Category: Drug Offences

At a Council of Australian Governments health council meeting last Friday, all state and territory health ministers signed onto a national scheme to streamline patient access to medicinal cannabis products. Federal health minister Greg Hunt said prescribing cannabis medicine will be left up to medical professionals. But once that decision is made, a medicinal cannabis script will ...

By Zeb Holmes and Ugur Nedim The Greens have highlight the fact that drug prohibition has proven to be a “dismal failure” and are pushing to legalise marijuana across Australia. It is the first party with seats in parliament to call for the legalisation of recreational cannabis use across the nation. Greens leader Richard Di Natale ...

The call for drug law reform is getting stronger, both globally and domestically. There is a growing acknowledgement amongst communities and former holders of positions of authority that the century-old drug prohibition model has failed. The 2011 Global Commission on Drug Policy report outlined that the intensification of drug law enforcement over the close to fifty ...

The Department of Family and Community Services (FACS) issued a letter to inner city public housing applicants on February 28, explaining that they’ll be banned from certain housing estates if they were convicted of, or even charged with, drug supply or manufacture in the last five years. The Inner City Local Allocation Strategy applies to public housing ...

The campaign against the warrantless use of sniffer dogs in public places by NSW police is moving North. The Sniff Off campaign, which is a collaboration between Greens MLC David Shoebridge and the NSW Young Greens, launched in Newcastle on Friday night. Figures obtained by the NSW Greens reveal that between 2014 and 2017 78 ...

By Ugur Nedim and Zeb Holmes Under sections 21 and 36 of the Law Enforcement (Powers and Responsibilities) Act 2001, police officers in NSW are prohibited from searching individuals, their personal items or their vehicles without a warrant unless they have a suspicion “on reasonable grounds” that: (a) the person or vehicle have something stolen ...

By Sonia Hickey and Ugur Nedim Police in the Northern Rivers on the Far North Coast of NSW are considering whether to press charges against a man who reported his cannabis stash being stolen. Nimbin Police Station took the call from a local man who reported returning home to find a man leaving his house. ...

Lucy Haslam has been at the forefront of the movement to re-introduce the use of medicinal cannabis in Australia since 2013. The Tamworth local was instrumental in engaging the support of politicians to a cause that many were sceptical about. Leading the campaign alongside Ms Haslam was her son Dan. The young man personally gained ...

The Australian medicinal cannabis quagmire is heavily impacting patients. The whole debate around the medicine has been about how to get a criminalised plant, which is now widely recognised for its beneficial qualities, into the hands of those that need it. And so far, the local model has failed. The Turnbull government passed legislation to ...

An Australian politician has finally drafted a law which seeks to provide access to medicinal cannabis and is broad enough to get real product into the hands of patients who desperately need it. Leader of the NSW Opposition in the Legislative Council Adam Searle introduced the Medicinal Cannabis (Compassionate Access) Bill 2018 into the state’s upper ...