Page 4336 - Week 14 - Wednesday, 30 November 1994
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .
MR MOORE (11.46), in reply: Madam Speaker, I would like to take a number of points in order. The first is the point that Mr Stevenson raised about consultation. This was an issue that was canvassed over three years ago by the Select Committee on HIV, Illegal Drugs and Prostitution when it presented its report on marijuana and other drugs. The issue was raised again very recently, when Mr Stevenson raised his matter of public importance on the issue of hemp. He spoke a little - and I spoke a great deal - about the medical uses of cannabis. By the way, this matter has been raised quite a number of times very publicly. I will soon have a copy of the briefing notes of the Australian Parliamentary Group for Drug Law Reform, which raised this issue with every member of parliament in Australia and made these public as part of a press release.
Madam Speaker, I should also point out that one of the barriers, as far as I was concerned, was that I had perceived that we could not provide cannabis to people without the Government being involved in some way; and, specifically, in providing it. In fact, it was when I was in the United States and discussing with a number of people an initiative that is going to be put under the citizens-initiated referendum system in California that somebody who was preparing an initiative there said to me, "What we are doing is simply saying that where somebody has used, or is growing, a small amount of cannabis for medical purposes" - and theirs is as broad as that - "then there will be no prosecution". It seemed to me that this was an excellent way of finally delivering what I had been trying to work out for some years. Unfortunately, what happens, of course, in such circumstances is that people tend to get a mind fix about a particular method, as indeed I had. When you hear a simple idea on how it can be achieved, then the implementation of that idea is not at all difficult. Whilst the issue has been very broadly canvassed in our community, it is this method of making it available that fits in with our expiation notice system that is important.
Madam Speaker, I would like to stay with the topic of the medical use of cannabis for a while rather than discuss any other issues which members raised. This is the one that is more controversial. Mr Connolly suggested that basically there has been no research done in this area. Mr Connolly, you are very conscious of monograph No. 25 of the national task force on cannabis which the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy released to us just recently. I must point out to members that, in fact, Mr Connolly provided me with my copy. If you look at the references on pages 200 and 201, this is actually about the health and psychological consequences of cannabis use. There are 2½ full pages of closely typed references to clinical studies that have been conducted. I have highlighted a series of names. Rather than run through those, I simply state that there are indications of very positive effects of the use of cannabis as a medicine.
Perhaps the most important is a report in the Journal of Clinical Oncology, volume 9, of July 1991. It is a very well respected peer review magazine. It indicated that a survey of American oncologists - this is also reported in that monograph - showed that more than 44 per cent of respondent oncologists had recommended the illegal use of marijuana for control of nausea in at least one cancer chemotherapy patient and that almost half, 48 per cent, would prescribe marijuana to some of their patients if it were legal. It is quite clear that there is an issue in terms of its use.
Next page . . . . Previous page . . . . Speeches . . . . Contents . . . . Debates(HTML) . . . . PDF . . . .