PREMIER Mike Baird’s road to Damascus moment struck in an unlikely place – an East Tamworth lounge room.
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As the state’s most powerful man sipped on tea at the Haslam family home in July, he listened to the heart-wrenching story of young bowel cancer patient Dan Haslam.
At yesterday’s opening day of the Inaugural Australian Medical Cannabis Symposium in Tamworth, Mr Baird revealed how deeply affected he was by the meeting.
“The Haslam family has inspired me, and Dan’s story, when I first heard it, couldn’t help but bring tears to my eyes,” Mr Baird said.
“I’ll never forget the look in his eyes ... when those eyes looked at me, it was very much saying, can you help?”
He also looked into the eyes of Dan’s parents: Lucy Haslam, a woman of uncommon strength, and her husband Lou, a former drug squad detective who is authenticity personified.
The Premier’s cannabis conversion was complete.
This was democracy at work, a politician confronted by the human face of an issue and changing his position accordingly.
That a conservative leader, and indeed a conservative city like Tamworth, could lead the charge on such a progressive policy is staggering to some.
But it need not be.
Because this issue transcends political ideology.
It’s simply about human compassion, the right of every person to have access to the most effective medical treatment available.
Compassion, of course, comes naturally to the human heart.
Science is a tad more conceptual.
And that’s why the symposium forms such a critical part of the reform puzzle.
It is science that must inform a change in medical policy and it was science informing the crowd at the TRECC yesterday.
Who could listen to a Harvard Medical School professor of psychiatry and a host of doctors and not be convinced cannabis has a role as medicine?
Who could look at the EEGs of the scores of children who have stopped having life-threatening seizures due to cannabis oil and not think they deserve access to the drug?
The truth is, nothing will stop this state’s inexorable march towards medical marijuana reform.
And it’s all thanks to the determination of one family and a community determined to “do it for Dan”.