Kelly in the Media

Proposal to amend medical Cannabis legislation

Leon Byner: Kelly Vincent.

Kelly Vincent: I was actually the MP who put this amendment forward Leon. Stephan Knoll has already said – medical cannabis is not psycho active so it doesn’t give you the high that you would get from smoking cannabis and that’s because cannabis only becomes psycho active once it’s been heated, so if you’re using a cold pressed medical cannabis oil, which many people do for pain and nausea and so on. Secondly the amendment that we put forward to the bill doesn’t require police to make any sort of roadside judgements about THC being present, whether that’s medical or recreational. Our amendment simply means that your medical cannabis can be used as a defence in court if your licence is removed because you lost it testing positive, having THC in your system so the prescription alone of medical cannabis is not enough to say you are safe to drive, you need to have a separate medical certificate on your possession –

Leon Byner: Provided by who?

Kelly Vincent: Provided by a doctor who has tested you and made sure that you are medically stable so we’re not talking about people who are new to medical cannabis, just aren’t using medical cannabis or have had their prescription upped or changed recently, we’re talking about people who are stable in their prescription and are tested as safe to drive by a medical practitioner, just as we already do for people with disabilities for example or elderly people, testing reaction times, testing other coordination.

Leon Byner: Have you spoken to the AMA

Kelly Vincent: Doctors in Germany have already been certifying people under medical cannabis for many years so this is definitely something that we could do and it’s also very important to remember that people turn to medical cannabis as a last resort, they’ve often tried every other drug and they’ve had side effects from that that are very, very often more severe than medical cannabis and they’ve actually impacted their ability to drive more than medical cannabis does so people are turning to this drug as a last resort and of course people who are sick and in pain still need to be able to visit family, get to medical appointments and we want to make sure that they’re safe to do that and often medical cannabis can mitigate their symptoms enough so that they are actually safe to drive.