Ivan Dean, Speeches Index

Tuesday 31 October 2006

TRIAL OF USE OF CANNABIS FOR PAIN RELIEF

Mr DEAN (Windermere ) - I am here to stir the pot. I think it has been clearly indicated that the medical fraternity do have some difficulties with this and if you look at the AMA's reports in relation to the use of cannabis, they certainly have grave concerns in relation to the use of it for medicinal purposes.

I will quote from the document that I have here, the AMA position statement and, certainly, a point in relation to cannabis where they say in this document, and I quote:

'the consumption of cannabis

There is adequate evidence that cannabis is an intoxicating substance which can cause physical, psychological and social harm, both to users and to others.'

Ms Thorp - Causes hair loss.

Mr DEAN - I beg your pardon?

Mrs Smith - If you were dying, you really would not be worried about that, would you?

Mr DEAN - Sorry?

Ms Thorp - Causes hair loss.

Mr DEAN - Quote:
'Any measures, particularly educational programs, which are proven to reduce cannabis use should be supported. Resources should be allocated to the investigation of the toxinology of cannabis with reference to the detection of quantities indicating impairment.

In susceptible individuals, the use of cannabis may precipitate episodes of mental illness.'

So, very clearly, the AMA do have some concerns about the use of cannabis for these purposes.

Ms Thorp - The same arguments could be used for alcohol.

Mr DEAN - Yes, but I think what they are saying is that cannabis cannot be taken in any quantity at all where it is not going to be harmful to you in some way. I think that is very clearly the message that they give you. It is like, I guess, the social smokers who say, 'I will have a smoke every now and again, once a week, twice a week' or whatever it is, and they believe that they can do that without causing any detriment to their health. But the medical evidence very clearly is that it does impact on you and it does affect your medical position even if you take it in small doses. There is a lot of evidence out there to show that and that is why there is this grave concern about it. But having said that, my position might be slightly different.

The CWA, very clearly, are a wonderful group of people and have been in existence for a long time and have done a lot of very good things in this State and for this country. They are a very credible group of people, there is no doubt about that at all, and they have put this forward for the right reasons.

The first concern by the CWA in framing this request to the State Government was, I believe, concern for those who suffer terrible pain, and that is a humanitarian concern and that is where they come from in relation to this.

Unfortunately, despite the marvels of modern medicine, there are some patients who suffer intractable, chronic pain and find relief elusive or impossible, and the member for Mersey has referred to that. In that situation they will resort to almost anything to relieve themselves of that pain and who could blame them. I, touch wood, have not been in that position and it is very difficult for us to say what you would do and what you would not do at a stage of your life where you are experiencing pain that is really unacceptable to the extent that you cannot bear it any longer. I think that you would resort to whatever you could use.

Anecdotal evidence that cannabis can be beneficial in this regard has been quite widespread for many years. Indeed, there are those within the medical community who have subscribed to this opinion and in supporting that view, the web site of the Australian Drug Foundation contains this pertinent quote, member for Mersey:

'There is evidence to suggest it (cannabis) is useful in providing relief to cancer patients from nausea and vomiting caused by chemotherapy.'

There is that evidence out there to suggest in that situation it is helpful and provides relief to these people who have had chemotherapy.

Of course, cannabis is also an hallucinogenic drug. Commonly we know it as marijuana and hashish. Those who smoke it speak of reaching a high and they speak of reaching real highs, Mr Deputy President. But this drug is also widely associated with criminal behaviour and it affects perception, impairs coordination and can impair logical thought and memory and also trigger increased heart rate and cause a lowering of blood pressure. It can do all of those things.

Ms Thorp - I will tell you what: you get a lot more domestic violence on the basis of alcohol than you ever would on a stoner.

Mr DEAN - That is your opinion. It is not an opinion that I would subscribe to and I was just going to say that the Deputy President and I would be only too aware of some of the side effects of drugs - marijuana, cannabis or whatever you would like to call it.

Ms Thorp - You reckon it causes more violent behaviour than alcohol?

Mr DEAN - No, I am not saying that. You would not have, I would suggest, the same number of probable cannabis users in the country as you would people using alcohol. I am not quite sure where it would fit in as to where more harm would be caused in relation to domestic arguments whether it be through drugs and/or alcohol. I do not have that statistical data to work from but suffice to say that I am aware of the criminality that does come from drugs, the use of cannabis, trafficking of cannabis, growing of cannabis. The figures at one stage were alarming, I do not have them now, but it was up around, I think, about 75 per cent, from memory, of all crime being committed had some relationship to drugs.

Mrs Smith - That is interesting because when we asked in the budget Estimates they could not give us the figure. They did not keep records. Remember?

Mr DEAN - There were figures available at one stage but I think it was almost as high as 75 per cent. So if you look at that, it is an alarming rate.

Mrs Smith - So where did those figures come from?

Ms Thorp - Through you, Mr Deputy President - does that support the argument that prohibition does not work?

Mr DEAN - Perhaps. I am not going to enter into that argument. I suppose we found that out with a lot of other issues where it has not worked, didn't we. You go right back to alcohol and so on where it did not work and the only way to move forward was to regulate it and control it, and maybe that is the way to go. I am not looking at that at this stage but one can look at cigarette smoking and so on.

Mrs Jamieson - A lot of those problems surely are also tied up with combination use, not just cannabis itself. It is the combination of other drugs, alcohol and coffee.

Mr DEAN - Mr Deputy President, rightly in my view cannabis is a proscribed illegal substance and criminal sanctions apply to users and those caught trafficking in it here and in many other countries. It was marijuana, we should all remember and it has been briefly referred to, in fact a 4 kilogram bag of it that earned Schapelle Corby at 20-year sentence in an Indonesian jail.

Ms Thorp - Talk about coal to Newcastle.

Mr DEAN - There is no doubting, Mr Deputy President, the seriousness of the illicit trafficking, ingesting and handling of this drug in some countries and the reason is that it is a proven harmful drug worldwide.
I have no doubt, Mr President, that the membership of the Country Women's Association would have been mindful of the many dangers associated with cannabis as they debated this matter. They certainly would have known or they would not have put this forward. There are very learned people in that group and that organisation, so they would have known this. We can be sure that in lending its fine reputation to the cause of trialling cannabis for medical use the Country Women's Association is absolutely sincere. I do not think any of us would doubt their sincerity in wanting this matter moved forward to being trialled. Many in our community share the awful experience of being witness to the painful decline of a friend or neighbour or loved one whose suffering is so bad that nothing in the normal array of medical drugs has been able to give relief. I have seen people in that position and I would suggest all of us here in this Chamber have seen people in that position. I can harken to one of my parents and I think you would say at that stage give them whatever you can to relieve and to help them.

That in a nutshell, Mr Deputy President, describes why the CWA has been motivated to appeal to the State Government seeking specifically medically supervised trials to establish scientifically whether or not cannabis might be determined as an agent for the relief of chronic and incurable pain.

The proposition before us has a humanitarian motivation and it is blended with caution because medical trials by definition and necessity operate within tight restrictions. Trials are limited by duration and by the numbers who participate in the trial, and medical trials are also subject to rigorous administration to ensure that the results accurately reflect actual experience. So I am moving towards your position, the member for Mersey should understand and realise by now.

Mrs Jamieson - I'll take you home tonight.

Members laughing.

Mr DEAN - I missed that.

Mrs Jamieson - I said, 'I'll take you home tonight'.

Mr DEAN - It's a bit of a worry, Mr Deputy President.

I would not be sympathetic if I thought the CWA's call was going to be a slippery slope that starts to slide towards the sanctioned use of cannabis in the wider community.

Ms Thorp - That was fabulous alliteration. Could you say that again?

Mr DEAN - Mr Deputy President, I would not be sympathetic if I thought the CWA's call was going to be a slippery slope that starts to slide towards a sanctioned use of cannabis in the wider community.

Ms Thorp - That was brilliant.

Mr DEAN - I thought it was pretty good and it took me a long time to get those words.
Members laughing.

Mr DEAN - Indeed, my understanding is that the medical use of cannabis need not necessarily involve the smoking of the drug. Immediately you put this forward and immediately I started talking to people about this they said, 'How can you have people smoking this drug in amongst other people in a hospital, for instance, or elsewhere?'

Ms Forrest - You're not allowed to smoke in hospital anyway.

Mr DEAN - You are right - but I guess for pain relief - and I said, 'Well, you have it wrong. There are other ways and other forms of ingesting a drug'. That is the immediate thought of people when you start talking about illicit drugs and trialling it, they immediately say, 'But how can you allow people to smoke it?' A trial in fact might well establish a method of delivery by ingestion, for instance, that in time could become an accepted formula for the availability of the drug in prescription form.

Ms Thorp - You could have a tongue tincture.

Mr DEAN - You could do. In this event, safety mechanisms already exist and I refer to the controls and regulations that apply to any pharmacological product under the Federal Health department's Therapeutic Goods Administration. They already exist and are already there to control it. I think the Leader is wondering where I am coming from and I am too.

Members laughing.

Mr Parkinson - It sounds to me as if you are stirring the pot.

Members laughing.

Mr DEAN - Australia's controls in this regard are second to none in the world, and I think people would accept that, that we have very strong regulations and controls in relation to the taking of prescription and prescribed drugs, and if you look throughout the world, we are certainly up there with the very best.
In this instance, Mr Deputy President, we would never see an open-slather situation because, like other potent medical drugs, a treatment that happened to utilise cannabis would of course be regulated at the point of manufacture, by prescription of the doctor and by dispensation by the pharmacist. It is interesting to read the AMA's report in relation to this. One of their concerns is that, whilst that could occur, there are those who shop-a-doctor, and that is how they refer to it - where a person has made up their mind that they want a particular drug and they will go around as many doctors as they possibly can to try to get the doctor to prescribe the drug that they want.

Ms Forrest - There are measures in place to stop that, though.

Mr DEAN - There are, and I am not saying there would be one doctor out there who would succumb to that. I am not saying that at all but I am saying there are people -

Mrs Smith - Surely you accept too that if they are terminally ill, they probably have not the capacity to go shopping doctors; somebody has to go shopping for them.

Mr DEAN - And that is what happens as well.

Mrs Smith - Now, reality.

Mr DEAN - In summary, the chain of control that regulates thousands of drugs would simply expand to include another item. The same regime that controls every other medical drug would come into play if a trial was looked at and/or considered.

Mr Deputy President, in closing it seems appropriate to suggest that the CWA seeks to involve one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in its hopes and aspirations for cannabis. I make this recommendation for their consideration because, at the end of the day, if there is to be a pain relief product that utilises cannabis in its formulation, then it would be wise from the outset to involve a manufacturer and distributor that is acceptable to the Therapeutic Drugs Administration.

Having said all this, I support the motion that has been put forward, Mr Deputy President. I think if I had debated this matter four years ago when I was still a police officer, I would not have seen it this way at all and I do not think I could have then supported a trial because of my background and knowledge of the use of this drug for criminal purposes and its involvement in crime. I simply had that one focus but now, with some research and discussions with other people, I have been able to see it another way. In the right circumstances a trial period is what we probably ought to be looking at and I think there are controls already in place in this State to ensure that if we did go down that track we could do it right.

I do not know how long it would need to be done for but I suspect that would be something that would need to be looked at and worked out as well. It is a debate worthy of having, in my opinion. There are a lot of people talking about it and looking at other ways of improving pain relief and perhaps this is the way we should be going. I will be supporting the motion and I thank the member for Mersey for bringing it forward.

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