Australia Rejects Recreational Cannabis Proposal
A proposal to legalize cannabis for adult-use in Australia was rejected in the Senate. It was the first time the Australian federal government considered and voted a nationwide bill on cannabis legalization. Government data suggests that almost 9 million Australians have consumed cannabis, with proponents calling that people should have the legal right and choice to buy weed if they wanted to.
Australia’s Senate turned down a proposal by the Greens party that sought to legalize cannabis for recreational use in the country. The legislative proposal received 24 votes against and only 13 in favor on Wednesday, Nov. 27. Chamber members from the governing Labor party as well as opposition coalition Liberal and National parties largely opposed the legalization initiative.
For the First Time the Australian Government Voted on Cannabis Legalization
A press release from the Greens party, which backed the proposal, remarked that this was the first time Australia’s federal parliament voted on a nationwide cannabis legalization bill.
“We took a big step today from treating cannabis as a part of the failing ‘war on drugs’ and instead putting forward a model that is safer, reduces harms and delivers for the millions of Australians who just want us to legalize it!” Greens Senator and Justice Spokesperson David Shoebridge said in a statement. “The Labor and Coalition parties joined together to try and hold Australia back in the 1950’s by blocking this desperately needed reform,” he added.
Shoebridge, who has previously argued that criminalization of marijuana in Australia has failed to clampdown its use, vowed in a social media post that despite the disappointing outcome of the vote, “we’re not giving up on legalising cannabis.”
Legalising Cannabis Bill 2023 sought to legalize, regulate and tax cannabis nationwide in Australia by establishing the Cannabis Australia National Agency (CANA), a body which would oversee licensing and other regulation of the cannabis sector. Other provisions laid out in the denied proposal included allowing homegrowing cannabis and/or homeprocessing edibles for personal use, authorizing the creation of social cannabis cafes, and maintaining a national register of marijuana strains.
“My office keeps hearing from people using cannabis to deal with anxiety or pain, or just to relax. We think that adults should have the right to do just that,” Shoebridge said, referring to the fact that 8.8 million of Australians have used cannabis at some point.
“If you’d rather have a brownie than a beer, or a gummy than a cigarette, of course you should be allowed to do that,” he said. “One day soon we will be able to sit together in a cannabis cafe and chill out together - preferably with a locally grown organic latte. Labor and the Coalition can’t hold us in the 1950’s for much longer.”
For now only medical cannabis remains legal in the Land Down Under, although there have been many complaints about its overregulation. Medical cannabis, which can be prescribed for conditions like epilepsy, chronic pain or cancer, can be accessed and obtained only with a doctor's prescription.
Recreational use of cannabis continues to be illegal also in neighboring New Zealand, where a referendum whether to approve adult-use or not fell short for small number of votes back in 2020.
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- Thailand to Regulate Cannabis, Not Relist as Narcotic
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Stephen Andrews
