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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Wednesday, 25 August 2004) . . Page.. 4133 ..

although I am glad to hear Mr Corbell say that he is prepared to look at it after the next election, if returned.

I recently read a book subtitled Arthur’s story—I recommend it to people in this place—written by Pauline Reilly, who is a well-known children’s writer. She found herself in the situation at the age of, I think it was, 84, where her husband, Arthur, had prostate cancer. She was caring for him and watching him fade away before her eyes. She describes this in the book in a very clear way and puts, right through the book, all the factual and documented evidence about cannabis and the medicinal use of it over the years—over a couple of centuries at least—and the history of the demonising of it as a medicinal drug.

It is interesting that the war on drugs actually came from Nixon in his election campaign and it made me reflect on the war on drugs, the war on terror, coming out of Mr Bush’s desperate attempt to deal with a crisis. A war on something always seems to work for certain politicians because it is a good phrase to hype up the community generally.

Just bearing that in mind, the war on drugs has absolutely failed, and the evidence shows that in terms of actually reducing harm associated with illicit drugs. As Ms Dundas said, that whole business of Nixon and his war on drugs was about being cross with what he saw as the alternative people in America who challenged the Vietnam War and so on. The history is really interesting.

I do recommend Arthur’s story as a book to read if you are interested in seeing a really clear history of the politics of drugs and the factual evidence and reports that support its medicinal use. It is also a human story about an octogenarian in our community who has nightmares at night about preparing the cookies, because the police might come and raid her, but who is absolutely determined to do that because she saw her husband start to eat as a result of eating a cookie with cannabis in it. She tells her story so clearly of the absolute joy when, after he had had a couple of these cookies, he actually called from his bedroom, “Could I have a cheese sandwich?” and how that was so incredibly important for the passage of his illness, because he actually started to eat.

Sure, he died finally, but the book gives the story—it’s not a thick book; I seriously recommend everyone here read it—and you understand the human story behind this. I know in theory we all understand that people are suffering, but read this book and get a real, first-hand experience of it from this 84-year-old woman, who is now a campaigner for the medical use of cannabis to be made available. People like her, who are struggling with the loss of their ailing partner, also have to deal with nightmares about police coming in and raiding them. That’s what this bill is about.

Of course, with recent changes to the ACT Criminal Code, we now see that the SCON system can only apply where the offender has two or fewer plants and cannot apply where those plants are grown hydroponically. Prior to this amendment, it was argued that the risk of criminalising self-medicating cannabis consumers was fairly low in the ACT, and the need for a compassionate scheme that would legalise that use was needed less. The argument was that New South Wales is not as enlightened as we are in the ACT and the stigma of criminal charges is much more of a threat there. But of course, with the amendments passed here last week, that claim cannot be made as easily.

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