The Legalise Cannabis Party has unveiled a lineup of senate candidates for the coming federal election, drawing on experienced campaigners and political veterans from across the country.
Fiona Patten, the former leader of the Reason Party, will head the ticket in Victoria. In Western Australia, long-time reform advocate Jason Meotti will carry the party's banner, while Miles Hunt, co-founder of drug harm minimisation charity Unharm, will contest the NSW senate race.
Patten first won a seat in Victoria's state parliament in 2014 and was returned for a second term in 2018, building a record as an advocate for social justice and cannabis law reform during her time in office.
Among her achievements, she set up a medicinal cannabis taskforce as part of the first serious effort to overhaul the state's roadside drug-testing laws, and she was the driving force behind the Inquiry into the Use of Cannabis in Victoria.
She also made history as the first political party leader to publicly acknowledge using cannabis regularly to unwind.
Patten said: "I went into parliament in 2014 as the first MP to speak about using cannabis. Cannabis reform has always been high on my to do list and is unfinished business for me. To open up law reform in the states we need to change the federal law and I intend to do just that."
Meotti, a Western Australian with roughly two decades of reform campaigning behind him, is equally focused on taking that fight to the federal stage.
Describing himself as "a huge political nerd", the former member of the Australian Democrats and the National Party said while it was "impossible to characterise" him as belonging to the left or right, "I've always championed the reform of nonsensical drug laws that prohibit people from growing and consuming a plant with endless benefits".
Meotti spent much of his adult life dealing with chronic back pain that led to depression, anxiety and an early exit from the workforce, before he found that cannabis helped restore his health.
"Cannabis and therapy played a huge part in my recovery," he said. "I have been using [it] for many years for pain relief, but now that medicinal [use] is legal, I no longer risk prosecution.
"But I'm still deeply invested in cannabis law reform. As the Young Nationals state vice president, I orchestrated the adoption of policies for cannabis decriminalisation.
"With representatives from Labor, the Greens and the Democrats, I then established the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation WA in 1998 and served as president until 2005.
"We led calls for the 2001 WA Drug Summit, and I chaired the committee that developed the cannabis decriminalisation proposal, a forerunner of the WA Cannabis Control Bill 2003 which decriminalised possession and cultivation of small quantities… the second state after South Australia to do so.
"I have already helped usher in cannabis law reform in WA and I wasn't even elected to parliament – just imagine what I could achieve… if I was elected as a WA senator."
Meotti said he wants excise revenue from legal cannabis sales directed toward improved mental health support and drug treatment, "rather than criminal gangs and cartels profiting from the failed 'War on Drugs'".
The party described NSW candidate Miles Hunt as a "tireless and very public campaigner for drug decriminalisation and legalisation all his adult life – including medicinal and adult-use cannabis, pill testing, and sniffer dogs".
In 2014, he publicly identified himself as a drug-taking lawyer on the front page of the Sydney Morning Herald.
Working as a lawyer, Hunt frequently represented clients charged with cannabis possession and considers legalisation long overdue.
"The prohibition of cannabis has been one of the great failures of modern times," he said.
"Legalisation and regulation of cannabis is necessary for a fair and just society, and when I get to Canberra I will do my best to make sure we get this done."
The next federal election must be held no later than May 2025.
In the meantime, around 30 candidates will contest seats in Queensland's state election on Saturday (October 26), hoping to become the first Legalise Cannabis MPs elected in the Sunshine State.
