Western Australia names cannabis in its poison-sales schedule

Western Australia expressly named cannabis in a poison-sales schedule before the end of the nineteenth century. The Pharmacy and Poisons Act Amendment Act received assent on 16 December 1899 and placed “Cannabis Indicus” in Part I of a replacement schedule. Its effect must be read through the existing pharmacy legislation, including that legislation’s exceptions.

A named addition to the schedule

The principal Pharmacy and Poisons Act of 1894 defined scheduled articles as poisons. Its original Fifth Schedule did not name cannabis. Section 3 of the 1899 amendment repealed that schedule and substituted a two-part list containing cannabis in Part I.

This comparison establishes an explicit statutory listing in 1899. It does not establish the first possible regulation of cannabis in the colony: the principal Act also allowed the Governor to add substances by gazetted proclamation, and a complete search for earlier proclamations has not been made.

The date used here is assent. A separate commencement rule was not verified, so the record does not silently equate assent with the first day of operation.

How covered sales were controlled

Under sections 25–28 of the principal Act, poison sellers required a licence from the Pharmaceutical Society’s Council. The 1899 amendment also changed the distance rule for licensing sellers who were not pharmaceutical chemists, reducing it from twenty miles to five miles from the nearest chemist’s open shop.

For sales covered by section 29(b), sellers had to record the buyer’s identity, address and occupation, the stated purpose, quantity and date. They signed the entry and obtained the purchaser’s signature, or noted an inability to write. The amendment limited that paragraph and the signature-authentication rule for correspondence in section 30 to Part I poisons, which included cannabis.

Section 31 required conspicuous poison labels identifying the article and seller. The 1899 amendment added the address of the shop or premises from which the poison was obtained. It also expressly required licensed sellers to produce their sales book for examination on an authorized demand.

Medicines and other limits

Section 36 preserved exceptions concerning compounded medicines, prescriptions, proprietary products and specified professional or commercial dealings. The 1899 amendment altered parts of that section without replacing it wholesale. A claim that every cannabis-containing medicine invariably required the same retail procedure would therefore overstate the law.

Section 33 supplied penalties for unlawful poison sales and breaches of keeping or sale requirements: up to £100 or twelve months’ imprisonment, with or without hard labour. The precise offence and applicable exception remained important.

This was regulation within the colony of Western Australia. The sources do not establish a nationwide cannabis ban, a general offence of possessing cannabis, or the frequency with which these provisions were enforced.^[1][2]