Some of you may have heard about a public run-in with Barnaby Joyce, my local MP and a person I've known reasonably well for a number of years. The incident took place last Thursday at a Tamworth screening of the important new documentary High as Mike, which highlights poor patient access to medicinal cannabis.
During the stoush - some of which was filmed and made available online and widely reported in regional media - Barnaby made various claims and objections which I feel need further discussion.
Barnaby suggested those who advocate for use of medicinal cannabis were offering 'false hope' to patients, particularly cancer sufferers, by claiming cannabis is an elixir and a cure for their horrendous conditions.
His words to me were that “if you want to pull a few cones knock yourself out, god knows I did when I was at uni. But that does not mean for one second that there is some grand elixir or … that there is some hope that somehow my brother... would be alive if this happened.”
I make no such assertion that medicinal cannabis is a grand elixir or cure. In all my years of advocating for medicinal cannabis, I have only stated that in many cases the drug can offer enormous relief from symptoms like pain and chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting. That’s what it did for my late son Dan, who enjoyed a quality of life we'd never have dreamed possible before medicinal cannabis.
As to Barnaby’s uninvited revelation that he pulled “a few cones” when he was a student, I only take exception to the conflating of recreational use with medicinal. While I have no objection to the ending of the prohibition of cannabis use recreationally, this campaign is 100% focused on its use as a medicine. Punching "a few cones” of street cannabis never will be genuine medicinal use. For Barnaby to liken the two reveals the deep scars from the so-called ‘War on Drugs’, a constant barrier to the medicinal cannabis conversation.
But there's more...
Later Barnaby said “Lucy you're a nurse and I'm a politician - neither you nor I are medical professionals,” prompting a flurry of emails, phone calls and messages to me on social media from incensed nurses furious at being told by this man that they aren’t medical professionals. What does this reveal about his views on hardworking nurses?
Finally, Barnaby (who, tragically, recently lost a brother to cancer) informed me I didn't “have a monopoly on grief".
On this point and this point alone, I have to agree with the Member for New England. Every day, I receive calls from people who are dying or in terrible pain, people whose loved ones (including kids) are facing appalling suffering. I speak with others who are unable to secure a legal supply of medicinal cannabis, despite it reducing their children's seizures more than 90% in some instances.
So no, I definitely don't have a 'monopoly on grief'. After spending years chatting with grieving family after grieving family, I wish that I did.
Lucy Haslam, proud medicinal cannabis advocate and even prouder mother of Dan Haslam.
#FixDansLaw