Page 493 - Week 02 - Wednesday, 20 February 2019
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and Procurement, Minister for Urban Renewal) (3.22): I seek leave to make a personal explanation.
MADAM SPEAKER: I grant leave to Ms Stephen-Smith to make a personal explanation.
MS STEPHEN-SMITH: Madam Speaker, I understand that Mrs Kikkert felt mocked by one of my responses in question time today. I would like to assure her that that was not my intention.
Drugs of Dependence (Personal Cannabis Use) Amendment Bill 2018
Debate resumed.
MS LE COUTEUR (Murrumbidgee) (3.22): As an ageing hippie, I am rising to give some personal reflections on this bill. Mr Rattenbury has already given an overview of the Greens’ position and the situation in Australia. To start off, people often assume that some drugs are illegal because they are dangerous, but the reasons that drugs are illegal are not particularly related to their relative risk or harm. In a 2010 study outlined in the Lancet, experts ranked 20 legal and illegal drugs on 16 measures of harm, both to the people concerned and the wider society.
The measures included health damage, economic costs and crime. Overall, I hope it will surprise no-one to find that alcohol was the most harmful drug, followed by heroin. Tobacco came in as No 6, and cannabis, I am afraid, was a poor No 8. I do admit that they did not consider caffeine, which I suspect is the most widely used drug in this building. I personally am aware of some of the downsides of excessive caffeine use.
In 1913, Australia signed up to what was the then new 1909 International Opium Convention. In 1923, the convention was expanded to include the prohibition of opium, morphine, heroin, cocaine and cannabis. This was all before there was any widespread use of these substances in Australia or, in fact, in general in the world.
In the 1960s the baby boomers came of age. Of course, in Australia we also had the US soldiers who were posted to Vietnam who came to Australia for their R&R leave. As a community, especially the baby boomers, we started growing and smoking dope. By 1970, all the Australian states had made drug supply an offence, which it had not been before; the offence had been only for possession and use. These laws made drug supply an illegal, but potentially very profitable, business. Thus, this created many of the social problems of drug use.
Of course, in the ACT we removed the criminal penalties for personal use of cannabis in the 1990s. My view, and the view of the Greens, is that that prohibition has failed and that the health issues from drug use, legal or illegal, should be dealt with first as health issues, not as criminal offences.
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