As a commitment under the Queensland Road Safety Action Plan 2022–2024, the Department of Transport and Main Roads (TMR) led a wide-ranging review of Queensland’s drug driving policies. As part of the Review, public consultation (see the Cannabis and Driving Consultation Report) was undertaken to fully explore the issues faced by persons using cannabis and the potential impacts of future policy changes to manage road safety risks.
In 2024, researchers from the University of the Sunshine Coast (UniSC) asked the following question: Should Queensland change or retain its existing approach to drug driving? Nearly 96% of respondents advocated for the laws to be revised to better support cannabis users, particularly medicinal cannabis users, with less than 0.49% calling for the current laws to be strengthened.
The Crisafulli LNP Government has relied upon reports conducted by the Motor Accident Insurance Commission (MAIC) and UniSC Road Safety Research Collaboration as the basis for the changes outlined in the Transport and Other Legislation Amendment Bill.
The idea of a medical defence allowing driving with THC under certain conditions was also examined but
found unfeasible due to challenges in verifying adherence to prescriptions and assessing impairment roadside.
In February 2025, UniSC alongside the MAIC published, “The Acute Effects Of Vaporised Cannabis On Drivers’ Hazard Perception And Risk-Taking Behaviours In Medicinal Patients: A Within-Subjects Experiment” that highlighted the fact that no changes in performance on video-based tasks were observed after consuming prescribed cannabis.
The very evidence that the Crisafulli LNP Government purports to be the foundation of the legislative changes, does not appear to support the Bill’s proposed amendments, particularly as the Government’s own findings surmise that “The Review concluded that no legislative changes should be made at this time”.
Queensland’s roadside drug-testing laws do not measure impairment. They target the presence of THC
while ignoring other potentially impairing prescription medicines. That isn’t evidence-based road safety.
Legalise Cannabis Queensland (LCQ) Party President, Jacki Verne noted that the Bill would double the maximum penalty and increase the minimum licence disqualification for driving with a relevant drug present. It would also remove the second roadside saliva test to streamline testing and allow more tests to be conducted. It does nothing to address the fundamental problem for medicinal cannabis patients: Queensland tests for the presence of THC, not whether a driver is impaired.
LCQ would appreciate as many members and their friends as possible to email (and re-email) every Queensland MP to decry this outrageous medical discrimination, as no other legally prescribed medication is treated this way. Emailing your MP is an excellent method of highlighting the ongoing discrimination on our roads, which many remain totally unaware of!
Please find your State member here, Members List Queensland Parliament, and feel free to use the below email, or your own words, as every email helps the cause of cannabis law reform. Also, please sign the GetUp Campaign if you haven’t already (open to all Australians, not just Queenslanders)!
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To the Honourable Member for ____________________,
I write in reference to the Transport and Other Legislation Amendment Bill, and would like to note that I am currently a medical cannabis patient with a legal prescription. Like many thousands of other Queensland patients, cannabis works really well for my particular circumstance, relieving my high levels of continuous pain, without suffering the ongoing brain fog caused by a wide range of pharmaceuticals.
A 2021 study, “The Risk of Being Culpable For or Involved in a Road Crash After Using Cannabis: A Systematic Review and Meta-Analyses”, by Dr Michael White et al of the School of Psychology, University of Adelaide, South Australia found, “With the medical and recreational use of cannabis becoming more prevalent, the removal of cannabis-presence driving offences should be considered (while impairment-based offences would remain)”.
In 2025, the UniSC published a peer reviewed study, “The Acute Effects of Vaporised Cannabis on Drivers’ Hazard Perception and Risk-Taking Behaviours in Medicinal Patients: A Within-Subjects Experiment”, which concluded that while acute prescribed cannabis consumption may reduce appraisals of selected skills, overall hazard perception ability and driving-related risk-taking behaviour may remain unchanged.
There are many reasons that the legally prescribed medicinal herb, Cannabis sativa, does not belong in roadside testing, including that the testing devices have been proven unreliable with a considerable number of false-positive and false-negative results. There is also still no device that can test for cannabis impairment, successfully. Furthermore, recent driving studies evidence that cannabis produces little or no car-handling impairment—consistently less than that produced by moderate doses of alcohol and many other legal medications.
Road safety must be evidence-based and I ask that you look at the latest evidence. Cannabis for medicinal use has been legal since 2016 but the presence only regime being followed by the state of Queensland has not been updated and thus users are being treated like criminals for taking their legally prescribed medicine whilst not being impaired which is not road safety but part of the ongoing war on drugs and an ideological prohibition that will never achieve its goal as prohibition always fails, as evidenced by history.
Yours faithfully,
____________________