Page 4560 - Week 15 - Tuesday, 6 December 1994
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I will speak relatively briefly. I made many of the points I wanted to make in the course of the debate on the suspension of the standing orders. I would like to reiterate that I can scarcely remember an issue that has caused more community concern than this one has.
Mr De Domenico: Above-the-line voting did.
Mr Moore: What the community is concerned about is the misrepresentation.
MS FOLLETT: I do not doubt the motives of those who supported clause 5, although I hear from the interjections that they are only too happy to impute the vilest of motives to those who opposed them. I do not find that very creditable behaviour in this chamber.
Notwithstanding Mr Moore's childish interjections, I would like to reiterate for members the procedures that are available for anybody who wishes to carry out a clinical trial in the ACT. The advice I have is that the Drugs of Dependence Act 1989 does provide a mechanism under section 32 whereby a person who proposes to conduct a program of research that would require the possession or use of a drug of dependence or a prohibited substance can apply to the Minister for an authorisation in relation to that substance. So, there is clearly a mechanism there to enable the kind of trial we heard Mrs Carnell speak about last week to be undertaken.
Section 32 sets out the detail that has to be included in any such application, including such matters as the qualifications of the person supervising the program; a clinical trial protocol, which must include the aims of the research; the proposed means of conducting it and the proposed method of analysis of its results; the total quantity of the substance to be possessed during the program and the maximum quantity that can be possessed at any one time; and the security arrangements employed while the substance is possessed or used. Further on it says that the program of research can be conducted only under the auspices of the Australian National University, the University of Canberra, the CSIRO or an education institution conducted by the Territory. I assume that in that latter category would be included the clinical school. Those are the arrangements currently in place for the conduct of a clinical trial for a product such as cannabis, and I find those processes very reassuring.
As I have said many times, I do not doubt the good intentions of the members who initially supported clause 5, but it is a fact that we have to have a cautious approach to the introduction into our community of a wider use of cannabis. I know that members have made the point that the Government must not trust doctors if we do not want to go ahead with the kind of arrangement that the Moore-Carnell motion had envisaged. The answer is that I do not trust doctors implicitly, and only a fool would. Yesterday I had the privilege of opening a new drug service for women who have problems with either alcohol or drug dependency, and it is the case that many of the women who are seeking the assistance of that service are on prescribed drugs. I know that in committee work Mr Moore has looked at the matter of benzodiazapines. It is a fact that over 50 per cent of people who have been prescribed sedatives or tranquillisers that are in common use in
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