Page 4587 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 6 December 1994
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In terms of the clinical trial protocol, that also needs to be addressed. It has to have aims, it has to have the proposed means of conducting it and the proposed method of analysis of the results.
Mr Connolly: I am starting to feel sorry for you, Mrs Carnell.
MRS CARNELL: I have felt a bit sorry for you for ages. Unless the proposed method of analysis of results is there, it cannot be approved. Of course, it has to be scientifically viable. If poor old Mr Connolly cannot work those sorts of things out, he should not be Health Minister and he should not be approving this sort of approach. Mr Lamont suggested that it was dangerous. Mr Lamont, it is dangerous only if your Minister for Health stuffs up and approves something that is dangerous. He has to approve it.
Mr Lamont also made a comment suggesting that the usefulness of cannabis medically was "alleged". The fact is that there is already one product - a very expensive product - that is available on an import basis. It is a product called Nabelone, which is specifically a synthetic cannabinoid product for nausea in end stage cancer. It is an approved product. So much for Mr Lamont's "alleged". The fact is that it is not dangerous. There are not alleged medical benefits; there are real ones that have already, in very limited circumstances, been proved, which shows that there is a need for more medical research in this area. The issue of quantity and quality and strength has already been addressed in the legislation. It seems to me that those were the only issues that anybody raised.
MS SZUTY (5.33): I have listened to the debate, both this afternoon and last week, with some interest. It has been one of the most extraordinary public debates I have witnessed, certainly in my time in this Assembly. The comment I would like to make about it is that it seems to have generated an enormous amount of hysteria in the community. "Hysteria", I think, is an appropriate word. It is interesting that this debate has been about the medicinal use of cannabis. How many other amendments have come before this Assembly which have been corrected at a later date and which have caused no community reaction whatsoever? It is a most extraordinary circumstance that we are even debating today Mr Moore's amendment to the Drugs of Dependence Act. Nonetheless, when the variety of legal opinions was proffered last week, I must admit that I had some concerns about the effect of Mr Moore's amendment, and certainly many people in the community would have had those concerns as well. I note that Mr Moore, in good faith, decided that he would seek his own legal opinion on the effect of his amendment, and I am very pleased and very grateful to Mr Moore for doing that. I think Mr Refshauge has clarified the position of Mr Moore's amendment quite conclusively.
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