Page 3822 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 25 September 2019
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personal use. This is a waste of resources. Police time and criminal justice resources would be better spent catching real criminals.
In the ACT, on average, almost one Canberran a day is arrested for cannabis and over 50 per cent of all drug-related arrests are for cannabis consumers. Further, a third of simple cannabis offences went through the criminal justice system and were not diverted. That means that one in three people caught in possession of cannabis are arrested, charged before the court or receive a summons. This is despite the decriminalisation position that we have already implemented in the ACT. It is clear that this system is still ensuring that people are being caught up in the criminal justice system.
Submissions received during referral to the committee, and letters and personal anecdotes that I have received, all too often touched on people’s experience of being caught with cannabis. For the most vulnerable members of our society, being caught with a small amount of cannabis could have an enormous consequence. This is something that we have the power to change. We should not be criminalising such a large portion of our community. It chokes up our justice system, leading to longer wait times for more serious issues. Our legal system should not be tied up with such minor issues as possession of small amounts of cannabis.
As a restorative justice city, we should focus on harm minimisation and reducing the excessive criminalisation of certain offences. Once individuals interact with the criminal justice system it can snowball into more serious offences and penalties, a cycle which can be hard to break.
During this debate we have heard scaremongering tactics about health concerns associated with cannabis. Like all drugs—legal and illegal—cannabis can have an effect on a user’s health. But in comparison to legal drugs such as alcohol, tobacco or prescription medication, the health concerns are massively overblown.
Alcohol and tobacco combined kill over 20,000 Australians every year. Alcohol represents 4.6 per cent of the total burden of diseases and injuries in Australia, tobacco nine per cent and cannabis 0.1 per cent. The misuse of prescription drugs such as codeine and other opioids causes more deaths than all illicit drugs combined. These legal drugs cause far more health problems than cannabis does, yet I can easily purchase these drugs and would not receive a fine or possible criminal record for simply having them in my possession. Rightly, we treat addiction to these drugs as a health problem, not a criminal one. It is time to do the same thing with cannabis.
Those who do experience cannabis addiction must receive treatment, not criminalisation. It is very clear that addiction should be treated as a disease, not a criminal act or a moral failing. Criminalisation just makes it harder for these people to seek help, as they are worried about not only the stigma of addiction but the possible legal consequences as well. This has never made anyone get better. Legalisation will make it easier for these people to get help without punishing the majority of recreational users.
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