Cooke on why the no vote won on cannabis

A really insightful article by Henry Cooke on why the yes vote failed to win the cannabis referendum. The TLDR version is:

  • The PM refused to spend a cent of political capital on it. Only 55% of Labour voters voted for it. She could have easily got that over 60%.
  • They should have gone for decriminalisation, not legalisation
  • They should have done what euthanasia did and passed the law in advance, conditional on a referendum endorsement, so people knew exactly what a yes vote would entail
  • The yes campaign was terrible, and failed to focus on human stories, as the euthanasia campaign did
  • The yes campaign was designed more to make yes voters feel good, than persuade more conservative voters to vote yes

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