Leighton Baker
New Conservative Leader
Press Release
Small business owners are struggling in New Zealand.
They have a business to run, services to provide, and staff to employ, as well as the everyday issues of family, health and finances. What makes businesses so hard to run in New Zealand is the ever-increasing compliance and documentation.
Now we have a government excited about legalising a mind-altering substance with little or no thought of how that affects the employers of those users. Dropping productivity is one thing, but accidents and mishaps are front and foremost in the concerns of small business owners, and who is going to be responsible to ensure all their workers are safe and not under the influence? The employers.
Will there be any financial help? No.
Will they have to waste time and capital testing staff daily for influence? Probably.
If there is an accident and cannabis is in the system how do they prove the person was impaired?
What right does an employer have to stand someone down or sack someone who has cannabis in their system if they claim they are not impaired?
Legalising cannabis has no benefit for us as a society but it is just one more issue that this government wants to dump on overworked business owners giving them all responsibility but no authority.
If those in government had any idea of the workload and responsibilities already shouldered by small business owners they would leave cannabis outside of the legal rights of workers.
