MP pushes for legalisation after report reveals drug dealers are using online networks 06:50

You've heard of this website, it's called LeafedOut.com, LeafedOut.com. Incredible story in the Daily Telegraph. It's about a giant illegal cannabis business. It's like the Uber Eats of marijuana and it's running through this website, LeafedOut.com. So you sign up and within minutes, you've got weed being delivered to your front door.

So the Daily Telegraph asked the New South Wales police, how on earth is this allowed to operate? And they said this, quote, Now, this website, look,

I don't know how easy it is for the police just to see who's selling what, but maybe because it's cannabis, I don't know, it's not dealt with as seriously. 131873, what should be done about this? But you pull up the website and you should see the number of people buying marijuana in Sydney. Extraordinary. Jeremy Buckingham is the legalised cannabis party. He's in the New South Wales Parliament. And unsurprisingly, he reckons this is the reason why marijuana needs to be legalised because...

People are doing it anyway. Jeremy's on the line. G'day. Good afternoon, Chris. How are you, mate? I'm all right. Leafedout.com. For people that don't know anything about it, and I didn't until I read this story in the telly this morning, can you explain it?

Yeah, well, it's a portal, an online portal that operates in other jurisdictions where cannabis is legal, like the United States. And people in Australia are availing themselves of that website to basically order up cannabis, like an Uber eats a menu log to their door. So people can get online. They say, I want to buy cannabis. And a dealer...

lines them up with a bag of cannabis and it's delivered to their door within an hour or two. It's a model that is used in Germany and the United States and Canada and people in Australia are using it here. So the telly have done a bit of analysis on this. So 70 individual cannabis suppliers across Sydney, Parramatta, Newtown, Mona Vale, Bondi, Ride, Rockdale, Hurstville, just to name a few. How widespread is this?

It's everywhere because cannabis is the number one illicit drug used in Australia. 15% of Australians regularly use cannabis. And for numbers, that means about 750,000 people just in Sydney use cannabis regularly.

So it's a vast market worth billions of dollars. And if you look at the graphic in the telly story, the whole of Sydney is just covered in cannabis because it is the drug of choice for Australians. It always has been. It always will be. And the police have given up on policing it. They've recognised that they're just saying to people, you know, don't do it anymore. But they've given up on policing it.

The time has come to stop wasting money on policing what is a relatively benign recreation for a lot of Australians, legalise it, tax it and take it out of the hands of the criminals. Now, you were telling me off air that you've heard stories about drug dealers delivering cannabis via drones.

Yes, that happens. And what we see is these delivery services, they may deliver other drugs. That's one of the problems with an illegal cannabis regime, that the people that are delivering cannabis may well be delivering other drugs, other products that are far more damaging. And that's one of the reasons we need to take it out of the hands of criminals who are delivering it by drones,

who are using young people. They're giving kids on a BMX 50 bucks to do a run around and throw a bag of pot over the fence, but they could be delivering other things. So that's one of the reasons to take it out of the hands of criminals, to regulate it, legalise it, make sure it's only used by adults

So this vast amount of money, and we are talking about billions of dollars. The Premier, Chris Minns, estimates that the war on cannabis is costing us billions of dollars. Take that money out of the hands of the criminals because once they've got that money, they're importing ice, they're importing cocaine, they're importing drugs. It's the start-up model. We need to take it out of the

I understand, but that's not necessarily the case. It sounds good, right? Logic tells you that it works, but you look at Canada, right, or different states in the United States where you regulate marijuana

And there are that many, the overheads for people when you come in terms of licensing agreements and all the red tape and all the green tape, pardon the pun, that goes with getting a marijuana license to cultivate and then sell this stuff legally. It just means it's too expensive and people just buy it on the black market anyway because it's cheaper to get.

Well, that's true. So what's the point of making it legal then? Well, that's why I'm running a regulation of cannabis inquiry through the parliament at the moment because we want to get the model right. So you regulate it to make it safer. You regulate it to make sure it's not in the hands of criminals or kids. But you don't over-regulate it to the point where people just throw their hands up and grow their own or get it from the black market. Because this is what's happening with cigarettes, right? People are just getting the chop-chop stuff or the illegal cigarettes online

under the counter at their local tobacconist and they're not paying any tax on it. So what would make you think that the criminal gangs would not just make it cheaper and therefore continue their market share?

Well, because if the price is right, people will opt for the legal option rather than face a criminal sanction. And so what we're seeing with vapes, with tobacco, with cannabis, is this over-regulation, this prohibitionist model that just forces the market to...

hands billions of dollars to criminals. What we need to do is get it right in terms of regulation, and we can look to other jurisdictions, Germany, Canada, the United States, Mexico, that have moved to legalisation their...

got an appropriate regime to make sure there's quality, that it's safe, it's not in the hands of kids and there's education about it rather than just forcing it into the dark. And really, they're just not doing anything. Over the last 40 years, there has been no decline or no increase in cannabis use in Australia. It's just flatlined at about 15%. It's a recreation Australians use. It's time to legalise it and take it out of the dark. Jeremy Buckingham, I appreciate your time as always. Thanks for coming on.