement. I proposed this amendment in good faith and as a compromise so that Parliament's desire for alternatives to be found and used would be clear.



Prior of answering to the above, I'm going to take one step back to the time just before my first correspondence with you. Both my wife and I give annually to animal charities. I have spent some part of my life loosely involved in the campaign to stop animal testing, world-wide, for matters that are not of public health, such as here. Can you imagine the bitterness and frustration for people such as myself who after all this time, making major gains getting private companies to stop their animal testing on shampoos, cosmetics, et al, to then see my government vote in animal testing for party pills? Think about that. Because no one thought about that when the Fortress was voting: it was all about the 'world-first' on the day, and political egos.

To your points. I have read experts on this, and I urge you to look up the Seven Sharp clip with the scientist that aired on the Thursday night this Act was enacted: there will be animal testing under this Act. Although even that fact is not all that is on the laboratory table here.

Stating the case clearly: regardless of the animals to be tortured under this legislation, for no good purpose other than adults can choose to recreate as stoners on Friday night, speaking from the point of view of an anti-vivisection campaigner, this legislation now creates the awful principle that the humane treatment of animals comes second to human recreation. Shame on all the 119 monsters who have put this principle into law. We're not talking about the treatment of cancer here, we're talking about party bloody pills.

Referring to my earlier point and your panel of experts, it is too late to set up your panel after enactment of the principle: you should have had all this advice first, so the members of parliament voting for it could have been informed on what they were actually voting for. Even three days after the vote, Tau Henare tweeted me no animals were going to be tested: bullshit. If there was to be no animal testing, then you would have voted for the Green Amendment: the fact you did not, shows the lie of this panel, which is only about deflection and minimising the political harm to yourselves, thought up after you finally realised what the sane public reaction against your mindless cruelty was.

This system of representative democracy simply cannot work when the masters of it are so  uninformed on the law they are making. (In your other portfolio, the new LTC regime is another example of mind-numbingly stupid law-making, but more on that separately).

To the real points of this response, and what you missed entirely in your reply.



You note in your blog that prohibition doesn't work. In the case of so called 'legal highs' this seems to be the experience of almost every country that has tried to restrict these products. The Psychoactive Substances Act means that manufacturers and developers of psychoactive substances are being given the opportunity to develop low-risk products, rather than have a blanket ban applied outright. To enable this regime, products must be thoroughly tested so that we can be sure that they pose only a low level of harm. Exactly what tests will be required now, and in the future, will be a decision for the experts on the Expert Advisory Committee.



Not one member of the infamous 119 who have voted for this has convinced me they understand what is meant by 'safe' in this Act: when I tried to pin Judith Collins down on it, she left the debate, indicating how it is simply a mantra you've all been taught to use. So to your own terms, you refer here to 'low risk': well what does that mean please? In my original letter I gave you the no risk alternative to animal testing of these dreadful synthetics, being the decrimilisation of the for 6,000 year tested cannabis.

In their own submission against animal testing in this Act, HUHA stated the following:


“The scientific evidence shows clearly that this is not a choice between the safety of people versus the safety of animals. Testing on animals does not give a direct indication of how a compound will react in people, as just one example look at Theobromine a compound found in cocoa, it is deadly toxic to dogs in small amounts, and yet can be eaten in abundance with no ill effect to people. Recent studies have proven that non animal testing in the lab can give a more species specific result. It can in fact be safer.’

Given this statement is particularly so in the case of psychoactive substances, can I have your response to that please?

Getting back to my own terms, as I started in my initial correspondence, and as I put to Russel Norman who was against animal testing, and for decriminalisation of cannabis, yet still voted for this:

" ... outside of the technicality that scheduler substances cannot be considered ‘safe’ under the Psychoactive Substances Act, given cannabis has been tested by humans, voluntarily, for at least 6,000 years, without a single recorded death, it is non-toxic in other words, then why, scientifically, is cannabis not ‘safe’ under this Act? For those of us appalled at animal testing for this trite purpose, we are especially confused that the 'ends' of this cruel Act could be achieved by decriminalising cannabis, without a single animal being abused. "

Can I further have your response to that statement please?

Indeed, this poster on Twitter states the case well enough.


 And as this may be our last correspondence on this matter, let's look more closely at this definition of 'safety'.


I don't know what the Act means by it either; there are two options:

1. As above, it means non-toxic to the human body, while still being psychoactive - that is, nothing changes with this Act, there will still be 'young' adults getting stoned. Thus, per my above position, then this can be achieved without a single beagle - or other animal - being breed in a heartless dog factory and tortured, merely by decriminalising the natural plant cannabis.

2. If 'safe' means non-psychoactive, as Larry Williams interprets it on NewsTalkZB, then this Act is only prohibition by stealth, under which the malice of the principle created that human recreation comes before animal welfare, becomes something very cynical and quite obscene.

So clarification please: 'safe', what does it mean? Why not decriminalisation?

Finally, the humane society doesn't want a bar of animal testing for party pills, so if the Green Amendment is not enacted, then I expect you, and the other 118 MP's, to be present at the first animal testing that occurs because of this hideous Act:





The short, painful and loveless lives of the little puppies in this photo will mercifully be well over by now, so before you create the next litter of pain, I await your answers, albeit with dread, because the other issue this Act has shown, with polls indicating over 90% of the population disagrees with animal testing in these circumstances, is our representatives don't listen to us.


Todd McClay - MP


Mark Hubbard - Pissed Off.

Related Posts:

MP Torturing Animals for Recreation.

(Out-dated, but) Why is Psychoactive Substances Bill a Conscience Vote?

My Challenge to Every MP About To Vote For Psychoactive Substances Bill - Go to Animal Test.

The Logical Argument Against Animal Testing In The Psychoactive Substances Bill That No MP Will Answer To.


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