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House of Assembly - Fifty-Third Parliament, Second Session (53-2)
2017-03-28 Daily Xml
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Medical Cannabis

Mr WINGARD (Mitchell) (15:04): A supplementary question: why are people from this industry who are wanting to establish this industry in South Australia being shuffled from the health minister to the Minister for Substance Abuse to the Minister for Manufacturing? Who is in charge here?

The Hon. J.W. WEATHERILL (Cheltenham—Premier) (15:04): It's a fair question. The Hon. Kyam Maher is the lead minister for this because, frankly, it does cross all those domains. This is an area that covers both the harvesting of cannabis sometimes for the purposes of clothing and other non-medicinal uses and, of course, it covers the question of medicinal uses, so the Minister for Health is involved. It does represent a particular manufacturing opportunity, so the minister for manufacturing is also involved. I have asked him to take the lead on pulling all these things together, and he has already conducted a number of round tables that have been very constructive.

It is somewhat confusing to understand why the criticism has been directed at the South Australian government because most of the regulatory barriers in this area are actually controlled by the commonwealth. Nevertheless, that's not a reason for us not to continue to work with the company, because we often advocate with companies to assist them in overcoming regulatory barriers that exist at the commonwealth level.

We need to work through each of those issues. There are issues of not insubstantial risk here that also have to be managed. Care needs to be taken that we don't expose people to risk of harm, so all those things will be addressed in due course.

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