WELLINGTON, New Zealand — New Zealand is known for its tourism campaigns emphasizing what a clean, green country it is, and after 2020 it might be even greener: A referendum will be held that year on whether recreational cannabis use should be legal, the justice minister said early today.
It appears that New Zealand would be the first country to put the issue to a nationwide vote.
Andrew Little, the justice minister, said the referendum would be on the ballot during the next national election to be held in 2020. He told reporters that the results would be binding, though he said there was “a bit of detail still to work through,” particularly regarding how the question would be worded.
The announcement came a week after New Zealand’s Parliament passed a law that will ease restrictions on medicinal marijuana.
If more than half of voters taking part in the referendum support legalization, New Zealand will join a handful of countries that have legalized marijuana use outright, including Canada and Uruguay. In the United States, several states have also legalized it.
Dozens of other countries and states have decriminalized recreational use, legalized medicinal cannabis or eased enforcement of possession laws.
New Zealand is known as being socially liberal, with previous governments having decriminalized prostitution and legalized same-sex marriage. But neither of the two major parties, center-left Labor — which leads the current government — or center-right National, had previously been willing to touch the issue of recreational marijuana.
But Labor’s hand was forced in negotiations after the September 2017 election, during which neither major party won enough seats to govern outright. To win the support of the left-leaning Green Party — one of two parties that have given Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern the majority she needs to govern — Labor agreed to put cannabis legalization to a public vote.
“Politicians are the most risk-averse group of people that I have ever met,” said Chloe Swarbrick, a Green Party lawmaker who has advocated legalizing cannabis.
There had not previously been “the will to invest in evidence-based policies” on controversial issues like marijuana, she said.