Affordable Medicinal Cannabis Needed for Millions of Australians

On Wednesday of the last sitting week in November, Senator Shoebridge proposed a bill to legalise cannabis.

While support for legalising cannabis is growing strongly across Australia and Queensland, it’s essential to approach the topic with care, data, and diligence. It’s important to understand that despite claims by the TGA and the Lib-Lab UniParty that medicinal cannabis is freely available, the reality is quite different. The plant is artificially expensive and restricted in availability.

In an honest and effective way, we need to make medicinal cannabis easy and affordable to access for millions of Australians. One Nation will continue to lead the way in taking this first, humane step.

While we welcome much of Senator Shoebridge’s bill, there are three key sticking points that One Nation cannot accept:

1. One Nation cannot support home grow at this time. The trial of home cultivation in the ACT has shown it’s not widely adopted. A licensed commercial system would benefit more people than home grow at this stage.

2. The fines and jail sentences proposed in the bill are excessively high. One Nation believes in ensuring that the punishment fits the crime, and this bill strangely gets that balance wrong.

3. One Nation does not support creating a new government entity to maintain a cultivar database. Instead, we would work with existing entities to achieve this purpose.

That said, the approach of removing cannabis from the control of pharmaceutical company salespeople at the TGA and establishing a new unit led by people who understand the plant, the industry, and can advance medicinal cannabis—is an excellent idea that One Nation fully supports.

A vote for One Nation is a vote for Australian, whole-plant, natural medicinal cannabis for anyone with a medical need. It would be accessible via a prescription from a doctor, nurse practitioner, or cannabis specialist, and filled by a pharmacist or qualified dispensary under the PBS.

This plan will not increase costs to taxpayers. Evidence from countries that have adopted this model shows that cannabis reduces healthcare spending, as it’s cheaper than many expensive pharmaceutical alternatives—if implemented correctly.

Transcript: https://senroberts.com/medicinal-cannabis