Cannabis enthusiasts are preparing to mount a campaign for the NSW Parliament, hoping to recreate the high from the recent Victorian state election where weed reformers captured two upper house seats.
The Legalise Cannabis Party will announce several candidates for the NSW election next month, hoping to target select regional lower house seats held by conservatives from both the Coalition and Labor, party chairman Craig Ellis told Crikey.
“It’s going to be a quite high-profile campaign,” Ellis said. “The general public knows it’s time that NSW and Australia just get on with it and regulate and legalise cannabis.”
The party wants to make cannabis legal for recreational use for people over 18, and to legalise growing the plant at home. It’s currently illegal to use, grow, import or sell cannabis in NSW, although people caught with small amounts can get a caution from police rather than face court.
There are also medical exemptions for people who get cannabis prescribed from a doctor.
But even those patients can get into trouble with the law if they’re caught driving with cannabis traces in their saliva, something that can occur even if the driver hasn’t used the drug for days and isn’t impaired.
An attempt by Greens upper house MP Cate Faehrmann to plug that legal loophole was soundly defeated last year when the Coalition and Labor joined forces to vote down her bill.
Ellis confirmed that providing a defence against drug-driving charges for responsible medical cannabis patients would be a central part of the party’s agenda.
“I’m particularly driven to fix this outrageous and discriminatory roadside testing regime,” he said.
However, he said voters who might assume that the Greens and the Legalise Cannabis Party would be natural allies in the NSW Parliament might be mistaken.
Ellis dismissed the Greens as a “populist left party” and said he was concerned their support for cannabis reform might be a case of “virtue signalling”.
He refused to say whether he considered his party to lean more left or right, saying the distinction wasn’t relevant for its politics. He noted it had gained support from voters who otherwise would have voted for One Nation in the last federal election and for the Shooters, Fishers and Farmers Party in Victoria.
“The cannabis vote is not left or right, it’s coming from all over the place,” he said.
He also refused to be pinned down on the question of whether any potential MPs from his party would be more likely to support the Coalition or Labor on issues that don’t have to do with cannabis reform.
“That’s a very good question, and the answer is: we’ll be listening to the experts,” he said. “We’ll look at every piece of legislation, and we’ll judge it on its merits.”
Ellis said that while there would be several candidates targeting lower house seats, the party would have a better chance of entering the upper house.
Last year NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet’s Coalition government categorically ruled out decriminalising drug possession, despite a recommendation from a landmark inquiry into the drug ice.
“I disagree with decriminalisation [and] I want to make very clear the NSW government does not support the recommendation to decriminalise drugs in NSW,” Perrottet said in September.
As the Australian Associated Press reported earlier this month, the Queensland Labor government has no immediate plans to respond to a vote at its state conference in November to legalise possession of pot.
Neither Victoria nor Western Australia, where the Legalise Cannabis Party is represented in Parliament, have any plans to change drug laws either. The ACT government legalised personal use of cannabis three years ago.
Legalisation proponents say making cannabis legal would free up police resources, bring in more tax money, and assist people in addiction to get help.
Many countries have legalised cannabis use in recent years, including Canada, Mexico, and Thailand. There are also dozens of countries where the use of the drug has been decriminalised.
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