Coughing Green MP: I'm insulating, not inhaling

T

The420Guy

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Green MP Nandor Tanczos is not the first person to blame his coughing on dust, rather than on hemp.

But Mr Tanczos was not smoking hemp yesterday – he was installing it as insulation in a cottage in Thorndon, Wellington, owned by Green MPs.

"It's not the hemp, it's the dust in the attic," he spluttered, after party co-leader Rod Donald handed a wad of the Nelson-made insulation up to him.

The Greens bought the first batch of the new wool-hemp insulation material, manufactured by New Wool Products in an experiment to find different ways to use industrial hemp.

It is part of a campaign by Mr Tanczos, who smokes cannabis as part of his Rastafarian religion, to have the drug decriminalised and the growing of industrial hemp made legal.

Unlike cannabis – a hemp product – the hemp insulation cannot be smoked for a high.

Mr Tanczos said the new product was safer in houses because it would not ignite, did not irritate the skin and lungs and was more energy-efficient to produce.

Industrial hemp is already grown in Britain, Australia, China and other countries, and on Thursday Parliament's primary production select committee will evaluate a one-year trial of industrial hemp in New Zealand.

The committee is considering Mr Tanczos' Misuse of Drugs (Industrial Hemp) Amendment Bill, which would allow industrial hemp to be grown legally.

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