A Perth-based medicinal marijuana company hopes to grow its first crops and manufacture products in WA by this time next year.

Laws to create a national licensing scheme for growers passed Federal Parliament yesterday, paving the way for the legal use of cannabis by people with painful and chronic illnesses.

The changes to the Narcotic Drugs Act create a national body that can issue licences to growers to cultivate medicinal marijuana.

Auscann, which is backed by former Liberal MP Mal Washer, plans to apply for a licence.

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THE establishment of a national regulator to supervise and allow Australian farmers to grow medicinal cannabis has passed the Senate, but hurdles remain to making the drug legal for medical purposes.

The Turnbull government bill was passed in the Senate yesterday, with bipartisan support, to allow patients to access medicinal cannabis products produced and grown in Australia.

Health Minister Sussan Ley described the new laws as the "missing piece" for patients, but Greens leader Richard Di Natale said there was still work to be done.

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THE New South Wales Government's Stoner Sloth anti-marijuana campaign cost taxpayers $350,000 and 265 public servant work hours just to be internationally ridiculed.

Greens MP Mehreen Faruqi uncovered the details under a freedom of information request into the failed #StonerSloth social media campaign.

It set the government back $351,790, including $36,386 paid to advertising firm Saatchi and Saatchi.

The government spent $115,000 on research, including $64,000 for market research, $28,000 for a Sax Institute and University of NSW literature review on the effectiveness marijuana education campaigns and $23,000 for University of Technology Sydney research.

Production company 8Com took home $59,000 and $99,990 went to media agency Universal McCann.

Actors, including the hirsute star, were paid $28,000. According to PriceOfWeed.com, the government could have bought about 30kg of high-quality marijuana for the total amount.

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The Turnbull government will on Wednesday introduce a national scheme into Parliament to licence medicinal cannabis growers.

Although medicinal cannabis is available for particular patient groups and clinical trials, it is now illegal to grow and import most medicinal cannabis products, leading some patients to buy them from the black market and run the risk of prosecution for drug use and possession. Health Minister Sussan Ley hoped for bipartisan support for legal changes that she said would help chronically ill patients in allowing therapeutic products to be grown on a larger scale to meet patient demand. She was confident a single cultivation scheme rather than state- and territory-based schemes, would hasten regulation and patients' access to medicinal cannabis. "A national regulator will also allow the government to closely track the development of cannabis products for medicinal use from cultivation to supply and curtail any attempts by criminals to get involved," she said. It is unclear whether the scheme will gain enough Senate support, because it differs from a separate Greens-led bill for a national regulator that would oversee growth, manufacture and distribution of medicinal cannabis. This model, introduced into the Senate in 2014, has support from both Liberal and Labor senators.

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Given that the evidence is clear that the current regime of drug prohibition isn't working, it can only be that ideology is overruling sense when we continue this absurd and costly war on drugs.

Climate change sceptics seem to fit the same criteria yet their motives seem less clear. Science told us that cigarettes are bad for us and we acted on that advice albeit after much resistance.

Could we please cut to the chase on these others issues and save ourselves a lot more grief ?

Greg Leisner Copeland

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The Herald identifies that organised crime groups have become so successful at importing drugs into Australia that the wholesale price being paid for ice, cocaine and ecstasy has dramatically fallen in the past 18 months ("Drug supply soars as imports get cheaper", January 22).

Australia has been involved in other wars that were debacles: Vietnam and Iraq. But even those saw governments of the day eventually admit the country's folly and withdraw.

I can only hope that our longest war, that on drugs, will reach a similar ignominious end in my lifetime. Then perhaps all the politicians with an interest in this war - as well as law enforcement officers, judicial and magisterial officers, corrections officers, lawyers, probation and parole officers - can begin to put their efforts into something that is not such a stupendous dead end, insofar as the betterment of society is concerned.

I am worried that there may be some truth in the words of a police officer in that superb crime drama, The Wire, when he said "the war on drugs is not a war because wars have an end".

Joe Weller Lewisham

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But Cannabis Users Say They Are Avoiding Detection

POLICE have warned Northern Rivers cannabis users that every police car is a potential drug testing unit.

But cannabis users say they are outsmarting mobile drug swab tests by swigging vinegar, gargling mouthwash, drinking chocolate milk and chewing on vitamin C.

Thousands of people are using Facebook groups to avoid roadside drug tests.

With one in four Northern Rivers motorists testing positive for cannabis between April and December 2015 an average of 141 positive tests every month literally thousands of residents have taken to social media to prevent detection.

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Sydney Awash With Cocaine, Ice, Ecstasy

Organised crime groups have become so successful at importing drugs into Australia that the wholesale price being paid for ice, cocaine and ecstasy has dramatically fallen in the past 18 months.

The NSW Crime Commission says the illegal drug trade remains the main source of income for organised crime in Australia and at present illicit substances are in "plentiful supply".

Fairfax Media has learnt that the wholesale price paid by Australian criminal groups to import cocaine from overseas was as high as $280,000 a kilogram three years ago. Eighteen months ago it had dropped to $240,000 a kilogram and now sells below $200,000 and as low as $180,000. The cost for a kilogram of ice has fallen in the past 18 months from $220,000 to as low as $95,000 and ecstasy had dropped from $65,000 to $37,000.

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As the Status of Drug Use in Victoria Is Debated, Lessons Can Be Learnt From the US.

It was the best of times, it was the worst of times. In January 1964, the Beatles first broke onto the US Billboard chart. In January, the US surgeon general announced that scientists had found conclusive evidence linking smoking to cancer and thus launched a highly successful 50-year public-health fight against tobacco. In August, the North Vietnamese fired on a US naval ship in the Gulf of Tonkin, which led to the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the public phase of the Vietnam War. Alongside an accelerating deployment of conventional troops would come their widespread use of marijuana and heroin.

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