‘Wow! All these rich kids smoke weed.’

There’s a lot of dishonesty around drug use so when I talk about drug law reform, I like to start with the personal. NSW’s parliament has an inquiry into cannabis legalisation underway right now and when gave evidence, I kicked it off like this:

I had a privileged kind of upbringing here in Sydney and was educated the expensive way. In my late teens and early twenties, socialising with people that I went to school with, cannabis use was almost ubiquitous. I had thought that cannabis was a fringe social phenomenon but here were the sons of some of NSW’s wealthiest families, like me smoking joints and punching bongs.

Later on, I became a researcher and consultant to government departments and agencies. A lot of that work was on alcohol and other drugs. Sitting in meetings with bureaucrats, I was often struck by how they talked about cannabis use as if it was something that just went on out there in society – not like any of us would do that!

Now, I’d seen the data by this stage and it backed up what I’d seen in my own life. I knew that it was more likely than not that most people in the room had used cannabis. I’d look around and think, “I’m pretty sure some of you are bullshitting.” 

It struck me that, right where cannabis policies and programs were being designed and evaluated, there was a culture of dishonesty about cannabis use.

Later I moved to Sydney’s Kings Cross. Living in the Cross you see how unfair the enforcement of personal drug laws is. People like me are almost invisible to the police, but I’d constantly walk past police stopping and searching Aboriginal people, people experiencing homelessness and people exhibiting signs of poverty or mental illness. I thought, “I can’t walk past this anymore.”

When I talk to white middle-class people, they’re often not sure whether cannabis is still illegal. I think that represents the two-track system that we’re currently living with. People like me are not at risk of arrest for cannabis use, especially given that we can afford to get cannabis prescribed and access it from pharmacies. Meanwhile, New South Wales police arrest around 15,000 people every year for cannabis use, or about 40 every day, on average. Police are much more likely to arrest and charge people for cannabis use if they’re Aboriginal.

The proposed bill considered by this inquiry, to legalise possession and personal cultivation of cannabis, would eliminate thousands of harmful cannabis arrests in New South Wales each year. It’s an important step towards a fairer, more honest and more effective way of managing cannabis, and that’s something we should all get behind.

Unharm’s submission to the Inquiry

Unharm has made a submission to the inquiry being held by the NSW parliament as part of the process of examining the Drug Misuse and Trafficking Amendment (Regulation of Personal Adult Use of Cannabis) Bill 2023.

Unharm’s submission focuses on the harmful impact of criminalisation, especially the disproportionate harm to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples due to overpolicing.

Given that about 700,000 people use unregulated cannabis in NSW every year, the harms of the current legal settings, and the additional benefits that would flow from the reforms as outlined in the bill, Unharm supports this bill becoming law.

You can read our submission here.

Will Tregoning – CEO of Unharm

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