Cannabis enthusiasts are preparing to mount a campaign for the NSW Parliament, hoping to recreate the high from the recent Victorian state election where weed reformers captured two upper house seats.
The Legalise Cannabis Party will announce several candidates for the NSW election next month, hoping to target select regional lower house seats held by conservatives from both the Coalition and Labor, party chairman Craig Ellis told Crikey.
“It’s going to be a quite high-profile campaign,” Ellis said. “The general public knows it’s time that NSW and Australia just get on with it and regulate and legalise cannabis.”
The party wants to make cannabis legal for recreational use for people over 18, and to legalise growing the plant at home. It’s currently illegal to use, grow, import or sell cannabis in NSW, although people caught with small amounts can get a caution from police rather than face court.
There are also medical exemptions for people who get cannabis prescribed from a doctor.
But even those patients can get into trouble with the law if they’re caught driving with cannabis traces in their saliva, something that can occur even if the driver hasn’t used the drug for days and isn’t impaired.
An attempt by Greens upper house MP Cate Faehrmann to plug that legal loophole was soundly defeated last year when the Coalition and Labor joined forces to vote down her bill.
Ellis confirmed that providing a defence against drug-driving charges for responsible medical cannabis patients would be a central part of the party’s agenda.
“I’m particularly driven to fix this outrageous and discriminatory roadside testing regime,” he said.
However, he said voters who might assume that the Greens and the Legalise Cannabis Party would be natural allies in the NSW Parliament might be mistaken.
Ellis dismissed the Greens as a “populist left party” and said he was concerned their support for cannabis reform might be a case of “virtue signalling”.
He refused to say whether he considered his party to lean more left or right, saying the distinction wasn’t relevant for its politics. He noted it had gained support from voters who otherwise would have voted for One Nation in the last federal election and for the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party in Victoria.
“The cannabis vote is not left or right, it’s coming from all over the place,” he said.
He also refused to be pinned down on the question of whether any potential MPs from his party would be more likely to support the Coalition or Labor on issues that don’t have to do with cannabis reform.
“That’s a very good question, and the answer is: we’ll be listening to the experts,” he said. “We’ll look at every piece of legislation, and we’ll judge it on its merits.”
Ellis said that while there would be several candidates targeting lower house seats, the party would have a better chance of entering the upper house.
Last year NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet’s Coalition government categorically ruled out decriminalising drug possession, despite a recommendation from a landmark inquiry into the drug ice.
“I disagree with decriminalisation [and] I want to make very clear the NSW government does not support the recommendation to decriminalise drugs in NSW,” Perrottet said in September.
As the Australian Associated Press reported earlier this month, the Queensland Labor government has no immediate plans to respond to a vote at its state conference in November to legalise possession of pot.
Neither Victoria nor Western Australia, where the Legalise Cannabis Party is represented in Parliament, have any plans to change drug laws either. The ACT government legalised personal use of cannabis three years ago.
Legalisation proponents say making cannabis legal would free up police resources, bring in more tax money, and assist people in addiction to get help.
Many countries have legalised cannabis use in recent years, including Canada, Mexico, and Thailand. There are also dozens of countries where the use of the drug has been decriminalised.
Should cannabis be decriminalised? Let us know by writing to letters@crikey.com.au. Please include your full name to be considered for publication. We reserve the right to edit for length and clarity.
Cannabis has been decriminalised in the ACT for some time (admittedly at odds with Federal law – though yet to be tested in court). Just look at what has happened – kids are dying, old people are being harassed by stoners, no one is going to work or school, delicious snacks are disappearing off shelves like toilet paper in 2020. An utter disaster. Quite stressful actually, might need to go and have a bit of a lie down ….
No one will look at cannabis law reform because it is one of the most fundamental tenets in the conservative media that the drug remains illegal. So invested are our shock jocks in absolute prohibition that to even contemplate a mild and logical change like Cate Faehrmann’s proposal to bring drug driving charges back into some basis in reality could cost a party the next election. Having said that, Ellis needs to drop the high-mindedness with the Greens. They’ve been pro-reform for decades, and I don’t think he was at the barricades during the protests in the early 80’s.
Legalising private use of Cannabis, accompanied by set standards of purity and certification, would also stop the hard drugs dealers spiking the weed with harder drugs to entice addicts into their more profitable and dangerous activities. It would also allow the Drugs Squad stronger focus on such potentially fatal drugs as heroin and Ice cocaine. It’s a no-brainer.
There are now many people who have been using prescribed cannabis without ill-effect. These are often older people with chronic pain: they tell their family, their friends down at the bowlo and word gets around. I suspect it is this cohort that led to the surprising result for the party in the federal election, and I agree with their spokesperson, this not a left/right issue for those voters, it is an issue of common sense, dignity and justice.
Its not before time.
For too long Australia has been screwed by the US into following what they do.
Labor control both houses of the WA Parliament. There are now two Legalise Cannabis members in the WA Legislative Council. . They have no influence at all. On their key policy proposition (legalise, regulate, tax cannabis) they have my full support, but the intransigent wowserism of WA Labor means nothing happens. The two Legalise Cannabis MLCs have also shown some propensity for anti-vaxxerism, but otherwise no real opportunity for voters to see whether they are ‘left’ or ‘right’. Anyway, WA Labor has ‘reformed’ the Legislative Council in such a way that neither are likely to survive the next State election – problem solved, from the government perspective, and all the donors kept happy.