Page 3816 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 25 September 2019
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The government’s response to the HACS committee report says:
The Government will move amendments that are designed to resolve potential incompatibilities with Commonwealth laws. The approach the Government considers most closely achieves this objective is to retain offences in the Drugs of Dependence Act for possession and cultivation of cannabis over prescribed limits but include an exception such that those offences do not apply to anyone over 18 years of age.
This would mean the ACT still retains a relevant offence in legislation but with the practical outcome that possession and cultivation of small amounts of cannabis would be effectively legal for individuals.
This amendment we will shortly be debating.
The other thing that happened was that I listened to the Chief Police Officer on 666 this morning. He gave a mixed message but one which could be interpreted reasonably positively in so far as, while he pointed out that individual constables are masters of their own conscience and have to interpret the law on an individual basis, he felt that the police would do their utmost to do what it was clear the government and the community want to have happen. I sincerely hope that that will be the outcome in practice. If, as the government says, “effectively legal for individuals” can be achieved then this clearly is a step forward for drug law reform.
I have spoken to drug law reform advocates and the view is that, given the intransigence of the commonwealth government, the only current option for drug law reform is for another jurisdiction to see if they can work out a way of circumventing commonwealth laws. Given the ACT’s subordinate relationship to the commonwealth due to the constitution, I would not have thought we were the ideal jurisdiction. But given that no-one else is doing it, it seems the ACT will need to pioneer this, as we have in other things.
As an aside, I think the most useful thing that the ALP could do at this point in time for drug law reform is persuade their federal colleagues to embark on drug law reform, because the federal government has had the laws that it has had for a very long time, including times when the ALP was in government. I call on the ALP to talk to their federal colleagues to try to get the aims of harm minimisation taken seriously as part of our commonwealth legislation and out of the criminal justice system. This is not where it should be. But there is legal uncertainty about how the proposed ACT law would work with the commonwealth law even after the ALP’s amendments have been moved and, I assume, passed.
I think it is important that ACT residents are protected. The HACS committee, of course, dealt with this issue. First, we saw effective education as essential. Recommendation 15 states:
The Committee recommends that strong public information about the provisions of the Drugs of Dependence (Personal Cannabis Use) Amendment Bill 2018 proceed or coincide with the implementation of the Drugs of Dependence (Personal Cannabis Use) Amendment Bill 2018.
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