Page 3248 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 September 1994
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Mr Deputy Speaker, we must then ask the question: Why did this prohibition occur? For those of us who are interested in this subject, there is a quite significant piece of writing on how it occurred in Australia and how it occurred in other parts of the world; but primarily the most convincing arguments for the prohibition of cannabis are the arguments that apply to the prohibition of things like heroin, the opiates and cocaine, and that is that they are based largely - although it is not the entire story - on racism.
Dr Desmond Manderson explains it very clearly in his book From Mr Sin to Mr Big. Similarly, there is a chapter on it in Drugs Policy: Facts, Fiction and the Future by Ian Mathews, a former editor of the Canberra Times, and Russell Fox, the former Supreme Court and Federal Court judge in the ACT. In their book they talk about prohibition being associated with workers coming from Mexico to take over the jobs of people in the United States and those people being associated with cannabis use. You must wonder whether that would apply to a series of other things as well. Indeed, one can look at the prohibition of alcohol being associated with the Irish taking the jobs of WASPs - white Anglo-Saxon Protestants - in the United States and that being the foundation part of it. That does not account for the whole reason behind prohibition, but it certainly is one of the major influencing factors. More important, and what Mr Stevenson is dealing with today, is what prohibition actually means for the positive uses of a plant like cannabis. The position would be similar with the palm tree. If you applied prohibition to one small use, you would suddenly lose a huge number of benefits.
When I look at our international treaties on cannabis, I believe that it is correct to say that we are restricted in what we would be able to do in the cultivation of cannabis in the way that Mr Stevenson mentions. I know that Mr Stevenson does not put much faith in our international treaties and has often criticised our international treaties with respect to other things; but we do have international treaties in this area, which is why you would be restricted to research rather than being able to cultivate such a crop for the sorts of uses that Mr Stevenson mentioned.
There is an example in Tasmania which we should apply to cannabis. There is a thriving agricultural industry in Tasmania that grows the same poppies that are used for heroin. In fact, the biggest legal poppy industry in the world is in Tasmania. Of course, the poppy plant is used for the production of morphine. We are able to continue with that sort of production in spite of the fact that they are the same poppies that are used for heroin, which is after all only diethylmorphine.
We could apply the same sort of strategy in the ACT and say, "Ought we to be looking at removing restrictions in the ACT in order to allow for the growing of cannabis?". There are some concerns about how cannabis will be used as a drug and whether the growing of it in the ACT would mean a wider distribution of it. One has to wonder how wide a distribution we would get with cannabis. In submissions and evidence given to the Assembly Committee on Drugs young people told us that in any of our colleges they could get cannabis in 20 minutes if they wanted some. It is readily available now, and one has to wonder just how more widely available it would be.
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