This week, I had the honour of joining Premier Daniel Andrews to announce the Victorian Government would legalise access to locally manufactured medicinal cannabis products for use in exceptional circumstances from 2017. This is an Australian first.

We're taking steps to change the law because no family should have to choose between breaking the law and watching their loved ones suffer.

The Victorian Law Reform Commission's Report on Medicinal Cannabis, tabled in Parliament this week, includes 42 recommendations and addresses key issues including cultivation, manufacture and supply of high quality medicinal cannabis products and patient eligibility.

The government fully accepts 40 of the commission's recommendations, and accepts two recommendations in principle. A key step to enabling access to medicinal cannabis will be to establish cultivation and manufacturing industries in Victoria to support an ongoing, reliable and regulated supply of medicinal cannabis for patients. 

The Department of Economic Development, Jobs, Transport and Resources will be given new regulatory functions to license growers to cultivate cannabis for the purpose of medicinal cannabis. The commission also recommends that eligibility for the scheme be based on symptoms like severe muscle spasms or severe pain resulting from multiple sclerosis, severe pain, nausea, vomiting or wasting arising from cancer or HIV/AIDS, severe seizures resulting from epileptic conditions and severe chronic pain. 

As a priority, the government will provide access to medicinal cannabis for children with severe epilepsy in early 2017. This is good policy, which I believe will help ease the suffering of thousands of Victorians.

- Jaala Pulford, Western Victoria

WE HAVE been seeing and hearing a lot about the despicable destruction of ancient and wonderful native vegetation in connection with the almost inconceivable duplication of the Western Hwy between Ballarat and Ararat. 

As appalling as this destruction is, the project itself has other major environmental impacts, namely - providing for a massive increase in road transport at the cost of investment in rail and facilitating the movement of vast quantities of goods of dubious community and economic value - more consumer products that we really don't need. 

In any sense of looking at sustainability and grappling with the impacts of climate change, the Western Highway duplication project is a huge mistake. Personally, I will find it hard to ever travel that road again.

- Hedley Thomson, Canadian

THE government's focus on mental health, and calls for more services, are encouraging. But more of the same will not improve the situation.

Recent studies confirm that the public is right to believe that mental health problems are caused not by chemical imbalances and genetic predispositions, as the drug companies and a dwindling number of psychiatrists claim, but primarily by factors like poverty, stress, violence, child abuse, etc.

Services rely too much on anti-depressants and anti-psychotics, which have repeatedly been shown to be no more effective than placebo for most recipients. These drugs, like the anti-ADHD drugs given to more and more Australian kids, have dangerous adverse effects. 

We urgently need to listen to service users and to the research and then reallocate funding from relatively ineffective drugs and hospitals towards more humane, evidence-based and safe social and psychological approaches. 

- Professor John Read, Psychological Sciences, Swinburne University of Technology