Laws allowing medicinal cannabis users to drive in New South Wales have drawn sharp criticism from Upper Hunter MP Dave Layzell, who argues the science needed to make the change safe simply does not yet exist.
Under the new laws, drivers using medicinal cannabis will be permitted on NSW roads, with a three-strikes system applying to those caught with the drug in their system. Layzell says the change is premature and potentially dangerous.
“Allowing drug driving is absolutely not something that is safe,” he said.
“This is more about politics than anything else, and it’s really bad decision making and bad policy.”
At the heart of the concern for Layzell is the absence of a reliable impairment threshold for cannabis, something he says was crucial to allowing alcohol in a driver’s system.
“When it comes to alcohol, we have a lot of evidence and a lot of data, and that’s why we’ve come up with the figure of 0.05,” Layzell said.
“We need to know that we’ve got a sustainable threshold limit for cannabis, one that we’re comfortable people are under, and uncomfortable when they’re over.”
Layzell also raised concerns about the government’s transparency, saying a research document that informed the policy decision has not been made public.
“When the government refuses to release any research that they’ve based decisions on, it’s quite right that we are asking questions,” he said.
“The jury is most definitely out amongst academics about whether we can safely test cannabis use and whether we can actually have a decent threshold.”
He stressed his opposition was not to medicinal cannabis driving in principle, but to the timing.
“It’s not a case of this should never happen,” Layzell said.
“It’s a case of we don’t have the information, we don’t have the science, and we don’t have the data to back it up.”
