Ardern has no regrets about staying mum on cannabis despite close margin

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Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern has not had a change of heart about keeping her cannabis vote secret despite the final, narrow margin in the referendum – only 2 per cent.

Ardern had voted to legalise cannabis for recreational use, but didn’t say how she voted until after the provisional results were revealed three weeks ago.

Yesterday the final results were released, showing a much narrower margin after 504,625 special votes, or 17 per cent of the total, were counted.

The provisional result had the “no” vote on 53.1 per cent and the “yes” vote on 46.1 per cent. The final result was 50.7 per cent for “no” and 48.4 per cent for “yes”.

Out of 2,908,071 total votes, the margin was only 67,662 – or 2.3 per cent.

Many proponents of drug law reform…