As a trauma surgeon, I know cannabis kills. Don’t green-light ‘medicinal’ drivers

June 5, 2026 — 5:00am

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I have held a man’s ruptured spleen in my hands at 3am. I have told a woman that her son did not survive surgery. I have watched nurses who see this every night still find the composure to do their jobs.

So when a government announces it is prepared to make it easier for impaired drivers to be on the roads where these patients come from, I am not going to use diplomatic language. I am going to say what this is: a failure of political courage that will cost lives.

NSW Premier Chris Minns has thrown his support behind a proposal allowing “medicinal” cannabis users to drive on a valid prescription, with a “three strikes” system that merely fines – rather than convicts – a driver who returns a positive THC reading on their first offence. The NSW treasurer has called it “common sense”. It is not common sense. It is populist politics dressed up in the language of fairness, and it will end with more broken bodies on my operating table.

Let me be direct: the politicians making these announcements are clearly not reading the literature.

A major 2026 review published in Current Addiction Reports by........

© The Sydney Morning Herald