Wednesday, 31 July 2024

 David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (09:53): Last week the Penington Institute released a groundbreaking discussion paper titled Cannabis Regulation in Australia: Putting Community Safety First. I highly recommend it to all members because it is a cracker of a read. The paper examines Australia’s regulation of cannabis and finds it wanting, to say the least. It finds that the ongoing criminalisation of cannabis, far from limiting its use and availability, is allowing criminal gangs to prosper while punishing small-time users and people from low socio-economic backgrounds. The illicit cannabis market is worth $5 billion annually. It is hugely profitable for the broader criminal economy. Police operations routinely reveal the participation of dangerous criminal networks in cannabis cultivation and distribution. The bulk of cannabis-related arrests, however, are for small-time personal use offences. We should be using these resources to tackle serious crime, from family violence through to the activities of criminal gangs supplying more harmful illicit drugs. The paper points to the wealth of evidence and research from around the world showing the benefits of a regulated cannabis market, including the ability to limit under-age access, to ensure quality and safety and to reduce the enormous cost of policing illicit cannabis – and maybe even put a few billion back into state coffers. It is time for our lawmakers to move towards a regulated cannabis market to benefit the community, deprive criminal gangs of their cash cow and stop the criminalisation of and consequential harms to vulnerable people.