Page 3701 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 15 October 1991
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The point, of course, is that there are some people who think they can do it all - smoke marijuana and drink alcohol - and they do it to excess. I do not think that you can go around stopping people doing a little of what they enjoy, if it is not doing harm to anybody else. We do not stop people having a couple of drinks at night. For personal use, 25 grams of marijuana - I am not into the grams, but I understand that this is a very small amount - would roll to about five or six cigarettes. Of course, if these people were to sell those cigarettes or were to sell this amount they would immediately be classed as dealers and would be charged under the particular Act. The suggestions in the report have covered all of that area.
This report is to the Assembly and the Assembly has to decide whether it acts on it or not. This will be the decision of the Assembly. I have enjoyed working on the committee. I have enjoyed working on it with the chairman, Michael Moore, and with Robyn Nolan on the last part of it. As you will see, other people, such as Carmel Maher, Bill Stefaniak and Bill Wood, were also members of this committee in its early stage. The secretary, I must say, did a very good job. Ron Owens was called on at the last minute to get this all together, and I thank him for all the time and effort that he put into it.
This will be an interesting report for people to read. Whether the next Assembly will adopt anything that is in this report will be up to them. It is very important that we have these committees. These are the sorts of things that people do not know a lot about. I think it is very important that we listen to the people who are working in this field, for and against. I think the report has been very even-handed in that way. We are fortunate to have people from different walks of life sitting in this house at the moment, such as lawyers, schoolteachers, accountants and so on. They have expertise in those fields, but there is no way we could all have that knowledge. So, we are privileged to be able to serve on one of these committees and to acquire this knowledge, and thus be able to make up our minds after listening to both sides of the case.
I thank the Assembly for giving me the opportunity to serve on this committee. Even though I have a nursing degree, I have learned a lot, and in the short time I have served on it I really have enjoyed it.
Debate (on motion by Mr Connolly) adjourned.
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