We are so pleased to bring good news—Legalise Cannabis had a significant win in Victoria this month. As you may have heard, on the thirteenth of May Rachel Payne MP and David Ettershank MP moved a Motion in the Victorian Parliament to stop arrests for personal use of cannabis. We asked the Government to legislate cautioning for personal use rather than arrest (more on why below).
WHAT DOES THIS MEAN?
If you’re in Victoria and you’re found with small amounts of weed for your own personal use, you should get a simple caution and nothing more RIGHT NOW, with those cautions being unlimited. Not once, not twice; every time.
Obviously, we wish the Government would just get on with it and legalise already, but neither the Labor Government nor the Liberal Opposition support that yet. While we keep working to get this outcome, no arrests is the next best thing:
- No lock-up
- No court time
- No criminal record
BACKGROUND
To be clear, Victoria Police agree but they have been very quiet about it.
The Victorian Police Operations Manual was updated in 2024 to say that police should be cautioning—and not arresting—people for small amounts of personal possession of cannabis. In other words, if there are no extenuating circumstances, your average personal-use charge or arrest for a small amount of cannabis should be a thing of the past.
This should already be happening according to the police’s own manual. This is a huge development in the policing of cannabis, but almost no-one knew about it. When it came to our attention, we spoke to lawyers, stakeholders, health providers and consumers, and none of them knew about the change. Even past and current serving members of Victoria Police were mystified.
Legalise Cannabis Victoria advocates constantly around this issue and we were not informed of the change at the time. This makes the policy shift almost meaningless. Consumers should know their rights at the point of charge and arrest, their lawyers should know and obviously, the police themselves should know that their own operations manual recommends cautioning for weed, in most cases.
To reiterate, cautioning should be happening right now, but the arrests keep coming. There are still almost 4,000 small-possession arrests for cannabis in Victoria every year—and yes, that is after the manual was updated. Those 4,000 arrests simply cannot all have “extenuating circumstances”. Something hasn’t worked with the update. We want clarity and transparency and we have been working hard behind the scenes to fix this. On the thirteenth of May, we got a step closer.
We are really pleased to let you know that both the Government and Opposition agreed with our Motion to investigate making cautioning the law: no ifs and buts; if there’s no other offence and you’re found with less than 50g of cannabis in Victoria you should get a simple caution.
This would mean that default cautioning isn’t just something in the police manual, it’s not something the police may or may not do (or know about); it would be enshrined in legislation. The debate in parliament was really good—you can read it here. The dial is definitely shifting toward law reform, and it was clear from almost every MP contribution to the debate that no-one seriously wants people getting busted for a joint. The only question is whether the major parties will put their vote where their mouth is.
Investigating and legislating cautioning is a good first step—a slow step, but that’s how things work around here. We got the issue aired, we got media attention, we informed stakeholders, we made the changes to police policy far more public and, we got bipartisan support toward legislating. That is a big deal.
Watch this space and in the meantime keep up with our socials and newsletters for more updates.