19th of June 2024, 5:49pm
Legislative Council of Victoria, Spring Street, Melbourne
David ETTERSHANK (Western Metropolitan):
I am pleased to speak on this petition bearing the signatures of over 2700 Victorians calling on the government to decriminalise cannabis. We were easily able to obtain these signatures over a couple of days. People were quite impatient to sign up, and I have never actually had people queueing to sign a petition before as we had on those days.
When you think that some 700,000 Victorians consumed cannabis in the last 12 months, it is really quite a modest number. The fact is a majority of Victorians want to see cannabis decriminalised. If we look at the two most recent Australian Institute of Health and Welfare national drug strategy household surveys, we see the growing support for cannabis reform. In 2019 the percentage of people who consume cannabis regularly, not counting medicinal cannabis, was 11.6 per cent.
In 2023 that figure was pretty much the same – 11.5 per cent. However, support for its decriminalisation – that is, for an adult to be able to consume and possess small quantities of cannabis – increased from 78 per cent to an all-time high of 80 per cent. That is around 4.5 million Victorians over the age of 18 who believe that cannabis consumption should no longer be a crime. This is extraordinary, given that most of those in support of reform are not actually consumers. What can account for such a demand for decriminalisation? I think the reality is that those people see the sense in allowing adults to be able to consume and possess a bit of cannabis; it is that simple.
There are other interesting, if perhaps somewhat more sobering, statistics in the survey as well. Those who believe that the continued prohibition of cannabis will protect our young people might be quite devastated to learn that cannabis is already being consumed by 14- to 17-year-olds. Indeed its use has increased by 20 per cent from 2019 to 2023. You see, real criminals do not actually care about protecting our young people. All of us are rightly concerned about the harms that illicit drugs can do to our children. They should not be able to access drugs. But no amount of hand-wringing or exhortation to think about the children will protect our children from the harms of contact with an illicit drug market.
The age group most likely to consume cannabis regularly is in the 18- to 24-year-old bracket. These people stand to lose a lot if they are busted for possession, from losing their licences to acquiring criminal records to being jailed, events that will have a profoundly negative impact on the rest of their lives. Do we really want to inflict these harms on our young people just because they are smoking a bit of pot? And of course the negative impacts are disproportionately higher for our most marginalised young people, who we are criminalising in ever greater numbers.
Decriminalisation should be part of this state’s harm reduction response, and it must be part of the forthcoming alcohol and other drug strategy. The ACT decriminalised in 2020, and since then cannabis use has remained stable. In fact last year was lower than the rest of Australia, with no increase in cannabis-related hospital admissions and an actual decrease in youth consumption. This reality runs counter to the prevailing idea that decriminalisation of cannabis will increase usage and cause our young people to run amok. It is really time to decriminalise personal use. It is something that the majority of Victorians want, and indeed the Labor Party’s own members want. The 2024 ALP state conference resolved unanimously that:
Cannabis should be legalised, taxed and licenced and owned and/or regulated by the Victorian State government.
I do not have time to talk about the money we could save on enforcement costs, the potential revenue opportunities or the services that that revenue could fund instead of funding criminal gangs. I will say this is something we will have to deal with sooner or later, and it will take a courageous government to do the job. I would really, really like to hope that that courageous government is this one.
[Ends]
