A recommendation to bring in a legal defence for drivers in New South Wales taking medically prescribed cannabis has been rejected for now.<\/p>\n
The state government has released its response to last year’s drug summit, which made 56 recommendations including allowing medicinal cannabis patients to drive when unimpaired.<\/p>\n
Health Minister Ryan Park said the government would accept 50 of the recommendations, but key proposals have not been supported.<\/p>\n
The government said it was still looking into a medical defence for drivers prescribed cannabis and would consider advice from an expert working group due by the end of the year.<\/p>\n
Police Minister Yasmin Catley said the matter was “extremely complex”.<\/p>\n
“We need to make sure we get it right and we must do that because lives could be at risk,” Ms Catley said.<\/p>\n
“Our road toll is increasing and we want to make sure we put in place a process or a policy that will address those people who we know, use medicinal cannabis to assist them.”<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Police Minister Yasmin Catley, Health Minister Ryan Park and Attorney-General Michael Daley spoke on Tuesday morning. (ABC News)<\/p>\n
A recommendation to allow more than one medically supervised injecting centre to operate in the state also went unsupported, the government deciding the single Kings Cross facility was sufficient.<\/p>\n
Some of the 36 recommendations the government fully supported include the release of “10-year whole-of-government alcohol and other drugs strategy”, focused on harm minimisation and addressing disproportionate impacts on Aboriginal communities.<\/p>\n
It also backed a recommendation to develop community education campaigns to tackle stigma and discrimination.<\/p>\n
“In-principle support” has been provided to a further 15 recommendations, including significantly increasing funding for alcohol and other drugs services in the state.<\/p>\n
Sniffer dogs, strip searches at festivals to stay<\/p>\n
The government has also knocked back a recommendation to abolish the use of sniffer dogs and strip searches for suspected drug possession at music festivals.<\/p>\n
Last month, the NSW Supreme Court made a landmark ruling involving the illegal strip search of Sydney woman Raya Meredith by NSW Police at the Splendour in the Grass Music Festival in 2018.<\/p>\n
Ms Meredith was awarded $93,000 in compensation and aggravated damages for assault, battery and false imprisonment and for the way police had conducted the case.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
The police presence at festivals will continue to include drug sniffer dogs and strip searches. (AAP: Samantha Lock)<\/p>\n
Supreme Court Justice Dina Yehia found Ms Meredith, who was 27 at the time, had been subjected to “humiliating” treatment by NSW Police.<\/p>\n
The case is part of a broader class action, extending to police strip searches at music festivals from 2016.<\/p>\n
It was a significant loss for the state government and had increased pressure on it to ban strip searches and the use of sniffer dogs at music festivals.<\/p>\n
Despite the case, Ms Catley defended the government’s decision not to ban the police practice at music festivals.<\/p>\n
“Both strip searching and sniffer dogs are very important tools for police investigations and it’s as simple as that,” Ms Catley said.<\/p>\n
“The NSW Police have already apologised for that and accepted that that [unlawful strip search] was not correct.<\/p>\n
“That matter is before the court and I think we should allow that matter to go the duration of the court and then we’ll obviously have something to say.”<\/p>\n
Both NSW Police and the state government apologised to Ms Meredith for the unlawful strip after the ruling in September.<\/p>\n
Reforms receive mixed reception<\/p>\n
NSW Greens MP Cate Faehrmann accused the Minns government of squandering an opportunity for genuine drug reform.<\/p>\n
“The Drug Summit was meant to be a turning point for evidence-based drug reform in New South Wales,” Ms Faehrmann said in a statement.<\/p>\n
“Instead, we’ve seen Labor squander this historic opportunity to reform our drug laws.”<\/p>\n
“Instead the government has cherry-picked the easy bits and rejected or delayed the reforms that would actually make a difference.”<\/p>\n
Ted Noffs Foundation clinical services director\u00a0Kieran Palmer welcomed the government’s response.<\/p>\n
“Any steps the government can take to put science and evidence and health at the forefront of this conversation alongside law enforcement are the right steps to take,” Mr Palmer said.<\/p>\n
“This is a commonsense approach and we believe that the majority of NSW families would feel the same.”<\/p>\n
The Ted Noffs Foundation provides drug and alcohol treatment services for young people.<\/p>\n
Mr Palmer said while there needs to be safeguards for law enforcement, such as strip searches, it needs to form a “piece of the puzzle” alongside treatment and early intervention.<\/p>\n
“Law enforcement needs to form a part of this picture, we can’t pull law enforcement out all together,” he said.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A recommendation to bring in a legal defence for drivers in New South Wales taking medically prescribed cannabis…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":245518,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[64,63,57369,146016,124364,67003,44,2733,16862,2888,146017,146018],"class_list":{"0":"post-245517","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-australia","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-drug-driving","11":"tag-drug-summit","12":"tag-medicinal-cannabis","13":"tag-music-festivals","14":"tag-news","15":"tag-nsw","16":"tag-nsw-government","17":"tag-ryan-park","18":"tag-ryan-park-drug-summit-response","19":"tag-strip-searching"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245517","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=245517"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/245517\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/245518"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=245517"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=245517"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=245517"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}