Page 4576 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 6 December 1994
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It seems to me that we are indeed clutching at straws. I think it is very sad that the Government of the Territory behaves in this fashion; but, in the circumstances, the Liberal Party has, I freely admit, been put in a difficult position by this sort of behaviour. It is an embarrassing position to be in, and I regret that this has come about. But I state again that we do not resile from the important principle that medical research should go on under proper supervision, in the proper form and manner, in this community of Australia into the effects of cannabis and the possible benefits it might have for medical research and for relief of suffering and pain. That is the view of this Opposition. It was the view at one time of those people opposite. They seem to have lost their principles in the headlong rush towards next year's election; but that is a sad reflection on their position and one that, I think, my party can be reasonably proud to have honoured.
MR STEVENSON (4.40): As members will see, I do not have my hemp jacket on today, but I read from hemp paper. First of all, I think it is relevant to look at some of the medicinal qualities of hemp. We should understand that from 1842 and through the 1890s extremely strong marijuana, then known as cannabis extractums, and hashish extracts, tinctures and elixirs were the second and third most routinely used medicines in America for humans, from birth through childhood to old age, and in veterinary medicine until the 1920s and later. As I have stated before when I have raised this matter in the Assembly, for at least 3,000 years prior to 1842, widely varying marijuana extracts - buds, leaves, roots, et cetera - were the most commonly used real medicines in the world for the majority of mankind's illnesses. However, in Western Europe the Roman Catholic Church forbade the use of cannabis or any medical treatment, except for alcohol or blood-letting, for 1,200-plus years.
The US pharmacopoeia indicated that cannabis should be used for treating such ailments as fatigue, fits of coughing, rheumatism, asthma, delirium tremens, migraine headaches and the cramps and depressions associated with menstruation. That was data from Professor William Emboden, Professor of Narcotic Botany, California State University, Northridge. Queen Victoria used cannabis resins for her menstrual cramps and PMS. Her reign, from 1837 to 1901, paralleled the enormous growth of the use of Indian cannabis medicine in the English-speaking world. In this century, cannabis research has demonstrated therapeutic value and complete safety in the treatment of many health problems, including asthma, glaucoma, nausea, tumours, epilepsy, infection, stress, migraines, anorexia, depression, rheumatism, arthritis and possibly herpes.
The father of Chinese medicine, Emperor Shen Nung, included marijuana in his pharmacopoeia almost 5,000 years ago. Recently, marijuana was found in the 1,600-year-old skeleton of a woman giving birth near Jerusalem. Medical literature of the time indicated that marijuana had the power to increase the force of uterine contractions and provide a significant reduction of labour pain. References to marijuana are also recorded in Egyptian, Assyrian, Greek and Roman writings from the same era. On the Indian subcontinent, marijuana is found in many preparations in ancient Ayurvedic medicine and is still widely used today. It is certainly used in the treatment of glaucoma, as we know. That is a very important cause of blindness, particularly in people over the age of 40 or 50. It is an increase of intra-ocular pressure. The pressure inside the eyeball gets so great that it destroys part of the optic nerve. This can, and often does, lead to blindness. While there are drugs to treat this, they have a lot of problems associated with them.
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