I have sent a letter to MP for Tamworth Kevin Anderson raising with him my severe concerns regarding his proposed private members bill seeking to implement the recommendations of 2013’s Upper House inquiry into the use of medicinal cannabis. At the core of these concerns is a plea:
Mr Anderson and the Baird government, please do not segregate the sick!
The terms of Mr Anderson’s proposed legislation (and the findings of the 2013 inquiry from which it is derived), castigates copious citizens of NSW who are afflicted with a wide range of illnesses that have been demonstrated on both a clinical and anecdotal level to be responsive in differing degrees to treatment via cannabis products, yet are excluded from the planned legislation of Mr Anderson and that launched by Dr John Kaye MLC last Tuesday.
These many individuals are instead subject to the grave health implications inherent in a denying of medicinal cannabis products and of course the potential criminal justice consequences should they seek to cultivate or attain their medicines by private means or on the black market.
Mr Anderson has stated that he has “through my own research a greater understanding of how cannabis can be used to alleviate the severe and distressing symptoms suffered by those who are dying and the need to provide comfort and relief when they need it most”; completely ignoring the innumerable peer reviewed evidence of a variety of medical science authorities and research bodies showing the enormous efficacy of cannabis (specifically a vast array of cannabinoids/flavonoids/terpenes) in treating conditions in the living!
Such as the one in six Australians every minute whom are diagnosed with a form dementia, predominantly Alzheimer’s disease (70 per cent), like my mother’s father, for whom there exists in Australia not only no cure but not even a recognised form of treatment. In several states in the United States where medical cannabis programs exist and also in France and the Czech Republic, Alzheimer’s in its early stages is treated with medical cannabis as it has been established in clinical conditions that low concentrations of delta 9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and high concentrations of cannabidiol (CBD), respectively the first and second most prominent constituents of cannabis, interact with each other to impact on the CB1 receptors (one of four unique receptors that make up part of our endogenous cannabinoid system) located in all humans just behind the blood brain barrier, in a manner that systematically halts the progression of the disease. In later stage Alzheimer’s said treatment slows it significantly, dually increasing quality of life and prolonging it.
Kevin Anderson can be reached at [email protected] and I encourage everyone who is interested in the betterment of the health of all Australian people to contact and lobby him to expand the scope of his planned legislation… and rectify the wrong that is segregating sick people on the basis of prejudicial perceptions and dogma that have been debunked and are only kept alive by a mute media and petrified politicians.
Ivan Constable, Ballina
For four decades The Echo has printed the stories some people loved, some people hated, and some pretended not to read. If you want us to keep telling the truth, the real truth, not the sugar-coated version. We’ll need your support to keep the presses rolling. 
