Strong vote for Legalise Cannabis candidate in Queensland

Bernie Bradley was the Queensland lead Senate candidate for Legalise Cannabis in the 2022 federal election.

UN: While in the end you didn’t knock off Pauline Hanson (which would have been nice), you scored very highly, you got more votes than the United Australia Party. Was this from doing a lot of campaigning or was it just your party’s name?

Bernie Bradley: It was grassroots, but there was a fair bit of campaigning that went on by a small but very enthusiastic group of people, mainly based in Brisbane and mainly headed up by Suzette Luyken, the number 2 Senate candidate. One of the volunteers, Frank, using zip ties, attached a bunch of corflutes (large, plastic election signs) to a cage box trailer, and drove it around 4½ thousand kilometres or more around Queensland.

All told, we might have spent $10,000 in Queensland, including the $4,000 registration fee. We had one radio advert on the Wednesday before the election, that ran in Ipswich on an FM station. That was $1,000. The rest was corflutes and some “how to vote” cards. The “how to vote” cards just had vote ‘1’ for us and choose the five other options yourself. We didn’t recommend preferences. We didn’t have any media interest in the party beforehand, but it certainly came in an avalanche after election night.

UN: What was your campaigning focus?

Bernie Bradley: I’m only speaking for Queensland. I think the platform was broader in other states. Broader in that they were calling more vociferously for cannabis to be legalised for recreational use. I was more focussed on the medicinal side, in that people who currently have a prescription for medicinal cannabis (which is legal in Queensland— a tick for the Palaszczuk government, when they brought that in), but I don’t think the politicians thought about the cost, because it’s not covered on PBS. And the cost is roughly $200 for 20 grams, which is on a par with black market rates.

I found through my work as a criminal defence lawyer, I was seeing more and more people come before the courts charged with growing their medicinal cannabis themselves. So that was our focus: the law should be relaxed to make it more affordable for people with a prescription, by permitting them to grow a couple of plants themselves. First port of call, so to speak, would be medicinal users, and think about recreational users further down the track.

Hand-in-hand with that comes the other issue I was campaigning about. That is roadside presumptive tests. These test for cannabis or other drugs in the saliva, but are in no way indicative of impairment. In Queensland that test carries mandatory disqualification periods.

An open licence holder at least, if they need to keep their licence for work, they can apply for a restricted work licence if they haven’t had a suspension or disqualification in the past 5 years. But a provisional licence holder can’t. They’re usually the younger people. And their mandatory minimum period for disqualification for returning a positive presumptive roadside test is 3 months. And a lot of employers can’t afford to keep on an apprentice who can’t drive to worksites. That law literally creates unemployment. What’s the benefit of it? I’ve heard some say that it provides a deterrent. But the driving under the influence of a drug is already a very serious charge, with very serious penalties. Why do we need a deterrent for driving after having medicinal cannabis several hours earlier, when you’re not affected?

In fact, if after returning a positive test, the police think someone is actually impaired, it’s like drink driving: “Get out of your car! Lock your car and come with us to the station.” They give you a more sensitive test, a blood test that will determine how much drugs you actually have in your system. And then a toxicologist can give an opinion to the police about whether or not someone with that level drugs in their system would be able to safely drive a car. But if they don’t suspect that you are under the influence they give you a notice to appear before court and you are immediately suspended from driving for 24 hours. You can then drive until the court deals with the matter. So there is an inconsistency between blowing under the limit for alcohol and have a drug present in your saliva (and not being under the influence of a drug) that I don’t understand.

I just don’t know why they have this additional charge.

I don’t know if you’ve heard of David Heilpern. He was a magistrate in the Lismore area. He resigned 10 years before his retirement age because, as I understand it, he just became sick of disqualifying people’s driving licences because of these roadside presumptive tests. He just couldn’t do it anymore. And now he’s a campaigner for changing that law. Or the NSW law, which is identical to the one in Queensland.

It means that if you do take medicinal cannabis, you can make a choice: either use cannabis medicinally or drive.

These tests are meant to be sensitive to cannabis for up to 4 hours. That’s what the manufacturer says. But as the duty lawyer every 2nd Tuesday in a little town like Noosa, I keep a mental count of the number of people who are charged with this offence and plead guilty. And every time, I ask them, “How many hours before you were pulled over for the roadside test did you consume the drug?” and more often than not, it’s several hours. Like, we’re talking 8, 12, 24, but certainly not the 4 hours. One guy recently said, “Yeah, Bernie, an hour earlier. Fair cop.” But he still wasn’t under the influence of it.

The tests are only meant to be sensitive for up to 4 hours. That’s what the magistrates are all told by the manufacturers. But that’s just not true. And that’s what David Heilpern was saying too. He said he had thousands of people come before him for this offense and a majority of them swore that had not consumed cannabis within the 4-hour timeframe.

UN: What about other drugs? From a Harm Reduction perspective, criminalisation tends to make everything worse. Do you have anything to say about legalising other drugs?

Bernie Bradley: Only from a personal perspective. Not from the party perspective. And again, what I’ll say about that is I think the Canadians usually have done their research into these sorts of things. I know there was an announcement recently that a province in Canada, British Columbia, is having a trial for 3 years where legally you cannot be charged with possession of some of the “harder” drugs. I believe its cocaine, heroin and amphetamines up to 2½ grams, as a pilot study into harm minimisation. I’d be interested to see how that goes.

There’s a similar policy, I believe, in Portugal. Again, I haven’t done much research into it, but I’d be interested to see what happens in British Columbia.

UN: Anything else you’d like to say?

Bernie Bradley: Just that I think the result is partly a reflection of the softening of attitudes towards cannabis in the community. That it doesn’t hold the same stigma that it used to and is no longer a fringe issue. There are 120,000 people in Queensland alone who hold a prescription for medicinal cannabis who probably like the idea of being able to grow their own medicine.

If you buy it through a chemist, you can talk to an expert, and they’ll advise you on what particular strain might work best for your condition. You obviously couldn’t do that if you were growing it in your back yard. I don’t think the businesses run by people who are producing medicinal cannabis are going to disappear if some medicinal users grow back yard plants. A lot of people will prefer to choose the strain, if they can afford it. Some people may not have any choice.

UN: If they put it on the PBS, then if you had a Health Care Card, you could get it for $6.

Bernie Bradley: I’d prefer personally as a taxpayer that someone could grow their own, before I have to pay my tax dollar for someone’s medicinal cannabis. Especially when it is literally a weed. And they might be able to grow a strain themselves that doesn’t necessitate a strain on the taxpayers’ PBS dollar. You can’t make your own Endone or other pain relief medication, but you can grow your own cannabis. I’d like a trial first on the grow your own before we go to PBS.

The other issue with growing your own is people who really benefit from CBD oil. You need quite a quantity of the green leaf material to extract CBD oil from. And that’s why I get clients charged with 20-plus plants, because they’re growing it just to extract CBD oil.