Clear Dopey as Bill mud sides with on the Greens tax cuts on drugs

AN “irresponsible” Bill Shor-ten has shocked the Turn bull Government by backing the Green sin a vote that would allow a flood of “bags of weed” and hash into Australia.

In a drama-fuelled day, the Therapeutic Goods Adminis-tration was dispatched to Par-liament House tour get he cross bench to intervene to stop the move to undo tough drug regulations.

Health Minister Greg Hunt declared “it is one of the most irresponsible and dangerous decisions by a leader of a major political party in decades ”.

The Opposition said yester-day that it wanted to help more Australians access medicinal marijuana.

The Senate vote was nar-rowly beaten32-32, because it was tied. Atones tage, the government believed the Greens motion would pass, sparking concerns about safety of pa-tients, who would be able to access unregulated products.

It would have meant a patient with an Australian script for medicinal marijuana would have been able to personally import a “bag of weed” or hash from anywhere in the world.

Two US women recently died after their medicinal marijuana contained deadly fungus.

As well as efficacy issues, it would have left Customs over-whelmed because any Austra-lian, with a prescription for medicinal cannabis, could have brought raw cannabis, hash or oil in for personal use.

Currently, it can be imported by commercial opera-tors but only from sources regulated by the TGA.

Mr Hunt said he could not believe how irresponsible Mr Shorten had been.

“Bill Short enjoined with the Greens to vote in favour of opening the floodgates for dangerous, unregulated drugs to come to Australia ,” he said .

“It would have opened the way for personal importation through our airports of hashish and other products that are unsafe, unregulated and even deadly .”