The Proposed Legislation

The Federal Attorney General wants to expand the list of federally prohibited plants. The list currently has 5 types of plants in it which can be used as drugs. This is to be expanded to include hundreds (possibly thousands) of other species which are common garden plants. The purpose of this new legislation is supposedly to stop major drug trafficking, yet many of the targeted plants have never been traded for drugs and have no value as drug plants, because they only contain traces of the compounds. The proposed laws will make potential criminals out of most honest gardeners, cactus collectors, farmers, and native vegetation propagators.

The following two links take you to the Federal Attourney General’s website. The documents are long and complicated, but we have also summarised them for you further down this page.

Click this link to go to the introduction page for the “Consultation on implementation of model drug schedules for Commonwealth serious drug offences” at the attourney general’s website.

Click this link to go directly to the document oulining the proposed changes. This document is 41 pages long of which only about 4 pages deal with plant related matters. For a summary of the plant content please scroll down this page.

The Minister for Justice, the Hon Brendan O’Connor MP, invites public comment on issues relating to the implementation of model drug, plant and precursor schedules for Commonwealth serious drug offences. Comment is sought on the issues outlined in the discussion paper, including the expanded list of plant and fungi species under the model schedule for controlled plants.
The closing date for submissions is 11 March 2011.

Please click on the links to the left to see which common garden plants will be affected by these laws.

Please note that the schedules have special levels of penalties, which start at trafficable quantity [usually about 10 plants], however, even a single plant is covered by the basic scheduling. This means, possessing just a single plant listed here can cause you to be charged and convicted with a federal drugs conviction and criminal record.

The existing schedules include:
1. any plant of the genus Cannabis
2. Enhanced cultivation of any plant of the genus Cannabis
3. any plant of the genus Erythroxylum from which cocaine can be extracted [...] incl E.coca & E.nova-granatense
4. Papaver bracteatum
5. Papaver somniferum
6. all fungi that contain PSILOCIN
7. all fungi that contain PSILOCYBIN

The proposed new schedules will include:
8. any plant containing MESCALINE including any plant of the genus Lophophora
9. any plant containing DMT including any plant of the species Piptadenia Peregrine
10. Salvia divinorum (Diviners Sage)
11. Mitragyna speciosa (Kratom)
12. Catha edulis (Khat)
13. Any species of the genus Ephedra which contains ephedrine
14. Any species of the genus Brugmansia
15. Any species of the genus Datura