Is Australia Ready For Legal Cannabis for Medicinal Use ?

13 April 2017
Melbourne Australia –

There is a new Cannabis Bill in NSW Australia, and most believe it is the first Real Cannabis bill, for many reasons. Called the Medicinal Cannabis Bill 2017, http://bit.ly/Luke-Foley-Video it is a few years in the making, and a lot has happened since the comittee report was produced in 2013.

Most do not realise that leglaising Cannabis  for medical or reacreaitonal use is a state issue.

In the years since there have been multiple bills on Cannabis in states and federally. All have done similar things, fufil the voter promises to legalise medical cannabis (for the voters) and fulfilling the opposite promise to all others by prevneting it from happening, to the beneffit of others such as industry, pharmcuticals and politicians that are oposed.

So what happened ?

• In 2014 Politicians promised to legalise Cannabis for medical purposes, so parents and patients alike would not have to buy “evil, crude, mold-infested”  Cannabis from the black market.
• In 2015 a survey immerged showing 94% of Australians supported Cannabis. http://bit.ly/Cannabis-Survey. Oops, the problem is the government never intended to make it available.
• So in 2016 multiple bills in multiple states introduced laws increasing penalties for Cannabis patients, growers, and caregivers, and at the same time began to redefine Cannabis itself from a genus of a plant to a suite of products. This evolved bill by bill and state by state. In the case of Victoria, they got many new laws and increased penlalties on Cannabi sincluding social media, books, magazines, blogs and websites (oops) all with penalties of 10 years prison. This got worse when the word Cannabis was not even used in bills and law changes. All the anti-cannabis laws passed 33-6 or 32-6 as is typical in Victoria. My own amendmend got added that was spsecfic to the changing of the defition of Cannabis, it did not change the outocme of the bill but the amendment was addressed and is in Hansard for fact checking now and in the future.
• This was made worse again in QLD Australia when they re-defined the synthetic opioid Subsys (Fentynal) a synthetic opioid that 50-100 times more potent than morphine) as Cannabis in early 2016, and it was addressed in the QLD bill itself that passed without amendmeent in October 2016.

There is no “legal” demand for Cannabis in Australia so there will be no growing. 

• The result of all this activitiy and promises, was the birth of a new group in the department of health. Called the Office of Drug Control or ODC. They are repsonsible for licenscing of Cannabis grow and manufacturing licenses, as well as import and export. Previous to this each state controlled their own licenses, so now there wopuld be another tier of license control to make sure Australia proper fulfilled the international laws and agreements. This is how government was to control Cannabis.
• Licenses would only be granted if there was demand, “legal demand”. With all the new laws in bills and states coinsidentally having no legal condtions for Cannabis this meant there was no legal demand. But what if more conditions were legal (or if they were forced with a elgal challenge) then yes the same ODC framework would work.