Page 4577 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 6 December 1994
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Marijuana can be used in the treatment of multiple sclerosis, which is a central nervous system disease. One of the symptoms is terrible muscle spasms, which is a very difficult type of pain to control. There are some drugs ordinarily used - Dantrolene, Baclofen and Valium - but none of them is as effective as was hoped by medical researchers, and they have side effects. They discovered some time ago that if these same patients take some marijuana they get rid of the spasms and there are not any of the side effects. The same muscle spasms can be found in people who have paraplegia and quadriplegia.
So, there are many well-known, well-researched uses of marijuana for medicinal purposes. As members are aware, I have certainly not been one to promote the use of marijuana for what are called recreational purposes. As members will also know, I have strongly promoted the benefits of this most amazing plant to people not only in Canberra but throughout Australia. I realised when I first brought the matter up that members in this Assembly, mainly Labor members, were not aware of the valuable uses, medicinal and otherwise, of this plant. I could understand that some people had just read propaganda without any real thought or research, and I thought it was important that we should all have an opportunity to find out about cannabis hemp.
I organised the Hemp Futurama conference in Canberra, which was held on Thursday, 10 June 1993, nearly 18 months ago. The conference purpose was:
To inform relevant decision makers of the facts surrounding commercial Hemp production so that impediments to progress can be removed now and an informed future ethos contributed to ...
I got down to speak at the conference a medical doctor, Dr Andrew Katelaris. During the conference we went through the history and uses of fibre hemp. We looked at the current global situation and the fact that every country in the EEC has legalised the use of commercial low-drug strain hemp. We looked at the Dutch Government study on the value of the use of hemp in order to handle their pesticide problem by researching hemp for paper.
Mr Berry: Are you going to support this?
MR STEVENSON: Yes, I do support using hemp for paper. We looked at pulping. We looked at the legal issues. We looked at the agronomic aspects. We looked at the present project and the future of hemp in Australia. We looked at the other uses and we listed some of them: Textiles and clothing, paper, seed oil, methanol fuel, pharmaceuticals, industrial inputs, biodegradable plastics, industrial fabrics, human foodstuffs, stockfeed applications, and energy uses. These were all the things we looked at in the conference, to make sure that all members of the Assembly and other relevant people throughout Canberra and in the Federal arena were well aware of the information and had an opportunity to ask questions. There is no doubt that they should have an opportunity to ask questions.
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