Mr. Brendan Minish:

I want to reply to the Senator. The suggestion we have made around cannabis is that small-scale personal production of plant-based drugs should be tolerated. In a decriminalised world, if we are not moving towards a legal regulated market, the model could allow the establishment of social clubs like what has happened in Spain. While there is some criminality hanging around that, the State should be most concerned with the most violent and organised crime. We have to realise that we have created and handed criminals the entire market it by keeping the substances illegal. It will take time to replace that with something else. Right now, punishing users is a wrong way to go after organised crime. We should be working in a top down, rather than a bottom up, manner. At the moment, a lot of criminal cases are simple possession cases which is a travesty.