Will you be allowed to grow up to six marijuana plants in NSW? A NSW Parliamentary inquiry into cannabis is taking place in Lismore today chaired by Legalise Cannabis MP Jeremy Buckingham and this is one of the proposals they are looking to put forward to the drug summit in November.
‘The Northern Rivers is Australia’s cannabis capital, and has been since the 70s,’ said Buckingham explaining why the inquiry is holding a regional session in Lismore.
‘It was important to include the Northern Rivers on our itinerary as it is Australia’s home of cannabis culture ever since the famous Aquarius Festival in 1973.’
The Inquiry into the Impact Of The Regulatory Framework For Cannabis in New South Wales, has already held two hearings in Sydney.
Open to the public
It is currently hearing from cannabis law reform pioneers based around Nimbin including Michael Balderstone, Matt Noffs of the Ted Noffs Foundation, a former owner of cannabis club in Spain, a former magistrate and Dean of Law, Southern Cross University who now campaigns to change roadside drug testing laws David Heilpern among others.
The hearing is taking place at Invercauld House, 163 Invercauld Rd, Goonellabah from 12 noon till 6.30pm today and is open to the public to attend.
Tomorrow the committee will visit is a medicinal cannabis growing facility in the region.
‘The region is also home to the high-tech world of medicinal cannabis production,’ said Buckingham.
Six legal plants
‘We are here to take a fresh look at cannabis legislation, and to provide expert analysis on a Bill which is before Parliament, which seeks to legalise growing up to six cannabis plants per household, and the sharing of small amounts of flower’ (‘flower’ is a medicinal term for the standard cut of cannabis bud).
Lismore for regional drug summit
‘The idea is that the report will come out in October in time for NSW Drug Summit that is set to take place in Sydney in early December and in a regional location in October that is yet to be announced.’
A spokesperson for Buckingham told The Echo that they support the call by Uniting for the regional drug summit to be held in Lismore in October.
‘There is already an established group of local leaders who represent community services, harm reduction, Council, faith, health and legal sector [in Lismore]. They are working together to campaign for more AOD and harm reduction services for Lismore and they feel strongly that it should be considered as a location for one of the Drug Summit regional forums,’ Emma Maiden, General Manager External Relations and Advocacy at Uniting NSW.ACT has previously stated.
Impairment test
‘Cannabis legalisation is our number one goal,’ said Buckingham.
‘If we legalise cannabis then we also want to see the associated issue of a legal defense for medicinal cannabis use developed and a roadside sobriety test for cannabis. Currently the saliva test doesn’t test for impairment just the presence of cannabis and it produces a lot of false negatives and false positives. But if you are not impaired you should be fine and a roadside sobriety test combined with blood tests should be used here like they are used everywhere else in the world.
‘We would also like to see drug testing or pill testing become available in NSW as it is in Queensland – that is the minimum we’d like to get out of drug summit,’ he said.
The committee will produce a report in October, shortly before the start of a four-day NSW Drug Summit that is due to conclude in early December.
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. 
