Getting It Right: Professor Nick Crofts of The Nossal Institute for Global Health and Melbourne University's Centre for International Mental Health is one of the world's leaders in drug policy. He is here in The Zone to help people understand why prohibition does not work, and how we might minimise harm caused by drug use. In so doing he is not here to encourage the use of illicit drugs. He is driven by harm minimisation - and human rights.

"Arrested at Denpasar airport in 2004 after marijuana was found in her board bag, she had become the victim of every traveler's darkest fear. The drugs had been placed in her bag after she'd checked it in and she was forced to face the consequences of someone else's crime in a country where the penalties for drug smuggling are barbaric. Her trial became a major news story, as it was glaringly obvious that the evidence she pleaded to be considered was being ignored, and thorough investigation she begged for was being shrugged off. She was sentenced to a shocking 20 years in an Indonesian jail. Her appeals were dismissed equally as lightly, with the end of the judicial process being reached in March 2008." also Wikipedia

Australia: NSW: "The Hemp Industry Act 2008 (the Act), allows the cultivation and supply of low THC hemp fibre and seed production in NSW, under controlled conditions. A licensing scheme under the Act was commenced on the 6th of November 2008 and will allow commercial production of low THC hemp, as well as facilitating the development of an industry in processing, manufacturing and marketing in NSW."

Australia: NSW: "Hemp Industry Act 2008 No 58" - full text of NSW legislation concerning industrial hemp in NSW.

Australia: Queensland: "It is generally accepted that only Cannabis sativa with a THC concentration of 3% and above is considered attractive as marijuana, and less than 3% is considered as industrial hemp. However, it is important to know that commercial-grown industrial cannabis plants grown for seed or fibre production in Queensland must not exceed 1% THC."

Australia: Tasmania: "Tasmania's Industrial Hemp Association is frustrated by what it says is a lack of State Government action on improving hemp licensing laws."

Australia: Tasmania: "The State Government must move to take industrial hemp off the state's poison list in order to provide a much needed boost to the Tasmanian agriculture sector. Tasmanian farmers have been hit hard recently with a number of exceptional circumstances including devastating floods, decreased crop prices and a drop in interstate and international produce exports."

Australia: Tasmania: "Mr Reader, who farms on 260ha at Bishopsbourne in northern Tasmania, said hemp minus the pshyco-active drug normally associated with some varieties of cannabis had the potential to be a broad-acre food crop and a major job spinner. He said the budding industry still had to overcome some stigma attached to the plant but more importantly the associated political intransigence."

Australia: Tasmania: "A national inquiry into the regulations governing food grade hemp is underway. Food Standards Australia New Zealand is considering the use of low THC hemp as a food. It's taken submissions, including one from the Tasmanian Farmers and Graziers Association and another from Tasmania's Industrial Hemp Association."

Australia: Tasmania: "Interview with Tasmanian Hemp grower, Patsy Harmsen discusses the use of hemp fibre to produce newsprint as well as a strengthing agent in recycled papers."

Australia: Western Australia: INDUSTRIAL HEMP ACT 2004: Full text of Act.

Australia: Western Australia: "Industrial Hemp (Cannabis sativa) is a potentially important crop for Western Australia. Hemp can be used for fibre from the stem or oil from the seeds. Items manufactured from it include textiles, paper, rope, fuel, oil, stockfeed and medicine."     (comment in the underneath comments section on Wall) Please check the pdfs on this page for download.

Australia: Western Australia: "Hemp Resources has been one of the prime movers responsible for bringing about the Western Australian “Industrial Hemp Bill – 2003” legislation, having strongly lobbied a number of Western Australian Governments over several years, and thus enabling a viable hemp industry to be established in Western Australia."

LEAP advocates the elimination of the policy of drug prohibition and be replaced by a regulated policies based around appropriate restrictions on drug sales. Drug abuse is a health problem and their use should be regulated and subject to similar restrictions as currently applies with alcohol, tobacco.

"Prohibition was introduced as a fraud; it has been nursed as a fraud. It is wrapped in the livery of Heaven, but it comes to serve the devil. It comes to regulate by law our appetites and our daily lives. It comes to tear down liberty and build up fanaticism, hypocrisy, and intolerance. It comes to confiscate by legislative decree the property of many of our fellow citizens. It comes to send spies, detectives, and informers into our homes; to have us arrested and carried before courts and condemned to fines and imprisonments. It comes to dissipate the sunlight of happiness, peace, and prosperity in which we are now living and to fill our land with alienations, estrangements, and bitterness. It comes to bring us evil --only evil-- and that continually. Let us rise in our might as one and overwhelm it with such indignation that we shall never hear of it again as long as grass grows and water runs."

Roger Q. Mills of Texas, 1887.