This weekend, a Patient shared on social media, that they had their legally prescribed product seized by police after a targeted search based on their number plate.
The patient, known to police due to priors related to their Medicinal use of Cannabis, was pulled over after their number plate was picked up by the Police Automatic Number Plate Recognition (ANPR) System.
When pulled over, the police claimed they smelt Cannabis, which allowed them to perform a warrantless search and found a utensil and Prescription Cannabis.
The Medical Cannabis and Drug Utensils laws are outdated, and a poor match for affordable, safe consumption. The Gazette notice that allows only legal Cannabis, utensils, only allows for Vaporizers Approved as Medical Devices (with expensive studies) in other countries. To date, there is only 1 Brand of devices legally available in New Zealand, and they are expensive, so most patients still don’t use the “approved” utensil.
“We have championed both in the initial consultation and the recent review, for the Ministry to reconsider this stance, and allow for other Utensils to be legal without expensive studies, by using ISO 13485 Medical Device certification as the bar for entry, which isn’t common, but is attainable, to date, that has fallen on deaf ears,” says Medleaf Business Development Manager Shane Le Brun.
“Furthermore, the current stance by police is a farce, in the wake of many “dry herb” vaporizers being dual use/purpose with Aromatherapy or Tobacco consumption, allowing many to be legally available for sale” says Shane.
In this instance, the police also questioned the patient on the health condition for which they were prescribed, with some level of scepticism. It is inappropriate for Police to be questioning patients on their private health information in a public setting, and questioning clinical decisions.
“There are perhaps tens of thousands of genuine patients with a criminal record for Illicit consumption of Cannabis, who can now transition to legal supply, I myself am acutely aware of this, having narrowly avoided a charge, with diversion granted for the cultivation of 20 plants of various medicinal strains. It’s imperative that the Police review their policies and procedures in the wake of Prescription Cannabis becoming more popular” Says Shane.
We call on the Police to return the lawfully prescribed Medicine and review their procedures around handling patients with a legal supply of Cannabis.
“The best outcome for this patient, is their legal supply returned from the evidence box, an apology, and their license plate scrubbed from the flagged status in the ANPR system, as they’ve clearly moved to lawful supply, and any further stops would constitute police harassment,” Says Shane.
Medleaf will be contacting the Police Policy team for dialogue on this issue.
“Having been active in advocacy since 2015, and now working for the most trusted Cannabis company in NZ, I am ready to assist in educating Police on the current law, access pathways, products they can expect to see, and how to verify them” Says Shane.
Medleaf hopes that this mistake isn’t repeated and that NZ police take up Medleaf’s offer to educate them on the rapid improvement in access that has occurred in the past year.
