Source document: https://docs-lawep.s3.us-east-2.amazonaws.com/1697641995439.pdf (Australia)
Mr Gabriel J. Buckley National President Liberal Democratic Party 26 ​ July 2015 th ​ Senate Standing Committees on Economics PO Box 6100 Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600 RE: Senate Inquiry into measures introduced to restrict personal choice 'for the individual's own good' Summary In compiling this submission I am focussing on material relevant to item (c) of the inquiry’s terms of reference, namely “the sale and use of marijuana and associated products, including any impact on the health, enjoyment and finances of users and non­users;”.
Notwithstanding my focus on item (c), many of the arguments presented are also relevant to the other items of reference.

Introduction My name is Gabriel Buckley.

I am a middle­aged man currently residing in Brisbane.

A university­educated, gainfully­employed father of three I serve in a voluntary capacity as the National President of the Liberal Democratic Party of Australia as well as being heavily involved in a number of community organisations.

I am a recreational cannabis user.


I would ask you to consider the following scenario: It is 9:30pm on a Friday evening.

Dinner has been cooked and eaten, the kids are in bed and a cheesy action movie is about to hit the small screen.

The end of a working week has arrived and a man feels he owes himself a little downtime.

Before settling in to absorb some brainless televisual fodder he ventures out onto his back deck, rolls himself a smoke and inhales deeply.
The above scenario, or one very similar to it, plays out every week in thousands of homes across the nation.

We all know that smoking any substance poses inherent risks to the physical health of the smoker.

That simple fact alone does not disabuse any of us from the notion that an adult in this country has the right to decide for themselves whether or not they will choose to smoke tobacco.
Indeed we all know very well that the chemical nicotine is both highly addictive to humans and present in large concentrations in tobacco smoke.

Again, the knowledge that addictive substances are found in tobacco smoke does nothing to persuade us of anything other than the right of adults to make informed decisions about their own consumption.

The idea that the man in the above scenario is committing a criminal offence is laughable.

His conduct causes no inconvenience or harm to any other person.
It does not cause damage to anyone else’s property, Personal choice and community impactsSubmission 79 nor does it unreasonably interfere with anybody else’s ability to go about their lawful business.

In every aspect this is an action that affects no­one but the grown man who makes an informed decision to consume a substance that some other people might choose not to consume.
The narrative is not changed in any Nicotiana tabacum plant, the man chooses to roll the meaningful way if, instead of the dried leaves of the ​ Cannabis sativa plant into his cigarette instead.

The action still affects no­one but the dried flowers of the ​ lone actor involved.

There is no valid ethical or moral basis for legislation aimed at curtailing the recreational use of cannabis and its derivatives by informed, consenting adults.
The remainder of this document presents arguments pertinent to the stated terms of the inquiry, namely the economic and social impacts of legislation that creates an offence out of the possession, cultivation and sale of cannabis and substances derived from cannabis.

Cannabis is Safe Cannabis is the fourth most popular recreational drug in the world after alcohol, tobacco and caffeine.

Its use by humans has been documented dating back to some of humanity’s earliest known writings.
In a recent report, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that close to five percent of the world’s global 1 population had used cannabis in the previous year .

The Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found 2 that locally, more than ten percent of Australians had reported using cannabis over the same period .

Notwithstanding the high prevalence of cannabis use in the community, neither acute nor chronic cannabis use has been responsible for a single attributable fatality.
Studies ranking the comparative harm posed by recreational drugs consistently show cannabis to be very low in terms of potential harm to users or the broader community.

Contrasted with this are the very high levels of danger associated with both tobacco and alcohol use.
A combined study by the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education (FARE) and the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation (VicHealth) found that chronic disease and injury caused by alcohol 3 has significantly increased over a decade, causing 15 deaths and 430 hospitalisations each day in Australia .

While consuming alcohol remains a legal and socially acceptable form of recreational drug taking in Australia, the classification of cannabis as a “dangerous drug” remains laughable.
Unlike manufactured and heavily processed illicit drugs such as Amphetamines, Opioids, Cocaine and LSD, the processing of cannabis from its raw state to a consumable product requires nothing more than the harvesting and drying of the flowers and/or leaves of the cannabis plant.
Where other drugs require complex chemical reactions to be performed ­ leading to catastrophic explosions on many occasions ­ the production of further cannabis derivatives requires nothing more than steeping cannabis plant matter in alcohol or heating it with edible oils.

Cannabis is noted for its many and varied medical applications.

The anti­emetic, anti­inflammatory, analgesic and anticonvulsive properties of cannabis have been widely documented.
In jurisdictions where it is permitted for physicians to do so cannabis is prescribed to treat conditions as diverse as cancer, HIV/AIDS, epilepsy, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis and glaucoma.

The lack of significant contraindications for cannabis makes medical marijuana a highly regarded complementary treatment.

While it should be obvious that inhaling the smoke of any burning substance is unlikely to have positive 1 "Status and Trend Analysis of Illict Drug Markets".

World Drug Report 2015.


UNODC 2 “National Drug Strategy Household Survey 2013” Australian Institute of Health and Welfare.

(2014).. 3 "Alcohol’s burden of disease in Australia".

2014.

VicHealth & FARE Personal choice and community impactsSubmission 79 health effects, it should be equally obvious that the consumption of cannabis by methods other than smoking carries none of the risk to lung function that smoking cannabis (or any other substance) does.
The War on Drugs has Failed It was the Nobel­prizewinning economist Milton Friedman who stated that “if you look at the drug war from a purely economic point of view, the role of the government is to protect the drug cartel”.

A variation on the venerable ‘Baptists and Bootleggers’ theme from the days of alcohol prohibition in the United States, Dr Friedman manages to accurately sum up the net result of the prohibition of illicit substances.
It is a logical truism that if you criminalise the trade in a particular substance, then the only individuals who trade in that substance will be criminals.

The nature of the legislative environment in which a market operates directly affects the manner in which buyers and sellers in that market must conduct their business.
In an open market, both buyers and sellers enjoy legislated protections of their rights to freely buy and sell, resulting in a market where providers can hold competition at bay through a combination of innovation and efficiency.

Producers that provide greater value to their customers will remain in the market where producers who are reluctant to meet the needs of consumers will go out of business.
Conversely, a market where both buyers and sellers are criminalised offers little incentive for producers to ward off competition using anything other than violence and intimidation.

As was seen when alcohol prohibition was introduced into the United States in the 1920s, organised crime cartels soon became heavily involved in the supply of liquor.

Similarly, the global illicit drug trade is heavily dominated by organised crime syndicates at nearly every level.
The illegal nature of the operation naturally ensures a high profit margin for those prepared to involve themselves.

Cannabis users in Australia come from many walks of life.

From teenagers through to retirees, from those who seek relief from chronic and debilitating medical conditions to those who simply enjoy the psychoactive effects of tetrahydrocannabinol.

Comparatively few cannabis users are actively engaged in any other activity that could be considered criminal in nature.
Forcing cannabis users to deal with organised crime syndicates simply to obtain their drug of choice not only forces them to pay an artificially inflated premium on the price of their recreational drugs but places them in the uncomfortable position of having to deal with people for whom extortion, intimidation, assault and murder are commonplace activities.
Unlike alcohol drinkers, cannabis consumers enjoy none of the consumer protections in place to ensure drinkers receive a product of known quality and potency.

These effects combine to cause a great deal of angst among cannabis consumers.

Users not only fear police harassment and the possibility of arrest and subsequent fines or imprisonment, but also the possibility of being ‘ripped off’ (or worse) by unscrupulous and unaccountable drug dealers.
In any society attempting to maintain a veneer of civility, elderly pensioners should not have to deal with thugs in order to obtain their glaucoma medication.

The cost to Australian taxpayers of enforcing arcane and out­of­touch drug laws in 2013 was estimated by noted academic Dr John Jiggens to be in the range of 1.5 billion dollars annually .
70% of all prosecuted drug offences in Australia are cannabis­related offences putting the cost to the Australian taxpayer of chasing down and prosecuting cannabis users, growers and sellers at over one billion dollars each year.

The over­representation of cannabis in drug prosecutions is due to the physical nature of the drug in question.

Cannabis is bulky and infamously smelly, both factors that make its detection relatively simple.
As a spectacular example of unintended consequences, the difficulty involved in producing and transporting 4 4 “Estimating the size and value of Australia’s market for illegal drugs and its potential for taxation under a regulated market” (2013) Dr John Jiggens Personal choice and community impactsSubmission 79 cannabis without detection is a direct driver of the uptake of more dangerous yet easier to conceal drugs such as ice and other amphetamines.
Aside from providing an incentive to use more easily concealable drugs, cannabis prohibition does very little to reduce the demand for cannabis.

Very few people in Australia wish to use cannabis but are dissuaded by the notion of its illegality.

Some are put off by the inconvenience and fear inherent in having to step outside the bounds of legitimate society, but very few are swayed by the government’s finger wagging.
Almost every adult Australian who wishes to use cannabis already does so, they simply do so at a far greater personal (and societal) monetary cost and under the threat of criminal prosecution.

The possession of nearly any amount of cannabis is regarded as a criminal offence in all jurisdictions in Australia.
Ranging from low­level summary offences to indictable offences carrying heavy jail time, the penalties attached to such offences are significantly out of proportion to the potential harm caused by the offender.
In most jurisdictions, no provision is made to indicate the nature of the drug(s) involved when recording a conviction, leaving those prosecuted for selling cannabis tinctures to the parents of children suffering debilitating epilepsy subject to the same charges as those prosecuted for dealing heroin.

A criminal record for drug crimes relegates the user to a second­class citizen in many aspects of life.
Convicted cannabis users experience difficulty gaining and/or keeping some jobs, obtaining clearance­based qualifications such as the “Blue Card” and travelling internationally.

The stigma associated with having a criminal record can ­ in itself ­ be a major driver behind an individual’s descent into poverty or further criminality.

The war on drugs does not target criminals, it creates them.
The Liberalisation of Cannabis Legislation Brings Positive Results The black market in illegal drugs in Australia is valued at 17 billion dollars annually.

The amount that would be saved by no longer expending police and para­police agency resources on cannabis enforcement would be dwarfed by the benefits to the economy of the redirection of cannabis sales into legitimate businesses instead of organised crime syndicates.
The positive benefits to the community of re­legalising cannabis are not a matter of conjecture.

We need only look to other jurisdictions where cannabis prohibition has been repealed in order to qualify the potential benefits to Australia.

Following the legalisation of cannabis in Colorado, crime reporting from the city of Denver shows a drop in violent crime of 5.2% and a drop in the overall crime rate of 10.1% in the first year after legalisation.
With the availability of legalised cannabis, not only are cannabis users no longer being arrested for possession of cannabis, they are less likely to turn to other, more easily­concealed, drugs such as methamphetamine, the use of which is often linked to criminal behaviour.

Additionally, with police resources no longer being occupied with prosecuting cannabis users for minor drugs charges, the police have more time and resources to devote to more serious criminal matters.
The positive effects to the economy do not simply come off the back of lower crime rates however.

The Colorado cannabis industry employs over 10,000 people and delivered more than ten million dollars in taxes to the state government coffers in the first four months following legalisation.

In Portugal, where the government decriminalised all drug use in 2001 the results have been similarly positive.
Deaths from drug overdose have fallen, drug usage rates have fallen and drug­related HIV cases have also fallen.

As Portugal has not yet decriminalised the supply side of the drugs trade, it is yet to see the Personal choice and community impactsSubmission 79 direct economic benefits that Colorado has seen, but the reduced drain on the healthcare and criminal justice systems do translate into a net benefit.

Conclusion To summarise, I have covered the following points: 1.
Cannabis has been established to be objectively safer than both alcohol and tobacco, both of which are currently legal for adults to possess and use as recreational drugs.

2.

The current approach of prohibition and enforcement has been unsuccessful in its stated aims of curtailing the use of cannabis in Australian society.

3.
3.

The current approach of prohibition and enforcement results in the criminalisation of behaviour that takes place between consenting adults and affects no­one but those voluntarily involved.

4.

The alternative approach of legalisation of cannabis for recreational use by adults has been demonstrated to have positive effects both in economic and social terms.

There are no legitimate moral, ethical, economic or social grounds on which to predicate the prohibition of cannabis.
That cannabis is prohibited at all is a historical accident, a by­product of a brief period of puritan ideology that took hold in the USA early last century.

If cannabis had remained legal, and legislators were attempting to introduce prohibition today they would be laughed out of office.

The same fate awaits legislators who have the opportunity to remedy this injustice and fail to do so.

Personal choice and community impactsSubmission 79