The Australian government today announced a national scheme to licence medicinal cannabis growers, starting from 2016.
Health minister Sussan Ley said legislation had been drafted to setup a single scheme for growers across Australia which would be introduced in parliament next year.
This follows Ley's announcement in October of the government’s plans to amend the Narcotic Drugs Act to allow the growth of medicinal cannabis in Australia. The planned amendment and a single, federally regulated scheme for growers mark the first steps in the government’s plans to legalise medicinal cannabis across Australia.
"I am confident creating one single, nationally-consistent cultivation scheme, rather than eight individual arrangements, will not only help speed up the legislative process, but ultimately access to medicinal cannabis products as well," she said.
However some are not impressed with the announcement, believing it to only complicate a simple matter. Medicinal Cannabis campaigner Damon Adams told BuzzFeed News the Australian government was only delaying the legislative process.
"What Sussan has done today has further delayed the legislative process, and ultimately delayed access (again) to medicinal cannabis products, and continues to waste time, money, effort and lives on unneeded trials."
"Thousands of parents are still risking custody of their children, their job, and their livelihood by being criminalised for giving their children with epilepsy cannabis oil to end their seizures. There’s also thousands of parents that can do nothing but to keep holding their child’s hand as they fit and froth, sometimes for hours at a time, where pharmaceutical drugs have done nothing but to sedate and zombify their children. I know families in both circumstances."
"Some of them in Police and Military uniforms. Some of them already breaking the law because they could no longer watch their child be resuscitated and admitted to hospital time and time again. Some of them waiting desperately for a legally accessible product that won’t risk losing a job that pays the mortgage and keeps the family alive. Some of these families have already left our shores to live in places like Colorado that have legalised medicinal and recreational cannabis industries."
"How many more of these announcements [will] we have to endure before we see actual change, and patients with the medicine they need? 2016 will be a big year, indeed."