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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2000 Week 12 Hansard (7 December) . . Page.. 3888 ..

MR WOOD (continuing):

It is also the case that about 40 per cent of the population has used cannabis at some stage, but nothing like 40 per cent of the population is addicted to harder drugs. I think something like 5 per cent of the population may have tried heroin. I do not think you can claim that cannabis is necessarily a gateway drug. I don't think the argument is there to sustain that.

What is important is to separate cannabis use, if we can, from the heroin scene. It is the case, as we heard, that more commonly today you can find people who deal in both cannabis and heroin, and it is very important that we separate out, if we can, that cannabis user from that harder drug scene. It is highly desirable that any person's source of cannabis should not also be the source for heroin.

To go back to another one of the recommendations on those health effects, we recommend that there be much more in the way of education programs pointing to the potential negative health impacts. Perhaps there is a view in the community that cannabis is not so harmful. That was certainly my view at the outset. It may well not be as harmful as heavy tobacco use or heavy alcohol use, but it is not without harm, I repeat, and we need to see that there are programs in place to make sure that the community better understands those potential negative health impacts. I might say that we passed through and by suggestions of positive benefits of cannabis use as claimed by some people, such as people with HIV and some other symptoms. We didn't get heavily into that area and we have made no comment about it.

On the subject of separating out cannabis use from the heroin source, we point out the effect of the SCONs system, the simple cannabis offence notices. That was established to keep cannabis users out of the criminal system. That was the reason for it. It is the view of the committee that we support the continuation of that SCONs scheme to try to keep cannabis users out of the criminal system, to keep them away from the harder drug users and not to give them a record that is more detrimental to them. One point made - I do not know whether we quoted it in the end in the report - was that the effect of any legal sanction should not be worse than the effect of the drug itself, so we are really keen to see that that SCONs system should continue. It is not necessarily the ideal or perfect way to go, because perhaps there is no perfect way, but it is a better way to go if we can keep people out of the criminal area and not have a criminal record against their names.

One of Mr Rugendyke's great concerns was the use of the word "decriminalised". It is said that cannabis use has been decriminalised. We all agree that that is misleading. There is a view in the community that "decriminalised" means legalised, which, of course, it doesn't. There are still sanctions against cannabis use. For that reason I think we also need the education campaign that is one of the recommendations. The public should be brought to understand that cannabis is still not a substance that is legal and that you are subject to penalties if you are seen to be using it. We must get rid of that misconception about the word "decriminalised".

As we looked at the SCONs we discovered - Mr Rugendyke knew this from his police days - that currently about half of them are paid. So we have a system that is not really effective. If people out there know that they are not paid, that does not seem to be much of a disincentive. So we have made some recommendations about that. We want to see that those collections are at 100 per cent, because in that way it is a more effective system. We would like to see the system or the paperwork improved so that some steps

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