Cannabis permit cards similar to drivers’ licences could be issued to terminally ill patients in New South Wales to allow them to carry medicinal marijuana.
State Nationals MP Kevin Anderson is planning to distribute draft legislation for the decriminalisation of medicinal marijuana to his parliamentary colleagues in the coming days.
The member for Tamworth announced his intention to draft the private member’s bill in May, but Premier Mike Baird said his support would depend on how well it addressed supply and regulation issues.
Mr Anderson said the bill would propose a licensing system and a medicinal cannabis register that listed terminally ill patients and authorised carers who could legally possess up to 15 grams of the drug.
“If the police do come across someone [possessing marijuana] then they will be able to show their card,” Mr Anderson said.
“Their card will be cross-checked just like a driver’s licence and they will be identified as being eligible.
“That’s a rough framework of where we’re heading.
“It will be for terminally ill patients only, at the end stage of life, suffering from cancer and [with] death likely in the foreseeable future.”
Mr Anderson announced his intention to develop the bill after meeting Daniel Haslam, a 24-year-old bowel cancer sufferer from Tamworth who uses cannabis to relieve the horrific side-effects of chemotherapy.
Mr Haslam’s family has been campaigning for the decriminalisation of the drug for medicinal use.
The Labor Opposition and Greens had indicated support for the principle of decriminalising cannabis for terminally ill patients, and Mr Baird also met the Haslams to offer support.
“Compassion remains my key focus in this debate, but any solution must address concerns in relation to supply and regulation,” Mr Baird recently told the ABC.
Cultivating a cannabis industry
The questions of who would grow and supply the cannabis, and how such an industry would be regulated, remain unanswered.
“There are a number of options that we are looking at that I am discussing with my parliamentary colleagues,” Mr Anderson said.
“We’ll eventually come up with a solution that will, we hope, address those supply concerns that many of us – including me – do have.”
He said the working group developing the bill had looked at drug cultivation in other jurisdictions, and Tasmania’s opium poppy industry was an example of a model with appropriate controls.
The state is a major producer of the world’s medicinal opiates, with hundreds of licensed farmers growing poppies.
Growers are only eligible for licences after they have secured an agreement with a processor, and tight security requirements are imposed on their farms, staff and visitors.
“It’s a very highly regulated, tightly controlled process,” Mr Anderson said.
“What I don’t want is a market to suddenly spring up on the back of the [medicinal cannabis] legislation.
“I need to be very focused and keep this particular supply chain logistics pathway that we are going down tightly controlled and highly regulated.”
Mr Anderson did not rule out the idea of a government department or agency growing and supplying the drug, rather than private contractors.
He hopes to introduce his private member’s bill to Parliament next month.