Wednesday, 14 May 2025

Cannabis law reform

David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan) (09:52): Imagine my delight reading the Herald Sun on Monday when my eyes fell on this ripper headline: ‘Victorians back push for legal weed, Penington Institute research shows’. The article then went on to say that a Melbourne-based public health research and drug policy institute has made some surprise findings in its survey of 3000 people. Not that the findings are in fact terribly surprising; they mirror those of the more recent Australian Institute of Health and Welfare household drug survey, which showed that 80 per cent of Australians support decriminalisation and 54 per cent support full legalisation.

Legalisation is not the same as decriminalisation, and we do not want to confuse the two. Legalisation would establish a commercial cannabis market, and we are not seeking this at this point in time. We just want the government to stop arresting thousands of people every year for possessing a little bit of cannabis. We seek a model similar to the successful ACT decriminalisation model, a model fully supported during the recent inquiry into the regulation of personal adult use of cannabis. Indeed the first recommendation of that inquiry supported by the committee was that the Victorian government implement a model similar to the one operating in the ACT, a recommendation enthusiastically endorsed by public health advocates and the legal community in Victoria. So what are we waiting for?