Page 3817 - Week 13 - Tuesday, 30 November 2021
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The Drugs of Dependence Act 1989 specifies penalties for the possession, sale and supply of prohibited substances, drugs of dependence, and has a separate set of offences for cannabis. The ACT Criminal Code Regulation 2005 defines 185 prohibited substances, which include heroin, ecstasy or MDMA, and cannabis. The regulation also defines 75 drugs of dependence, which it refers to as controlled substances, controlled medicines, which include amphetamine, cocaine and methylamphetamine.
Sections 169 and 171 of the act have general offences for possessing drugs of dependence and prohibited substances respectively. The penalties comprise up to two years in prison, or 50 penalty units, or both, and the value of the penalty unit for an individual is $160, setting the maximum fine in this case at $8,000.
The act has separate offences for cannabis. Section 171A of the act specifies a process for a simple cannabis offence. A police officer on duty must serve an offence notice on the person or child and their parents, or whoever has that role, with whom they are residing. The notice must specify some processes, including that if a person pays the prescribed penalty within 60 days then all liability is discharged and there is no conviction. The prescribed penalty is $100.
Since 2001 the ACT has had a non-legislative approach to police diversion called the Illicit Drug Diversion Program. Its aim is to divert people away from the criminal justice system to health and social services. ACT Policing stated that its internal governance specifies various criteria for diversion, including the amount, the person’s age, the context and whether other offences are involved.
In 2019-20, ACT Policing completed 192 referrals under the Illicit Drug Diversion Program. The drugs most commonly involved were cocaine, with 68 instances, cannabis, with 56, and ecstasy, with 34. ACT Policing advised the committee that it:
… rarely criminalises the personal use of substances—resources are targeted at drug trafficking. However, criminality can often be driven by drug use. For instance, drug possession offences are regularly prosecuted alongside other more serious offences.
ACT Policing already adopts a harm minimisation approach to illicit drugs.
This bill seeks to decriminalise possession of certain drugs under personal possession limits for 11 prohibited substances and drugs of dependence. The drugs and their personal possession limits are listed in the bill and include cocaine, heroin, LSD, MDMA or ecstasy, methylamphetamine, ice and magic mushrooms.
The above amounts are below those amounts that would constitute trafficable amounts prescribed in the commonwealth legislation. It was uncontested that these substances are extremely harmful to the mental and physical health of the user and that the use of some would significantly increase the harm that a user would inflict on themselves and those around them, as well as consequential destruction of property.
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