Sharman Stone (Murray, Liberal Party) Share this | Hansard source

I rise to speak on the Narcotic Drugs Amendment Bill 2016. The bill provides a legal framework for the cultivation of cannabis in Australia. It will address the structural issues of the Regulator of Medicinal Cannabis Bill 2014 introduced in the parliament in November 2014. The cultivation, production, manufacture, import, export, distribution, trade, possession, use and supply of cannabis and cannabis derived products are regulated by a number of Commonwealth laws, including the Narcotic Drugs Act 1967. Importantly, it will allow people suffering from debilitating and painful health conditions to access, as early as next year, medicinal cannabis to relieve their suffering.

Access to medicinal cannabis will only be available when prescribed by a doctor or as part of a clinical trial. It will not be available over the counter. Non-medicinal use of cannabis will still be illegal, as will its cultivation. There are wild concerns about someone using this bill to have greater access to the street form of marijuana, weed or whatever other name you like to give the illicit substance. Those fears, or even anticipations, are wrongly founded. This is not the case with medicinal cannabis and access to it by people with very serious illnesses, often terminal illnesses, in Australia.

We have long experience in Australia, of course, of cultivating poppy for the production of medicinal substances. There is no known leakage of the production of legal poppy in Australia onto the illegal or illicit drug market. We have morphine being produced, not street heroin. So there should be no concern about the cultivation of the appropriate plants which will lead to medicinal cannabis production.

There are many stories of patients who have had to resort to buying cannabis illegally to relieve their suffering from serious illnesses in Australia. This bill will begin the process of ultimately enabling many people who have had to endure debilitating pain over long periods of time to have an opportunity to obtain a medical solution to relieve their pain.

There have been many champions for the cause of legalising medical cannabis. I am sure everyone will remember the visits to this parliament by Lucy Haslam, whose son Daniel died at the very young age of 25 last year. Having been diagnosed with bowel cancer, Daniel used cannabis to stave off crippling nausea that was a by-product of some of his chemotherapy treatments.

Professor David Penington AC, one of Australia's leading public intellectuals and health experts, has been an advocate for sensible drug policy in his roles as former chairman of the National AIDS Task Force, the Victorian Premier's Drug Advisory Council, and the Victorian government's Drug Policy Expert Committee. Professor Penington's other leadership roles have included those of professor of medicine and dean and Vice-Chancellor at the University of Melbourne. He, of course, has been a champion of the introduction of medicinal cannabis to Australia, and I pay great tribute to Professor Penington. He was persistent and calm. He met all of the challenges to the idea of having medicinal cannabis introduced into Australia. His intellectual force and expertise made a great difference in this debate.

In my own electorate of Murray, I have had constituents write to me or contact me, talking about the particular tragic circumstances of their loved ones' conditions, often terminal conditions, where they were dying in great pain and suffering and losing weight, without any capacity for other drugs to bring any relief. In one particular case, the wife of a sufferer knew that there was possible relief for him if she could find some medicinal cannabis, but being a woman in a country region—a woman who had never been in touch with any illicit substance markets or dealers in her life—she had no idea where to go to get this substance. Then there was the pressure of other relations saying to her, 'Why don't you find some cannabis for your husband?' You can imagine the distress of this woman and the lack of any relief for her husband, who died at a very young age. The additional stress for the wife from not being able to support her husband to the extent that she imagined might be possible brought a great deal of additional pain and suffering to her, not to mention her husband. If it had been only a year or two later, she might have been able to access this drug through a legal process. Her husband could have had the prescription. He would still have been in a terminal situation, but he would have died with less suffering. That, of course, is the right of everybody: to die with dignity.

We also have people suffering from incurable back pain, acute abdominal pain and serious constipation—the result of calcium build-up in the bloodstream. This is the story of another case. This person was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer called multiple myeloma. This condition eats at the bone marrow, the interior of bones, and naturally she then had severe osteoporosis, along with fractures and cancerous lesions on her spine and pelvis. Her immunity was poor because of this multiple myeloma, a cancer of the immune cells and blood plasma which effectively took over the immune system and all other blood cells. She was told there was no cure and she was going to die from this disease. The prognosis was extreme lethargy, bone lesions, permanent fractures, living in a wheelchair, horrific pain and kidney malfunction. This woman was taking chemotherapy and morphine, but she wanted to have some hope of living to a normal age. She was a qualified nurse and also a trained agricultural scientist. She considered that the cannabis she was able to access was an effective aid and a treatment for her cancer, severe pain and tremors, along with other conditions that she suffered. She now looks forward to not having to go through the trauma of finding a product illegally or illicitly and to people with her sort of condition being able to have the dignity of going to a medical practitioner, accessing a prescription and taking a substance which she and others can be more trusting of in terms of its content and its medicinal value.

There are so many cases like this. You can imagine a family with a young child who has many fits per day, with each round of fitting leading to potential or real brain damage, knowing that, if they could only access medicinal cannabis, the numbers of fits could be reduced and the risk of brain damage could be lessened. For us to withhold the capacity for that family to access medicinal cannabis, which has been found to help, to my mind is just not a sign of a compassionate society.

So this bill will allow, with the work of the states, a sense of real relief for those currently suffering and those who may suffer in the future. These are often not commonplace conditions, but they are conditions which other medications cannot treat; they cannot relieve the pain and suffering. In Australia, we can regulate very carefully. We know we have strong systems of pharmaceutical quality control. We can control the growing of substances which have the potential in other countries to leak onto illicit markets. We have the proof of the poppy growing, which has now moved from Tasmania to Victoria. We can grow these other medicinal plants just as securely as we do poppies.

I think we have taken possibly longer than we should have to come to this point in this House where we have this Narcotic Drugs Amendment Bill put in place. I commend the states who have already made moves to trial various ways to grow these substances and to authorise cultivation for medicinal purposes. This will enliven the Commonwealth's obligations under article 23 of the United Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs. This legislation will override state and territory legislation for the cultivation of cannabis for medicinal use or related research. However, the Commonwealth will work with the states and territories in relation to existing manufacturing provisions. We will work in tandem, as we currently do with the poppy industry.

I want to particularly commend the work of Dr Richard Di Natale, the leader of the Greens, who, as a medical practitioner himself, has been aware of the great relief of some suffering with the use of these products. He has spent a lot of time researching the use of medicinal cannabis in other countries. He has been tireless in carefully and painstakingly ensuring that Australia will have best practice when it comes to regulation and legislation. I want to congratulate Dr Richard Di Natale for the work he has done. I have been proud to co-sponsor the bill, which was initially introduced into the Senate in relation to this issue, and to stand beside him and argue that Australia is a compassionate society. We should not let false rumours and fears overtake what can be and should be the compassionate response to people who are often in last stages of a terminal illness which has caused them great pain and suffering. This substance may also become an assistance to those suffering from multiple sclerosis or Parkinson's disease; we keep finding other conditions that medicinal cannabis can assist with. Who knows how else this substance might be used to relieve suffering in the human condition in the future.

So I commend this bill to the House. I hope that some of the new crops of medicinal cannabis are grown in northern Victoria. Mr McCormack, are you still the member for Riverina?

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