The Australian Greens have launched their latest effort to legalise recreational cannabis.
When Senator David Shoebridge, the Green’s justice spokesperson, took the Greens’ Legalising Cannabis Bill to a vote last November, Labor joined forces with the Coalition to vote it down.
Shoebridge said on March 13: “Labor had the chance to vote for legalisation last year and blew it”, adding “We’re not waiting for them to wake up.”
The Greens’ current proposal includes a legal, regulated and taxed recreational cannabis market. It points to a Parliamentary Budget Office report that reveals a potential $700 million a year in federal revenue, along with hundreds of millions at state and territory levels.
“The Greens’ plan will let the public decide if they want to spend more time and money on the failed war on drugs, or grow a new sustainable and exciting industry,” Shoebridge said.
Greens leader Adam Bandt said revenue could go towards “schools, hospitals and climate action”. The framework promises “safe, labelled, quality-controlled cannabis … with secure regional jobs, safe products, flourishing small businesses and the option to visit a chilled-out cannabis cafe”.
It mirrors the United States-style model, where commercial growers and dispensaries raked in $20 billion in the first quarter of last year.
While a population of 27 million will not generate those numbers, it is nonetheless a substantial tax revenue stream.
Personal use provisions
The Greens’ bill allows people to grow cannabis for personal use, as the ACT already does. It proposes that individuals will be able to grow up to six plants, provided they are inaccessible to minors and the public.
Cooking with your own products for your own consumption would also be permitted, however it is unclear if that’s subject to any compliance, such as child safe storage requirements.
There is also the vexed issue of obtaining and swapping seeds for home grow use.
Border Force and Australian Transaction Reports and Analysis Centre heavily police overseas buy-ins and Big Pharma is working to corner genetically modified-style global patents on popular varieties.
To genuinely protect home growers, both factors need to be clearly dealt with in law.
Protections would need to include home-grown seed production, seed swapping and external procurement, the cannabis itself, cannabis oil and edibles.
Corporate cannabis criticism
Shoebridge told the ABC that the Greens seek “a system which basically democratises the market”.
But there is friction between the freedom to grow your own and the inclusion of additional industry regulation.
Unlike the US, Australia has a small, isolated population base and there are fears that a legal recreational cannabis market here would not have the competition leverage to keep prices down.
People on low incomes, the elderly or those with physical disabilities unable to grow their own would be at the mercy of the market and, potentially, without a legal, affordable supply.
Under the proposed legislation, home growers will still not be able to legally give it away to other people or even sell at cost outside the proposed licensed and taxed co-op system for smaller suppliers.
Given the way medical cannabis was hijacked and handed exclusively to corporate cannabis companies, who already have the infrastructure and licensing to now corner the recreational market, there are valid concerns about equity of access protections.
Bad medicine
The introduction of legal medical cannabis in Australia was a multi-billion dollar government-approved “contractor only” solution to a $300 an ounce backyard grown “problem”.
It is also a demonstration of the ongoing class war on recreational cannabis users.
Medical cannabis only came about after middle-class people with cancer-stricken family members campaigned hard with promises to ensure it was “safe” and “strictly for medical use only”.
“Medical” means “scientifically proven consistency and efficacy”, which home growers will never be able to prove because of the cost of research and development, licensing, cloning and processing, not to mention the capital infrastructure investment required.
By ignoring seasoned growers’ warnings about the narrow medical definition and with their zero tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) approach organisations, such as United in Compassion, ushered in a system that meant only the privileged and their families could readily access and afford it.
Medical cannabis is now legal as a script-only medication. But because it is still not on the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS), it is not affordable to those who need it most.
Thanks to drug-driving laws nationally (except Tasmania), it cannot be used by anyone not prepared to risk their driver’s license over a legally available medication.
As to impairment, the same doctors now prescribing medical cannabis are also prescribing opioids, which are on the PBS, at the rate of 12.5 million scripts a year.
You can legally drive while being high on prescribed Hillbilly Heroin, with no risk of prosecution to the doctor or patient.
This ridiculous scenario seems less about reducing community harm and more about locking up the market for vested interests.
In this context, there are concerns that a burgeoning regulated recreational market will end the same way for home growers and the disadvantaged.
Quality control
The large-scale growers benefitting handsomely from the corporatised medical market have already criticised the Greens’ plan to legalise recreational cannabis.
They say that allowing unregulated home grows will substantially decrease cannabis quality and unfairly hurt their highly regulated investments and bottom line. No doubt, sustained, well-funded industry lobbying will follow.
The Greens’ Legalising Cannabis Bill has merit and would give conservative MPs the air of business-friendly respectability they want in return.
But if the Greens want community support for its bill, they will have to prove it will protect the right to home grow from the mega-industry monster it will inevitably create. It will also have to protect home growers and recreational users from over-policing.
When all most users want is the decriminalisation of personal use and a change in drug-driving laws, the Greens’ bill may prove a hard sell.