Flying low
A light plane that crashed in the Gibbston Valley near Queenstown on Saturday, killing two people, had been on a police cannabis reconnaissance flight, says ONE News.
Apparently, it's not the first time that aerial cannabis law enforcement has turned to tragedy. Twelve years ago two officers and two civilians were killed when a spotter plane collided with a helicopter above Auckland. The latest accident brings New Zealand's total aerial cannabis spotting deaths to six.
Police Minister George Hawkins says that "our on-going struggle against drugs, and in particular cannabis, sometimes extracts a cruel price".
It's not worth it, George. Why fight cannabis, when the number of cannabis-related deaths is, officially, zero? Why not fight more dangerous drugs, like ecstasy? The death toll from ecstasy is now... oh... er... only three. Looks like flying around spotting cannabis is twice as dangerous as blissing out on E. Good thing that you've temporarily suspended air searches for cannabis plots. Please, make it permanent. If you fly around looking for cannabis, you're playing Russian roulette.
posted by Richard @ 10:17 pm
4 comments
4 Comments:
Hey Richard
So what you are saying is that more people have died on aerial cannabis surveillance than have died from smoking cannabis? Almost funny in a sad and tragic kind of way.
Flysiguy (hey bro) be interested in the details of your young friend. I'm always looking for blatently unjust cases to highlight (anonymously or otherwise) as that's what brings it home to peole eg neville Yates getting 5 months for medical marijuana.
JaH guide
Nandor
In fact, the official number of "cannabis-related" deaths for the period 1990-96 is seven. But it is unclear whether any of these deaths can be attributed to smoking cannabis in the same way that deaths from a range of maladies are attributed to tobacco smoking. Check out the Ministry of Health's New Zealand Drug Statistics and draw your own conclusions.
My safety advice is to use knives, not planes, for cannabis spotting.
Richard, at least one of the aircraft that collided over Auckland was a traffic spotter, the other was the police helicopter, but I somehow doubt that it was cannabis spotting over the central Auckland motorway exchange. I recall this well as I was in the area at the time and actually saw the chopper coming in, but only heard the collision.
Umm! a Tony Harrod fell from the underside of a copter when the carabiner his harness was attached to came adrift,30 metres head first,presumably head first into the pot he was trying to recover.
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