Cannabis has been prohibited in Australia for almost a century. It is a failed policy. Australians continue to consume cannabis and they always will. In 2024 Victoria police acknowledged this, updating the Victorian Police Operational Manual to make cautioning the default option for minor, personal possession. It was the right call. But the arrests keep coming. Today, LCV is calling for what should have already happened: make cautioning the law.
Almost 40% of Australians have consumed cannabis in their lifetime and around 2.5 million consumed cannabis in the last year. While medicinal cannabis is now accessible to many, most Australians access cannabis illegally. This illicit market props up organised crime, wastes police and court resources and ruins lives. It is also contrary to expert health and legal advice and the wishes of the 80% of Victorians who support the decriminalisation of cannabis.
The police seemingly agree.
The Victorian Police Operational Manual (VPM) was updated in 2024 to recommend members caution people for personal possession of cannabis, rather than arresting them. This is a significant change in cannabis policing and we welcome it. However, the changes to the VPM are not known to most and are clearly not working as intended. Arrest rates remain high (around 4,000 per year), and there’s been no meaningful reduction since the update. Arrests in some demographics are double the cautions. If the VPM update was working, this would be the other way around.
Snapshot of data we requested from the Crime Statistics Agency:
- Cautioning remains low at 37% despite the update to the VPM in 2024
- Arrest rates for personal possession of small amounts of cannabis remain at 48%
- Young people (under 30) are now more likely to get a caution than arrested – a welcome development
- First Nations males had the highest arrest-to-caution ratios across almost every age group
- First Nations Victorians are 11 times more likely to be arrested for cannabis possession.
A key reason the 2024 changes haven’t delivered meaningful change is because hardly anyone knows about them. Many of the legal and health stakeholders we spoke to were unaware of the VPM update (see page 2). It is almost impossible for ordinary people – or their legal representatives – to access the VPM. It is only available on CD-ROM. To view it, you either need to visit the State Library or, send a cheque to Vic Pol for the disc (in NSW it is freely available online). For a public document, it’s not very public! It is similarly difficult for police themselves to find out about the change – to do so they would need to scan a QR code in their police station to access the manual, read it and then know how to follow the new (and quite convoluted) procedure. This would not pass the water-cooler test.
The fix could not be simpler. Victoria Police already recommend cautioning over arrest, so it needs to be legislated for clarity. Rachel Payne MP will move a motion this week calling on the government to enshrine Victoria Police’s Cannabis Cautioning scheme into legislation. Enshrining cautioning in law will ensure clarity and even application of the law across all communities and, save police, court and human resources.
Important Background
The Victoria Police Cannabis Cautioning Program (CCP) was officially implemented on 1 September 1998. It allowed police discretion to caution rather than arrest people found in possession of small quantities of cannabis. In 2024 the VPM was updated to recommend cautioning rather than arrest and for the number of cautions to be unlimited. This is good policy. The VPM makes specific reference to the Victorian Charter of Human Rights and Responsibilities Act 2006. Victoria Police employees must consider human rights under the Charter, including the desirability of promoting rehabilitation for children and young people and the best interests of the child. In short, it recognises that keeping adults and children away from the criminal justice system is best practice where possible.
Attributable Quotes (all stakeholders are available for comment):
GREG DENHAM, Former Senior Sargent (Victoria Police, 1980 – 2022, Senior Advisor in Drug Policy 1997-2022):
“I was around in 1998 when the cautioning program was designed. The idea was simple – save police time and resources, protect the public and, give police members a clear way out of an impossible situation. Nobody joins Victoria police to spend their shift busting someone for a joint. But we were stuck. We never wanted to ruin someone’s life over something like that, so members were doing all sorts of things off the books – turning a blind eye, flushing it. That’s not good policing. Legislate cautioning and give officers something solid to stand on.”
PROFESSOR KATE SEEAR, ARC Industry Fellow, Australia’s preeminent drug law reform researcher: “I was very surprised to learn of the change in Victoria Police’s manual. I had not heard anything about it before now, and I believe many other experts in the sector will also be surprised to hear of this development. Cautions should be offered wherever possible, consistently, and predictably, as required by law including the Victorian Charter of Human Rights. In my view, this can only happen if all Victorians are properly aware of how caution processes work.”
FITZROY LEGAL SERVICE: “For our cohort… the charge of possession makes it harder break the cycle of disadvantage. We have had experiences where: possessing cannabis has led to being remanded (children and adults); where confessing to their corrections worker to using cannabis has in turn been used by the magistrate as an aggravating factor in a sentence of term of imprisonment; welfare and family violence call outs have led to possession charges.”
RACHEL PAYNE MP: “No-one should have their life derailed over a joint. Not in 2026. Victoria Police already agree and quietly moved to a cautioning approach in 2024, but good policy isn’t good enough. It is either being ignored or unevenly applied. It’s time to take a fair and common-sense approach and to make cautioning official.”
DAVID ETTERSHANK MP: “Former Drug Court Magistrate Tony Parsons said it straight– cannabis law reform is the right thing to do, is backed by evidence and enjoys broad community support. Vic Pol took a step forward in 2024 but if nobody knows about it and it’s not being applied, what’s the point? Let’s make it the law and lock in this reform.”
Published Tuesday the 12th of May, 2026.
Related:
- 12% of arrests, 1% of the population: Cannabis policing in Victoria – Rachel Payne
- Cannabis-related arrests – Rachel Payne
- Millions wasted on cannabis arrests while state debt rises – Rachel Payne
- Cannabis criminalisation: Arresting our community’s most vulnerable – Rachel Payne
- Cannabis decriminalisation frees up police resources – Rachel Payne
