Medicinal cannabis use is booming, with over 70,000 Australians now using it legally. That’s because it’s often the best source of relief from conditions like PTSD, anxiety, chronic pain and cancer. 

But our drug driving laws haven’t caught up. Most medicinal cannabis contains THC which can stay in your system for hours, sometimes days, after use and long after any effects have worn off. 

It’s illegal to drive with any trace of THC in your system in NSW and roadside drug tests can pick up miniscule traces of it. Therefore medicinal cannabis patients who drive are being charged and losing their licence, despite not being impaired when they drive.

This means many people are having to make the choice between being able to drive to work, or go to the doctor or to drop the kids at school with taking the one drug that actually alleviates often very painful condition.

We think this is not only unfair, it’s discrimination.

The UK, New Zealand, Norway, Germany, and Ireland all provide a medicinal defence for testing positive to THC to protect medicinal cannabis patients if they were not impaired and were using the drug as directed.