Senator ROBERTS: Thank you all for participating today. My questions will initially be to Dalgarno. In your submission, you say, ‘this submission will show how proponents of increased promotion and permission models for illicit drugs must persistently deny evidence-based science’. By illicit drugs, do you mean medicinal cannabis?
Mr Varcoe: Are you talking about the pharmaceutically and clinically trialled, double placebo, accounted for medicines that are on the pharmaceutical register? I’m not referring to those—
Senator ROBERTS: My question is: by illicit drugs, do you mean medicinal cannabis?
Mr Varcoe: Illicit substances are, again, drugs that are still registered on the market as being and scheduled as being illegals, whatever the scheduling is in a particular jurisdiction. When it comes to pharmaceutical grade cannabis, double blind, placebo accounted for and clinically trialled medicines are not illicit; they are prescribable drugs. Simply by putting the title ‘medicinal’ in front of cannabis doesn’t make it medicine. It doesn’t make it medicine. In no jurisdiction—pharmaceutical grade has been clinically trialled—
CHAIR: I think we might still be able to hear you—
Mr Varcoe: I’m sorry—
CHAIR: You can keep answering—or if you have another question, Senator Roberts—
Mr Varcoe: I’m sorry, I thought we were cut off. I apologise. I can name—I can’t name all of them, but the ones that are pharmaceutically available—certainly Sativex has been on the market in Australia for a long time. It’s a therapy related to cancer treatment and, obviously, nausea issues. Of course, Epidiolex is the newest one. It was created by GW Pharmaceuticals, who did a great due diligence to create a fourth line, by the way—fourth line treatment for Dravet syndrome epilepsy with a 25 per cent efficacy rate. But they did the due process on that to have it marketed. But, outside of those three or four pharmaceutically trialled medicines, just creating a cannabis plant and then putting the word ‘medicinal’ in front of it doesn’t make it medicine.
Senator ROBERTS: So the thousands of scientifically peer reviewed papers, Mr Varcoe, that show benefit from using cannabis in a medical setting don’t exist—not one benefit from cannabis?
Mr Varcoe: No, I’m not arguing that there are some benefits, but there are also side effects. That’s one of the reasons why you have double blind, placebo accounted for clinical trials—to ensure that the product does do what it says going to do with a minimum amount of side effects. We are seeing that a lot of those perceived benefits also have massive side effects—genotoxicity, neurotoxicity and other factors—that are not being considered. But the ones that have been properly done, like GW Pharmaceuticals did, now owned by Jazz Pharmaceuticals—13 years to create that.
Senator ROBERTS: Your submission lists 19 known harms from medical cannabis, supported by a document called ‘Cannabis and hemp scientific review’, which is a paper by Drug Free Australia. The document you cite is not referenced. I see you have lots of opinion pieces on your website that follow your 19 talking points here. Can you provide a direct link for the scientific proof for each of the 19 assertions, please? On notice is fine.
Mr Varcoe: Yes, we can do that.
Mr Toumbourou: Just on my own position, I’d just say clearly that I totally support therapeutic trials of drugs. I’m in support of cannabis being trialled if it’s for a medical purpose where there’s going to be therapeutic doses tested. That is I think what we’re saying here. That is supported. The problem is that a lot of the way that the legalisation model has worked in the US is to claim medicinal benefits forms of cannabis that have never been through those trials. There is concern that those doses are actually doing harm. They’re not of therapeutic benefit. Cannabis, of course, is a very powerful drug. Used for therapy I’m sure there would be titrations of it for which would be for a medicinal purpose. But they’ve got to be carefully tested. So this is the point. But if what you’re looking for is evidence about some of the models that have been used and promoted to legalise medicinal cannabis use, which have been the forerunners of the non-medical or recreational legalisation, then we can provide some of those papers, including papers that show that there have been increased birth defects and cancers in association with the bringing in of legalisation, which in the early phases was for these so-called medicinal variants. But, in fact, what we’re arguing here is they never went through therapeutic testing. Thank you.
Senator ROBERTS: I’d like to see those papers—I look forward to them. Are you aware that the TGA recently approved for use—in recent years, it approved for use, with no testing in this country, mRNA vaccines. They relied on the FDA in America. The FDA in America had already said previously that they did not test the mRNA vaccines. They relied upon Pfizer’s testing. Pfizer admitted later that they had not completed their testing. Is that the kind of regime that we should take a lot of respect in?
Mr Toumbourou: Again, we’re in favour of therapeutic testing. We believe that’s the way forward. We’re not in favour of a vote for whether or not a drug is going to be harmless. It seems to us that the model we’re proposing is one that would continue to have rigorous therapeutic testing for any claims that a drug has benefits.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay. In your submission you say, ‘the regulating and this new industry will require a level of bureaucratic monitoring that will, as we are seeing in other jurisdictions, take more and more financial and human resources to oversee’. How does the totality of that cost compare to the totality of the cost of prohibition, policing, courts, prisons and the opportunity cost of low-level convictions for possession that may cost that person a career and the tax revenue that goes with that loss of career?
Mr Varcoe: Again, in the addendum document that was submitted with the submission also covers that quite thoroughly. A number of papers and reviews in there make it clear the assumptions made about people being incarcerated for simply blazing a spliff are fallacious. The costing—we’re mostly a diversion mechanism in this country. Incarceration models and the enforcement around that are a problem. As I’ve stated in the submission too, one metric is policing the possession. Once you remove that metric—as previously said by my colleague here, it doesn’t remove the other potential criminal metrics that can come into play. Bureaucracy in California—it’s in one of our papers in our submission there as well; in that single large document. It also talks about the grey market, how under-resourced it is and trying to bureaucratically manage the new market and all that’s going on, and the failings of that—and, of course, the failings and the corruption in the testing regimes. Groups that have been used to test legal products have also come into the fore in recent data coming out. So, again, we’ve got a real problem here with—again, we talk about talking points and just throw out the incarceration change. That’s just a talking point that has got to have evidence to it and we’ve seen the evidence—
Senator ROBERTS: Mr Varcoe, I asked you about the cost.
Mr Varcoe: We’re looking at what’s going on at the moment and the cost savings, in the law enforcement alone, will soon be swallowed up, as we’ve seen in other jurisdictions, like Colorado, with other forms of policing and with other forms of bureaucracy. So your net fiscal outcome is going to be, if not zero then negative.
Senator ROBERTS: Prescription opioids, Remdesivir, known now as ‘Run—death is near’ and statins are examples of pharmaceutical products over many years with a history of fatal outcomes that exceed cannabis notifications using DANE data. I note that Dalgarno does not campaign against those, yet you’re opposing the TGA decision to legalise the use, under limited circumstances, of psychedelic drugs. Can I ask where is the line? What TGA approved drugs are okay and what are not? What is your logic? Could cannabis ever be okay with you for any purpose?
Mr Varcoe: That looks like a straw man question to me. Our concern is that we have an unpredictable, highly promised substance that has not delivered. In 50 years of promise, it has not delivered what it could deliver, although we have, as I said, a number of therapeutic capacity based cannabis products on the market. We’re certainly opposed to any pharmaceutical drug that causes harms and any illicit drug that causes harms—of course we are, and we do that. But we’re wanting to mobilise and commercialise this particular market and pretend that’s not going to be a problem. That’s the concern that we have about cannabis. It’s also the substance that was most easily stepped into that place, as was indicated in our opening statement, back in 1993 by the head of—that’s the agenda. So we’re concerned that we want to foist another psychotropic toxin onto the marketplace for families and communities to contend with and pretend that we can manage the harms of that. That’s a concern that we have. We certainly want to see good, evidence-based, clinically trialled use of cannabis for certain issues, as we have with Epidiolex. That’s a wonderful product. But again, this is the issue. We’re not pretending that other drugs are not a problem. We’re saying we don’t want to add another problem to the problem.
Senator ROBERTS: I just need to clarify that we’d like a single large document, not documents in a pack, when Mr Varcoe provides that evidence.
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, if the witness is taking a question notice, they will provide that information.
Mr Varcoe: The evidence is there.
CHAIR: Thank you very much. If you have taken any questions on notice, we’ll give you a date by which we would like to get those back from you.
Senator ROBERTS: Thank you all for participating today. My questions will initially be to Dalgarno. In your submission, you say, ‘this submission will show how proponents of increased promotion and permission models for illicit drugs must persistently deny evidence-based science’. By illicit drugs, do you mean medicinal cannabis?
Mr Varcoe: Are you talking about the pharmaceutically and clinically trialled, double placebo, accounted for medicines that are on the pharmaceutical register? I’m not referring to those—
Senator ROBERTS: My question is: by illicit drugs, do you mean medicinal cannabis?
Mr Varcoe: Illicit substances are, again, drugs that are still registered on the market as being and scheduled as being illegals, whatever the scheduling is in a particular jurisdiction. When it comes to pharmaceutical grade cannabis, double blind, placebo accounted for and clinically trialled medicines are not illicit; they are prescribable drugs. Simply by putting the title ‘medicinal’ in front of cannabis doesn’t make it medicine. It doesn’t make it medicine. In no jurisdiction—pharmaceutical grade has been clinically trialled—
CHAIR: I think we might still be able to hear you—
Mr Varcoe: I’m sorry—
CHAIR: You can keep answering—or if you have another question, Senator Roberts—
Mr Varcoe: I’m sorry, I thought we were cut off. I apologise. I can name—I can’t name all of them, but the ones that are pharmaceutically available—certainly Sativex has been on the market in Australia for a long time. It’s a therapy related to cancer treatment and, obviously, nausea issues. Of course, Epidiolex is the newest one. It was created by GW Pharmaceuticals, who did a great due diligence to create a fourth line, by the way—fourth line treatment for Dravet syndrome epilepsy with a 25 per cent efficacy rate. But they did the due process on that to have it marketed. But, outside of those three or four pharmaceutically trialled medicines, just creating a cannabis plant and then putting the word ‘medicinal’ in front of it doesn’t make it medicine.
Senator ROBERTS: So the thousands of scientifically peer reviewed papers, Mr Varcoe, that show benefit from using cannabis in a medical setting don’t exist—not one benefit from cannabis?
Mr Varcoe: No, I’m not arguing that there are some benefits, but there are also side effects. That’s one of the reasons why you have double blind, placebo accounted for clinical trials—to ensure that the product does do what it says going to do with a minimum amount of side effects. We are seeing that a lot of those perceived benefits also have massive side effects—genotoxicity, neurotoxicity and other factors—that are not being considered. But the ones that have been properly done, like GW Pharmaceuticals did, now owned by Jazz Pharmaceuticals—13 years to create that.
Senator ROBERTS: Your submission lists 19 known harms from medical cannabis, supported by a document called ‘Cannabis and hemp scientific review’, which is a paper by Drug Free Australia. The document you cite is not referenced. I see you have lots of opinion pieces on your website that follow your 19 talking points here. Can you provide a direct link for the scientific proof for each of the 19 assertions, please? On notice is fine.
Mr Varcoe: Yes, we can do that.
Mr Toumbourou: Just on my own position, I’d just say clearly that I totally support therapeutic trials of drugs. I’m in support of cannabis being trialled if it’s for a medical purpose where there’s going to be therapeutic doses tested. That is I think what we’re saying here. That is supported. The problem is that a lot of the way that the legalisation model has worked in the US is to claim medicinal benefits forms of cannabis that have never been through those trials. There is concern that those doses are actually doing harm. They’re not of therapeutic benefit. Cannabis, of course, is a very powerful drug. Used for therapy I’m sure there would be titrations of it for which would be for a medicinal purpose. But they’ve got to be carefully tested. So this is the point. But if what you’re looking for is evidence about some of the models that have been used and promoted to legalise medicinal cannabis use, which have been the forerunners of the non-medical or recreational legalisation, then we can provide some of those papers, including papers that show that there have been increased birth defects and cancers in association with the bringing in of legalisation, which in the early phases was for these so-called medicinal variants. But, in fact, what we’re arguing here is they never went through therapeutic testing. Thank you.
Senator ROBERTS: I’d like to see those papers—I look forward to them. Are you aware that the TGA recently approved for use—in recent years, it approved for use, with no testing in this country, mRNA vaccines. They relied on the FDA in America. The FDA in America had already said previously that they did not test the mRNA vaccines. They relied upon Pfizer’s testing. Pfizer admitted later that they had not completed their testing. Is that the kind of regime that we should take a lot of respect in?
Mr Toumbourou: Again, we’re in favour of therapeutic testing. We believe that’s the way forward. We’re not in favour of a vote for whether or not a drug is going to be harmless. It seems to us that the model we’re proposing is one that would continue to have rigorous therapeutic testing for any claims that a drug has benefits.
Senator ROBERTS: Okay. In your submission you say, ‘the regulating and this new industry will require a level of bureaucratic monitoring that will, as we are seeing in other jurisdictions, take more and more financial and human resources to oversee’. How does the totality of that cost compare to the totality of the cost of prohibition, policing, courts, prisons and the opportunity cost of low-level convictions for possession that may cost that person a career and the tax revenue that goes with that loss of career?
Mr Varcoe: Again, in the addendum document that was submitted with the submission also covers that quite thoroughly. A number of papers and reviews in there make it clear the assumptions made about people being incarcerated for simply blazing a spliff are fallacious. The costing—we’re mostly a diversion mechanism in this country. Incarceration models and the enforcement around that are a problem. As I’ve stated in the submission too, one metric is policing the possession. Once you remove that metric—as previously said by my colleague here, it doesn’t remove the other potential criminal metrics that can come into play. Bureaucracy in California—it’s in one of our papers in our submission there as well; in that single large document. It also talks about the grey market, how under-resourced it is and trying to bureaucratically manage the new market and all that’s going on, and the failings of that—and, of course, the failings and the corruption in the testing regimes. Groups that have been used to test legal products have also come into the fore in recent data coming out. So, again, we’ve got a real problem here with—again, we talk about talking points and just throw out the incarceration change. That’s just a talking point that has got to have evidence to it and we’ve seen the evidence—
Senator ROBERTS: Mr Varcoe, I asked you about the cost.
Mr Varcoe: We’re looking at what’s going on at the moment and the cost savings, in the law enforcement alone, will soon be swallowed up, as we’ve seen in other jurisdictions, like Colorado, with other forms of policing and with other forms of bureaucracy. So your net fiscal outcome is going to be, if not zero then negative.
Senator ROBERTS: Prescription opioids, Remdesivir, known now as ‘Run—death is near’ and statins are examples of pharmaceutical products over many years with a history of fatal outcomes that exceed cannabis notifications using DANE data. I note that Dalgarno does not campaign against those, yet you’re opposing the TGA decision to legalise the use, under limited circumstances, of psychedelic drugs. Can I ask where is the line? What TGA approved drugs are okay and what are not? What is your logic? Could cannabis ever be okay with you for any purpose?
Mr Varcoe: That looks like a straw man question to me. Our concern is that we have an unpredictable, highly promised substance that has not delivered. In 50 years of promise, it has not delivered what it could deliver, although we have, as I said, a number of therapeutic capacity based cannabis products on the market. We’re certainly opposed to any pharmaceutical drug that causes harms and any illicit drug that causes harms—of course we are, and we do that. But we’re wanting to mobilise and commercialise this particular market and pretend that’s not going to be a problem. That’s the concern that we have about cannabis. It’s also the substance that was most easily stepped into that place, as was indicated in our opening statement, back in 1993 by the head of—that’s the agenda. So we’re concerned that we want to foist another psychotropic toxin onto the marketplace for families and communities to contend with and pretend that we can manage the harms of that. That’s a concern that we have. We certainly want to see good, evidence-based, clinically trialled use of cannabis for certain issues, as we have with Epidiolex. That’s a wonderful product. But again, this is the issue. We’re not pretending that other drugs are not a problem. We’re saying we don’t want to add another problem to the problem.
Senator ROBERTS: I just need to clarify that we’d like a single large document, not documents in a pack, when Mr Varcoe provides that evidence.
CHAIR: Senator Roberts, if the witness is taking a question notice, they will provide that information.
Mr Varcoe: The evidence is there.
CHAIR: Thank you very much. If you have taken any questions on notice, we’ll give you a date by which we would like to get those back from you.