Relieve shop owners of fake dope dilemma
When Napoleon described Britain as a nation of shopkeepers, he was being far from complimentary. His portrayal was that of mundane people doing a banal job. Fast forward 200 years, however, and things are not so straightforward for New Zealand's shopkeepers. The arrival of Kronic and other synthetic cannabis brands has presented them with the sort of dilemma normally reserved for highly paid chief executives.
Of 67 shops in Auckland surveyed by the Herald this week, most of them suburban dairies, 40 were selling synthetic cannabis. They are doing nothing wrong because it is legal to sell the products to anyone except minors. Yet it is not quite that simple. Nobody knows how safe they are, a situation highlighted by young people ending up in hospital after smoking them.
This has led some shopkeepers to stop selling synthetic cannabis, forsaking a big profit margin in the process. One said, quite admirably, that if he would not sell it to his own son, he could not sell it to someone else's son. Others have taken it from their shelves after enduring customers' wrath.
Yet it remains difficult to condemn the majority who, in choosing to sell the products, are not breaking any law.
Shopkeepers should not have this dilemma. The Government plans to accelerate moves to limit the sale and advertisement of synthetic cannabis.
The real answer lies, however, in manufacturers having to prove their products are safe before they can be sold. With that enshrined in law, shopkeepers could return to a more mundane, but far happier, existence.
Let's consign school balls to history
There is nothing glamorous about being inspected by a sniffer dog. When those subjected to this scrutiny are dressed in their finery, the sense of mortification must run all the deeper. This was the lot of some of the pupils and their dates who attended St Kentigern College's annual ball.
This weekend, those going to the Diocesan School for Girls ball will be subjected to attention from an alcohol and drug detection agency. It is almost as though schools are being forced to make these events such a disagreeable experience that their passing will not be mourned.
If so, they could be excused. The death of a pupil this month after the King's College ball has focused attention on a social custom that has clearly run its course.
The spectacle of teenagers going to considerable expense to look their elegant best and being transported to balls in the modern equivalent of the gilded carriage has always owed more to Jane Austen than the 21st century.
It is something of a mystery that they were not replaced by something more befitting this age many years ago.
If nothing else, the current problems confirm that time has surely come.
Many Auckland principals are clearly at their wits' end, and in no little despair, about the issues at and around balls. Schools have done their level best to educate pupils about drug and alcohol abuse. They have liaised with and tried to dissuade parents planning to serve alcohol at pre-ball and after-ball functions.
Sometimes, this has been to no avail. There is only so much that schools can do with parents who seem as wrapped up in the whole occasion as their children and want to call the tune. Indeed, in some cases, the actual ball seems to have become an intrusion on the pre-ball and after-ball partying.
Clearly, some principals have had enough of this feeling of powerlessness. They have become intent on keeping their pupils out of harm's way in matters they can control. They are also facing the reality that some pupils will use liquor and drugs at these functions. King's College is questioning whether it will continue holding balls. Diocesan is thinking along much the same lines.
Both suggest the annual ball could be overtaken by the graduation ball at the end of the year, which would be attended by parents as well as Year 13 pupils, rather than pupils and their dates.
In this way, it would have a similar feel to the valedictory dinners that are a feature of Australian school life. The appeal of this approach, said the King's College headmaster, Bradley Fenner, was that it encouraged "social interaction without the risks".This is a reasonable and realistic response. Zero-tolerance policies have not worked. Any attempt to impose still stricter rules at balls is sure to be abused. Such have been the controversies over the past few years that they have become a byword for bad behaviour.
Something that had always seemed merely a quaint anachronism is now, fairly or not, thought of more in terms of trouble. And when schools feel the need to go to the lengths employed by St Kentigern College and Diocesan to counter pupils' behaviour, it seems only sensible to consign them to history.
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