As a reporter versed in the law and politics, I was sent to cover a science conference. Newspapers are like that. I interviewed a scientist who had a story to tell. Reporters are like that. He told me how he set out to prove that wearing a copper bracelet to give relief for arthritis was nonsense, witchcraft and an old husbands’ tale. How could a common, raw, unsynthesised thing relieve pain? Treatments came in little white discs in little brown bottles with labels on them saying: “”Take one tablet every four hours.”
How could he disprove this copper nonsense? He had people sweating over the task _ literally. They ran on the spot in large basins and the scientist harvested their sweat. He mixed it with copper. He applied the mixture to arthritis sufferers who did not wear copper bracelets. And, lo, a goodly portion reported relief.
Further research, undertaken with all the controls and safeguards of a clinical trial revealed that the sweat chemically combined with copper to form a substance that was infused in the skin to relieve arthritis. Apparently research is continuing to formulate this compound to get more precise relief. But still many people prefer the copper bracelet.
I knew all along that there was something to this treatment because one of the most sceptical, down-to-earth person I know wore one of these bracelets (the sort of man who would not be seen dead in a bracelet) and he said it worked.
I relate this story because it was very uncontroversial at the time. It filled the space between a couple of advertisements at the bottom of Page 13.
What a contrast to events in the ACT in the past week.
Some people have similarly wanted to try a treatment that works, that relieves pain. They wanted to use a raw substance, a plant, in the same way that arthritis sufferers used copper.
Independent MLA Michael Moore proposed an amendment to egregiously misnamed Drugs of Dependence Act. The amendment said the offence of possession of cannabis did not lie against a person taking it under medical supervision.
Moore asserted, quite wrongly, that this was in the name of medical research. In fact, it was the thin end of the wedge to allow some people to use dope without threat of a criminal offence. It was a deception, but the means and the end were justifiable. Cancer and AIDS patients would get to use a drug otherwise prohibited that gave relief for nausea which other drugs had no answer (the means). People would realise that people could use cannabis legally without the sky falling in (the end).
The Liberal Party bought the argument. They voted for the intent of the legislation and it passed. They did not realise, however, that cannabis and hysteria usually grow together. The Minister for Health, Terry Connolly, undoubtedly the ACT’s smartest politician, did.
“”Open slather” on dope, he declared.
Here endeth any rational debate on the use of cannabis.
What followed was an exemplary exercise in political hypocrisy, hysteria-generation and face-saving.
The hypocrisy came from Labor. The ACT branch’s policy states that possession and use of cannabis (both medicinal and recreational) should not be a criminal offence. Now, it is nothing new for Labor MPs to be passive and not implement Labor policy, but here was a Labor Minister actively working against policy by striking down a law that would have taken medicinal use of cannabis under medical supervision off the criminal list.
The face-saving came from the Liberals.
In initially agreeing to Moore’s proposal they did not predict the flak. However, any undergraduate will tell you that cannabis and rational debate do not go hand in hand. Nor do they in the political arena. Moore’s proposal was bound to be misconstrued, misconstructed and deconstructed. Indeed, if you steer a middle course through the legal opinion of the Government Solicitor and a private solicitor engaged by Moore, the clause was defective. In permitting cannabis for medical research it gave such a broad meaning of “”medical research” that any doctor taking clinical notes on an individual patient could prescribe cannabis _ maybe what Moore intended, but the something most of the Liberal Party would baulk at.
The damage to the Liberals, however, came not from their overall position to liberalise cannabis law, which most people agree with, but from seeming not to have a well-thought out position, not finding out possible interpretations of the law they were passing, back-flipping, and proposing an amendment which recommitted all the original sins.
In all, though, the fuss was quite funny. (And I will not add the cliche “”if only it were not so serious”, because the whole episode has no serious consequence on the conduct of Canberrans’ lives.)
In the past week, MLAs engaged in the two of most visceral, Keatingesque debates in the Assembly’s short memory, as if their decision would actually affect they way people conducted their lives.
Can you imagine it: “”Oh, gosh, the Assembly has just passed a law so we better not smoke any dope tonight.”
Or, “”The Assembly says we cannot relieve our dear one’s nausea from chemotherapy with the tried-and-true dope, so we’ll put it away and let her suffer.”
As the tragic letter published on the opposite page the other day so clearly illustrated, cancer and AIDS patients who want to use dope can do so quite easily _ even the respectable middle class can get hold of it.
And what are the police and courts going to do? Prosecute? Issue and on-the-spot fine? Jail a non-complying terminal patient?
What law the Assembly passes is of little moment to drug use. Regulation and prohibition have very little effect on consumption; all they do is affect price. They drive the price of drugs up and increase the potential for corruption.
The politicians imagine their laws are regulating people’s conduct. In fact the reverse is true, the people are merely waiting with patient amusement for their conduct to influence politicians’ laws.
For thousands of years people have been engaged in healing and pain relief. Sure, there is a lot of quackery, charlatanism and witchcraft. But the legal-administrative process of clinical trials, exact doses, drug approval and benefits listing does not constitute the monopoly on healing and pain relief, even though it is rightly the primary source of treatments.
Bear in mind many, if not most, drugs come from plants or are synthetics of chemicals produced by plants. Many people will take relief or recreation directly from the plant, even if the doses are erratic, because they cannot wait and have nothing to lose.
If the drug under discussion had been banksia leaf, rather than the hysteria-producing cannabis leaf, people would have used it just like they use copper bracelets.