Page 2188 - Week 06 - Thursday, 6 June 2019
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This bill does not do any of the things that Mr Pettersson says it will do. It does not create a market, it does not move us any closer to a market, it does not reflect a global trend and it does not reduce the burden on the criminal justice system.
One of the most interesting things that we heard, in the whole part of it, was when the government officials came along, and one of the government officials said—and I will quote what was said, because it is worth putting it on the record here as well:
Back in the mid-1990s we went to simple cannabis offence notices. This effectively decriminalised cannabis use. I have some statistics from the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare. In 1998, which is around the time that these changes were introduced, we had 20 per cent of ACT residents aged 14 years and older using cannabis in the past 12 months. In 2016 this figure had fallen to eight per cent.
We have seen a reduction to a third of the cannabis use, according to the AIHW figures, over that period. They collect the figures in the same way. There might be faults in the way they collect them but they collect the figures in the same way. This is a substantial trend, and it is my belief that we should be looking at what is behind these trends before we make legislation to change the way in which we deal with it.
Mr Hanson said, at one stage during the debate on this process, that he believed we had it in about the right space with the simple cannabis notice. We are in a space where cannabis is not legal, but, generally speaking, people found in possession of small amounts are not put into the criminal justice system. The simple cannabis notice system could be improved; there could be more use of diversion and, with drug courts coming online, which is something that we welcome, there could be more scope for diversion of people out of the criminal justice system.
I agree with almost everybody who came before the committee who said that we should be treating this primarily as a health issue. But we do not deal with it primarily as a health issue by opening up the capacity for people to use this; rather, we should be looking at the issues of how to encourage people away from the use of this. Mr Pettersson’s legislation does anything but that.
The other thing that Mr Pettersson said is that it would keep people away from the black market. By his own evidence, it fails to do that. The mechanism or the rationale for keeping people away from the black market is that we will have a grow regime, and with a grow regime people will not need to go out and buy cannabis from organised crime gangs, bikie gangs and the like.
However, the grow regime requires someone who wants to grow cannabis to obtain seeds, seedlings or some other growing medium from somewhere. And doing that will still be illegal. It will still be illegal to go and buy cannabis seeds. If you plant them and keep them in your backyard and you meet all the requirements, the growing of them is not illegal but the acquisition of the growing medium is still illegal. By Mr Pettersson’s own admission, the only way you could do that would be on the black market. So Mr Pettersson himself admits that the aim of his legislation fails in this regard.
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