Padarath: New Bill won’t take effect until 2027

Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the Low­er House Bar­ry Padarath says the Mis­cel­la­neous Pro­vi­sions (Al­co­hol, Cannabis, Dan­ger­ous Drugs, Gam­bling and To­bac­co) Bill is aimed at chang­ing cul­ture and sav­ing young peo­ple and will not come in­to ef­fect un­til next year.

“The bill has a procla­ma­tion clause. And the Gov­ern­ment’s po­si­tion on this is that the bill will not come in­to ef­fect un­til 2027. There­fore, that gives us the op­por­tu­ni­ty to work on sev­er­al of the op­er­a­tional us­es and smoothen out and iron out those is­sues that have been iden­ti­fied as re­lat­ed to the fines and so on.”

Padarath, who spoke with Guardian Me­dia out­side Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, said stud­ies have shown the im­pact of drug abuse on the coun­try’s youth and this leg­is­la­tion is seek­ing to cor­rect that.