Regulated Cannabis in Australia: What Steps to do this Effectively?

MLC Legalise Cannabis Party (NSW)

Jeremy Buckingham led the Upper House ticket for the Legalise Cannabis Party in the March 2023 NSW State election. He is committed to bringing about progressive drug law reform, legalising cannabis, fixing the broken RDT system and growing the hemp industry. He is also focused on ensuring that we protect civil liberties, our environment and enact policies that look after the disadvantaged in our society.

Dean of Law, Southern Cross University

David Heilpern was appointed as a Magistrate in 1998, and was at the time the youngest magistrate in Australia. He ‘retired’ in May 2020. He sat in the criminal, mining, family, industrial, coronial and children’s jurisdictions of the Local Court, and was the Senior Civil Magistrate for five years. During his time on the bench, David was the principal educator for new magistrates throughout Australia and the Pacific and made several important reported decisions on criminal, environmental and evidence law.

Prior to his appointment, David was a litigation lawyer on the North Coast where he co-founded the law school at Southern Cross University in 1992, subsequently teaching in a range of subjects including constitutional law, criminal law and procedure and contracts. At the time, it was the first non-metropolitan law school in Australia.

David maintained a litigation practice throughout this time, representing a wide range of defendants including high profile clients North East Forrest Alliance and Nimbin Hemp. During this time David graduated with a Masters in Law from SCU and was pronounced the Alumni of the Decade for the University in 2005.

David has authored or co-authored four published books, refereed journal articles on a range of legal and judicial topics, and is a prize-winning short story writer and poet. He regularly speaks at practical law conferences in Australia and internationally on advocacy, criminal law and courtcraft.

In August 2022, David was appointed as Dean of Law at SCU and his writing and research is now focussed on victim’s rights, drug law reform, aboriginal over-representation in the criminal justice system and environmental activism.

NSW Greens MLC

Sue Higginson is a Greens MLC in the NSW Parliament driven by social and environmental justice. Her journey started in the old-growth forests of the North Coast as a frontline activist and her passion for protecting our precious native forests is just as strong today. Sue is in the NSW Parliament to bring in laws that protect First Nations people and their culture, to end logging in our public native forests and the destruction of nature, and to challenge the corporate interests that want coal and gas mining extended and expanded in communities across our state.

Founder, Drug Policy Alliance

Described by Rolling Stone as “the point man” for drug policy reform efforts and “the real drug czar,” Ethan Nadelmann is widely regarded as the outstanding proponent of drug policy reform both in the United States and abroad.

He was born in New York City, received his BA, MA, JD and PhD in Political Science at Harvard, taught at Princeton University (from 1987 to 1994) and then founded and directed first The Lindesmith Center (1994-2000) and then the Drug Policy Alliance (2000-2017), the world’s leading drug policy reform organization. He also co-founded the Open Society Institute’s International Harm Reduction Development program. Ethan has authored two books on the internationalization of criminal law enforcement (Cops Across Borders and (with Peter Andreas) Policing The Globe), published extensively, and spoken publicly in roughly forty states and forty countries. His TED Talk on ending the drug war has over two million views, with translations into 28 languages.

Ethan and his colleagues were at the forefront of dozens of successful campaigns to legalize marijuana, reduce the incarceration of drug law offenders, treat drug use and addiction as health, not criminal, issues, and otherwise promote alternatives to the war on drugs. He played a key role as drug policy advisor to George Soros and other prominent philanthropists as well as elected officials ranging from mayors, governors and state and federal legislators in the U.S. to presidents and cabinet ministers outside the United States.

Ethan has hosted the leading podcast about all things drugs: PSYCHOACTIVE. And he has become increasingly engaged in the debate over tobacco harm reduction.

Legalise Cannabis Party

Fiona was first elected to Victoria’s State Parliament in 2014 and re-elected for a second term in 2018. During those eight years she was a champion for social justice and cannabis law reform. She established a medicinal cannabis taskforce in the first major attempt to fix the ridiculous Roadside Drug Testing laws and then was the driving force behind the Inquiry into the Use of Cannabis in Victoria. And she was the first political party leader to admit using cannabis regularly to relax!

NSW Greens

David Shoebridge is a NSW Greens Senator and the Australian Greens spokesperson for Justice, Foreign Affairs, Digital Rights, Defence and Migration. Before reaching the Senate, David spent over a decade in the NSW Legislative Council. He launched Sniff Off in 2014 with the NSW Young Greens, a Facebook and Instagram page tracking police drug dog deployments at stations and festivals across NSW. Data obtained by David in the NSW Parliament has been instrumental in showing that drug dogs are wrong more often than not, meaning the program’s main achievement was subjecting innocent people to public searches. He has been in the Federal Senate since 2022 where he has championed whistleblower laws, peace, privacy protections and digital rights for all people. He has led the campaign against the broken FOI laws and travelled to Washington to lobby the US Department of Justice over the Assange extradition. In 2023 he introduced the Legalising Cannabis Bill which remains the first time the Federal Parliament has considered a national approach to legalisation. He remains committed to legalising cannabis.

MLC Legalise Cannabis Party (WA)

Brian is an Australian politician and medical practitioner with over 40 years of experience, spanning many continents and cultures. His passion is making this world a better place for our children and grandchildren. Born in Malaysia to Scottish parents, he received his education at Scotch College in Perth before earning his medical degree at the University of Dundee, Scotland. Brian’s medical career has seen him practice across the globe—from the cutting-edge hospitals of Germany, the Soviet Union, the UK, and Hong Kong, to his eventual return home to Western Australia in 2008, where he established a specialist GP practice in the Perth Hills. Since being elected in 2021 as leader of the Legalise Cannabis WA Party, Dr Walker has been a strong voice for reform, challenging outdated laws and advocating for modern, science-backed policies. With his deep understanding of medicine and health, he brings a fresh, holistic perspective to the political arena, focusing on improving the medical, mental, social, and economic wellbeing of all Australians.

Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation

Dr Wodak is an Emeritus Consultant, Alcohol and Drug Service, St Vincent’s Hospital, Sydney, and Tobacco Harm Reduction Adviser to the Harm Reduction Australia Board. Wodak is a notable advocate of drug reform laws, and helped establish the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, the NSW Users AIDS Association, and the Australian Society of HIV Medicine. Wodak is President of the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation and was President of the International Harm Reduction Association. Wodak also helped open Australia’s first needle exchange programme and the first medically supervised injecting centre in Kings Cross.

A portrait of him by artist Nick Mourtzakis was a 2009 Archibald Prize finalist.

In the 2010 Queen’s Birthday Honours, he was made a Member of the Order of Australia for “service to medicine and public health, particularly in the area of drug and alcohol dependency treatment, through legislative reform, and to medical education”.