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Legislative Assembly for the ACT: 2004 Week 10 Hansard (Wednesday, 25 August 2004) . . Page.. 4134 ..

Other key issues that have been raised with us include the dangers of smoking, and Mr Corbell mentioned that. But there are of course other ways of using the cannabis. It is sometimes preferably smoked because it is hard to know the potency of the drug and it is easier to control through smoking. There is also now the potential for inhaling in a vaporised inhaler. I understand there is one actually available in Canberra, the Vapir, which precisely determines the correct temperature for vaporising the THC and could deliver only the active ingredients. There is that capacity.

But I do find it very ironic that we have people saying, “We don’t know what the side effects are exactly and it might be a trigger for mental illness,” which it might be. It has been identified as a potential stressor, among many others, for people predisposed to mental illness. Marijuana or other drugs can be one of the stressors in this way. But, for heaven’s sake, the reason that people are using cannabis is to deal with the side effects from the other drugs that they are legally using. For heaven’s sake, this is about understanding that this particular herb assists in certain illnesses. There is no dispute that that is a fact.

People have mentioned a synthetic being available. It is extremely expensive if you do want it and because, it is not covered by the PBS, you have to get a special prescription and pay a lot of money for it. There are concerns about it because it is harder to know what the effect will be on people. There have been concerns about how effective it is.

Mr Smyth raises concerns about the AMA but maybe he has not looked at the amendments. We have dealt in the amendments with not asking a doctor to prescribe a dose, for the reasons that he explained.

The provision of seeds is an issue Mr Corbell raised. Of course that could have been dealt with in amendments but we did not pursue amendments because it became obvious that we were not going to get support for this today. That could have been dealt with as well. He also said the bill does not outline methods for monitoring compliance; that equally could have been worked out if there had been the will to do so. Not outlining how to dispose of it if a person dies also could obviously have been dealt with if there had been the will to work with those issues.

I have stressed—and members are well aware—that I have had this on the table for a while. I have been open to any conversation about how we could amend it to deal with concerns that people have, but that will obviously was not there.

In conclusion, I just want to say again that we have not seen New South Wales do anything over the past couple of years even though, as occurs so often, you can have an inquiry or a review, you can get the evidence and you can get the conclusions and recommendations. But basically there is a fear, a lack of political will or courage to do this because in some way it may be seen to offend the notions of prohibition, zero tolerance, war on drugs, the thin edge of wedge, et cetera.

I understand that it requires courage and leadership to support this but, as I said before, this is a compassionate response to the reality of people who are suffering in our community and are using cannabis. It is not as if it is not happening. It is incredibly easy to get. It is not as if we are achieving anything by not supporting this or not amending

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