Alongside this year's New Zealand general election the public were asked two additional questions.
The first on making euthanasia legal, and the second on making recreational cannabis use legal.
While the euthanasia question received a resounding yes from voters, paving the way for doctor-assisted suicide to become a legal practice in the nation;
the cannabis question was narrowly defeated, meaning cannabis use will, for the foreseeable future, remain a criminal offence in New Zealand.
I can’t exactly complain about the results, both referendums results align with the votes I cast;
but given how close it was, the cannabis question could easily have gone the other way, so let’s explore what went wrong for the Yes Campaign.
The no campaign presented a simple core argument; legalization of cannabis would reasonably be expected to increase the availability of cannabis
and therefore allow more use of cannabis, and that this has negative health implications.
Those from the Yes campaign disagree with that premise, but at the very least it makes logical sense.
An important point to begin with about this referendum is that voters on both sides aim to minimise harm caused by drugs - but disagree on how best to achieve that.
Early in the campaign, the Yes Campaign focused attention on the medical use of cannabis,
arguing that legalising cannabis would improve the lives of patients that need the drug for pain relief.
This paralleled The End of Life Choice campaigns tactic of highlighting sympathetic stories of people in immense pain looking for a way out;
on the surface, it seemed like a good strategy, and it worked for the euthanasia campaign, but for the cannabis yes campaign this was a mistake.
The Say Nope to Dope Campaign has a simple answer: medical cannabis is already legal in New Zealand.
And while the Yes camp tried to defend their stance by arguing the high cost of cannabis-derived drugs was prohibitive, the damage was done.
To the casual observer the yes campaign was caught pushing misinformation; and for those who looked deeper,
pharmaceutical quality drugs, with all the regulations and quality control involved in that status, and smokable cannabis seemed like very different things.
As former United Future Leader, and Yes Vote supporter, Peter Dunne penned in an opinion piece from February:
the referendums failure is “also bad news for those that were counting on the legalisation of recreational cannabis to usher in a regime that,
thanks to lower quality and safety standards, would allow manufacturers to make therapeutic claims
without having to pass through the hoops envisaged by the current medicinal cannabis scheme.”
The Yes campaign's other main argument also fell short.
This was that it is unfair that people are criminalised for using a drug that research shows that 80% of Kiwis have tried.
I believe this is objectively true, but, in August 2019, the Misuse of Drugs Amendment Bill passed its third reading and would become law soon after.
This amendment gave the New Zealand Police more discretion when dealing with low-level drug crime,
instructing them to consider whether a health approach would be better when deciding whether a prosecution should be pursued.
The result was a month after the law change, the number of people charged with cannabis possession had halved.
The no campaign presented this law change to tantamount to decriminalisation, and took the wind out of the yes campaigns argument over unfair criminalization.
Arguably, and with the benefit of hindsight, not pursuing decriminalisation first was a mistake.
As Center-Right political blogger David Farrar noted: ”all the great social progress had been somewhat incremental,
If you had gone back to 1986 with the New Zealand Homosexual Law Reform Act and said this isn't just about decriminalisation,
it's also about gay marriage, same-sex adoption, it wouldn't have passed”.
So in the individual conversations that Kiwis were having before voting,
No supporters were armed with solid responses to the primary arguments being made by the Yes campaign.
But the argument around unfair criminalization also led to one of the Yes Vote supporters biggest mistakes.
Because minority communities bear the brunt of the criminal consequence of cannabis.
Yes supporters often presented this as something equivalent to “if you vote no, you’re a racist”.
Surprisingly, it turns out calling people racist is a terrible way of persuading them to agree with you, and vote for your cause.
Overall, Yes Vote supporters seemed more concerned with winning the argument, and the social media likes, than actually convincing anyone to change their mind.
Not that everyone on the yes side did this. The most high profile supporter was former Prime Minister Hellen Clark,
who I think did a good job of keeping her messaging on point. Clark was an important person for the Yes camp.
While Minister of Health she introduced The Smoke-free Environments Act.
Her presence on the campaign trail was key to disarming the argument that Winston Peters brought forward
by labelling having a Smokefree 2025 goal alongside the cannabis referendum 'hypocrisy'.
Clark could argue that a legal framework would better protect New Zealanders, and that a regulated industry was what was making that goal achievable.
But Clark’s appearance also demonstrates another problem for the Yes campaign.
Hellen Clark and Green MP Chlöe Swarbrick were the faces of the yes campaign.
Their dominant role, and National leader Judith Collins announcement that the entire National Caucus would be voting no made this a partisan issue.
The Yes campaign here needed to make more use of those further to the right on the political spectrum, who were supportive.
When you’re thinking about how a campaign performs it’s not the stereotypical no or yes voter who you need to understand.
A close vote is ultimately decided by a group of people in the centre, who were persuaded one way or the other.
By prominently featuring those on the left in their campaign; In effect, the Yes campaign didn’t pursue the voters in the centre and centre-right.
They never pushed the ideas that would appeal to them like taxation benefits and basic libatarian choice to the foreground,
instead producing messaging that mainly appealed to those already on board with the idea.
In the end, they became reliant on youth turnout to swing the vote, but just as with Sanders in America, that youth turnout didn’t turn up at the ballot box.
Someone else who didn’t come to the aid of the Yes campaign was the Current Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern.
Despite everyone from Judith Collins to Chlöe Swarbrick pushing for the Prime Minister to pick a side, she kept her cards close to her chest.
After the preliminary results were published it was confirmed she voted yes, but if that had been known earlier,
her popularity would have swayed some Labour supporters to change their vote. Although probably not by enough on its own.
However, there is a danger here that the left use Ardern as a scapegoat for their loss.
Her reasoning was that she wanted to reassure the public that whatever the results, she as leader would implement them,
but I suspect there was some strategic thinking going on there too. A major party leader must think about more than a single issue,
and the referendum looked like it may get voted down, for Ardern other issues took precedence for her to spend her political capital on.
But her image though wasn’t helped by the fact that on the other question the cat was out of the bag,
as the End of Life Choice Act had already passed through the house, putting her opinion into the public record.
This highlights the key difference between the two referendums. In New Zealand, all laws must be passed by parliament,
in the case of the End of Life Choice Act this had already happened, but with the clause that it would come into effect only if the referendum result gave the green light.
This made the euthanasia question as binding as a referendum can be in New Zealand.
It will now take politicians' active effort to repeal the law, and politicians often find doing nothing rather easy.
The Cannabis Legalisation and Control Bill, on the other hand, hasn’t gone through parliament and was only presented as a draft bill,
to be put through the normal procedure if the vote had come back as a yes.
But this was a problem for the Yes campaign, as the bill would likely change on its way through parliament, Kiwis weren't 100% sure what they were voting on.
A fact highlighted by the clarity around the euthanasia question. The multiple possibilities of how the final law could look, were bad for the Yes campaign
but, more generally, having multiple possibilities is a common problem for progressives.
Even though I voted no, there would certainly be a proposition for the legalization of cannabis that I would support.
Although, others would undoubtedly find that proposition a deal-breaker for them.
After all, Progressives have a multitude of options for how to change society but conservatives only one option for keeping things the same.
But in the end, if the cannabis question wasn’t on the ballot, Labours majority could have allowed them to legalize it without much fuss.
But it was on the ballot - so the nation got to have their say.
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