Rachel made a contribution to the Roads and Ports Legislation Amendment (Road Safety and Other Matters) Bill 2025. On behalf of Legalise Cannabis Victoria, Rachel proposed amendments, advocating that medicinal cannabis that does not impair driving must be treated in the same manner as other prescription drugs.
Tuesday the 29th of July 2025
Victorian Legislative Council
Rachel Payne (South-Eastern Metropolitan):
I rise to make a brief contribution to the Roads and Ports Legislation Amendment (Road Safety and Other Matters) Bill 2025 on behalf of Legalise Cannabis Victoria.
This bill makes several amendments across a number of pieces of legislation. Among other things, it establishes a licensing framework for the provision of mooring services at specified commercial ports, improves their operation and extends the time Victoria Police must bring proceedings for certain hit-and-run offences. My contribution today focuses specifically on the changes this bill makes to the Road Safety Act 1986.
This bill seeks to expand the classes of people who can take blood and urine samples to detect drink and drug driving offences. While we do not necessarily have a problem with this amendment, if resourcing is the issue, we would like to offer an alternate solution, one that we have been calling for ever since we have been elected. On that note, I will be moving amendments on this bill, and I ask that they now be circulated.
Amendments circulated pursuant to standing orders.
Since day one we at Legalise Cannabis have advocated for medicinal cannabis patients to be treated like any other person on legally prescribed medication who is not impaired when driving. It is deeply regrettable that when Victoria first legalised medicinal cannabis in 2016, no forethought was given to the need to reconsider our driving laws. Almost 10 years later it continues to be an offence to drive with cannabis in your system, regardless of whether it is medicinal cannabis taken as prescribed and not causing impairment. Other lawful prescription medication is not treated this way.
There are far more impairing drugs that we do not test for, things like opioids and benzodiazepines. Some people are taking these instead of medicinal cannabis because they know that if they get pulled over at a roadside drug test, it will not come up on that test. For others who decide to go without entirely, they are left managing the symptoms of their condition. Instead of having an unimpaired medicinal cannabis patient on our roads, you get someone struggling with crippling insomnia. Now, that is hardly a safer alternative.
We understand the Victorian government recognises this issue and has dedicated both time and money to addressing it through its controlled, closed-circuit driving trial to assess the effects on driver performance. It is expected that this will conclude sometime next year, meaning any potential change to legislation is realistically not going to happen until the next term of Parliament. In the interim, we commend the government on passing an amendment to the Road Safety Act to provide magistrates with discretionary powers not to cancel a medicinal cannabis patient’s licence if they are driving while not impaired. However, while we wait, there are thousands of medicinal cannabis patients in Victoria who risk being criminalised every time they drive.
This driving trial will only tell us what we already know from similar studies: medicinal cannabis patients can and do drive safely. Tasmania’s laws have allowed medicinal cannabis patients to drive if unimpaired for many years now, and the sky has not fallen in. This amendment would provide that prescription medicinal cannabis that does not impair driving is to be treated in the same manner as other prescription drugs. It is just common sense, and there is no need to continue to wait.
Related:
> Medicinal Cannabis Driving Reform – Rachel Payne
> Legal Defence for Driving Medicinal Cannabis Patients – Rachel Payne
> Driving While Impaired – Rachel Payne
> Tradies and Parents Campaign for a U-turn on Unfair Medicinal Cannabis Driving Laws – Rachel Payne
> Driver Impairment Statistics – Rachel Payne
> Medicinal Cannabis Driving Trial and Pill Testing – Rachel Payne
