The New South Wales Labor government will introduce a drug driving defence for people prescribed cannabis, but are unable to drive without risk of conviction.

Ten years ago medicinal cannabis became a legal prescription drug, but the law prohibits people from driving with any concentration of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) — the active ingredient in cannabis.

The new announcement brought momentary relief to an estimated 300,000 users — prior to their reading of the fine print.

Labor first spruiked its “commonsense approach” on June 4. It proposes that “drivers taking prescribed medicinal cannabis containing THC” no longer face automatic penalisation for testing positive for traces of the lawful medicine in their system. But they will be surveilled in the process, unlike drivers who take prescribed opiates and benzodiazepines.

If those prescribed the medicine want to drive in NSW, they will have to register themselves on a Transport for NSW medicinal cannabis user register. If they test positive, they will be banned from driving for 24 hours, while a laboratory ascertains whether the THC, the psychoactive component of cannabis, in their saliva exceeds a new legal limit of 50 nanograms per millilitre.

The NSW drug driving testing regime has been derided for decades, long before the federal Coalition under Malcolm Turnbull legalised the cultivation, production and use of cannabis medicine in 2016.

This is because, unlike random breath testing for alcohol, which ascertains if drivers are over the limit, drug driving laws don’t test for impairment but rather the mere presence of four select drugs.

After a decade of resisting calls for a simple defence — where a prescribed cannabis user who tests positive for THC, is not impaired and has a prescription, is able to raise this as a defence — the new proposal continues to criminalise these drivers.

NSW Greens MLC Cate Faehrmann said on June 10 that a cancer patient phoned her office “distraught” about........

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