What have you been charged with?

1.1The document in your hand

Start here

The Court Attendance Notice, usually called the CAN, is the document that formally charges you with an offence and requires you to appear in court. It is not optional, it is not an invitation, and ignoring it will not make the charge go away. If you do not appear on the date listed, the court can deal with your matter without you, and if you were on bail a warrant can be issued for your arrest.

There are two ways you will have received it. If police charged you at the station or in the field, you were handed a CAN on the spot, sometimes with bail conditions attached. If police investigated first and decided to charge later, a Future CAN arrived by post or was served on you personally, often weeks after the incident. The document is the same either way and it carries the same obligation to attend.

Keep the original. Photograph every page with your phone the day you receive it. You will need to refer to it in every lesson of this module, and you will need to quote details from it if you write to police.

Legal basis: Criminal Procedure Act 1986 (NSW) ss 172 to 177 (commencement of proceedings by court attendance notice). This is a summary for general understanding. The full provisions are more detailed and may not apply in all circumstances.

1.2Reading the notice field by field

The layout

The layout varies slightly between police commands, but the fields are the same. Below is a sample notice. It is for a different offence, a drink driving charge, and the person is fictional, but the form is the one you are holding. The field this lesson is about, the offence and the law part, is highlighted.

The diagram below maps every field on the notice to the lesson in this module that deals with it.

Court. The Local Court you must attend. It is usually the one closest to where the offence occurred, not the one closest to where you live. If the courthouse is a long way from you, Lesson 2 explains what you can and cannot do about that.

Date and time. Your first court date. For most people it is a mention, which Lesson 2 explains. Nothing on the notice tells you that, so read Lesson 2 before you assume anything about what will happen that day.

H number and officer in charge. The police file reference and the officer who investigated and charged you. Lesson 3 covers both and why they matter.

Offence and law part. The name of the charge and the section of the Act it comes from. This is the field this lesson is about, and it is the one to check first.

Short particulars. A one or two line summary of what police say you did: the date, the place, and the drug. The full version is the facts sheet, which Lesson 4 deals with.

Bail. Whether you were released on bail and on what conditions, or whether no bail was required. If there are conditions listed here, you are already bound by them, and breaching one is a separate offence.

1.3What you are actually accused of

The charge

This course is about the offence of Possess Prohibited Drug under section 10(1) of the Drug Misuse and Trafficking Act 1985 (NSW). Your CAN should say s 10(1), and it should name that Act. If it says something else, stop and read the next section before going any further.

The offence has three parts, and the prosecution has to prove all three. First, that the substance was a prohibited drug. Prohibited drugs are listed in Schedule 1 of the Act, and the list runs from cannabis through MDMA, cocaine, methylamphetamine and heroin to many substances you will not have heard of. Police usually establish this by a certificate of analysis from the laboratory, though for small matters they sometimes rely on the officer's observation and your own admission. Second, that you had the drug in your possession. Possession in law means more than the drug being near you. It means you knew it was there, you knew what it was or were aware it was likely to be a drug, and you had physical custody or control of it. Third, that you had no lawful authority to possess it, which for street drugs is rarely in dispute.

The reason the elements matter to a self-represented person is that they tell you what a real defence would look like and, just as importantly, what one would not. Lesson 8 goes through this properly. For now, understand that "it wasn't mine" and "I didn't know it was in the bag" are arguments about possession, and they are the arguments that occasionally succeed. "I only had a little bit" and "everyone was doing it" are not defences to anything. They are matters for sentence, and Module 3 shows you how to use them there.

The maximum penalty is two years imprisonment, a fine of 20 penalty units, which is currently $2,200, or both. That is the ceiling the law sets for the worst version of the offence. Lesson 6 explains why almost nobody at the lower end of this charge receives anything near it, and what people in your position actually do receive.

Legal basis: Drug Misuse and Trafficking Act 1985 (NSW) s 10(1) and Schedule 1; s 21 (penalty for summary offences); Crimes (Sentencing Procedure) Act 1999 (NSW) s 17 (value of a penalty unit). Possession as explained in cases including He Kaw Teh v The Queen (1985) 157 CLR 523. This is a summary for general understanding. The full provisions are more detailed and may not apply in all circumstances.

1.4Charges commonly laid alongside it

Related charges

Two other charges regularly appear on the same notice. Neither changes your plan much on its own, but both need to be dealt with.

Possess equipment for administration of prohibited drug, s 11(1). Pipes, bongs, syringes not obtained lawfully, scales in some cases, and other implements found at the same time. It carries the same maximum penalty as s 10(1). If you are charged with both, the court will usually deal with them together and the preparation in this course covers both.

Drive with illicit drug present in blood or oral fluid, Road Transport Act 2013 s 111. If you were pulled over and tested, this may appear as well. It is a traffic offence with its own disqualification rules and it is not covered by this course. Read the separate guide on that offence before your court date, because the licence consequences run on a different track from the drug charge.

Legal basis: Drug Misuse and Trafficking Act 1985 (NSW) ss 11, 25, 29; Road Transport Act 2013 (NSW) s 111. This is a summary for general understanding. The full provisions are more detailed and may not apply in all circumstances.

1.5Could this have been dealt with without a charge?

Diversion

Not everyone found with a small quantity of a drug ends up in court. NSW police have two diversion options for personal-use quantities, and knowing about them matters even after you have been charged, because they are one of the things you can raise when you write to police in Lesson 5.

The Cannabis Cautioning Scheme has operated since 2000. It allows police to issue a formal caution instead of a charge to an adult found with up to 15 grams of cannabis for personal use, provided the person admits the offence, has no prior drug or violence convictions, and has not already been cautioned twice. The Early Drug Diversion Initiative, which began in February 2024, extends a similar idea to other drugs. It allows police to issue a $400 penalty notice, with the option of completing a health intervention instead of paying, for possession of a small quantity of a prohibited drug for personal use. A person can receive up to two of these. Neither scheme is a right. Both depend on police discretion, and police can decide to charge instead.

If your quantity was small, you have no relevant history, and you were cooperative, it is fair to ask why you were charged rather than diverted. Sometimes the answer is that the drug or quantity fell outside the scheme, sometimes it is that you declined to admit the offence at the time, and sometimes there is no good answer. Lesson 5 shows you how to put that question to police in writing, in the form of a request that the charge be withdrawn in favour of a caution or penalty notice. It does not always work, but it costs nothing and it is the single most useful thing a first-time offender with a small quantity can do before court.

Legal basis: Cannabis Cautioning Scheme (NSW Police Force policy under the Drug Misuse and Trafficking Act 1985 (NSW)); Early Drug Diversion Initiative, Drug Misuse and Trafficking Act 1985 (NSW) s 10 penalty notice provisions as inserted in 2023 and commencing February 2024. Requires principal review before release: confirm current quantity thresholds and eligibility criteria. This is a summary for general understanding.

1.6What this course will take you through

Your next step

By the time you finish this course you will understand what the charge means legally, what the Judge weighs when deciding your outcome, what documents you need to prepare, how to conduct yourself in court, and what your result means for your life going forward.

Work through it in order. Each module builds on the one before it. Module 1 gets you through the paperwork and your first contact with police. Module 2 explains the law and the range of outcomes so that you can make the plea decision properly. Module 3 is the preparation: references, apology letter, programs and submissions. Module 4 is the day itself. Module 5 is what to do with the result.

If your court date is within the next few days, read Lesson 2 and Lesson 11 today, attend court, and ask for an adjournment using the words in Lesson 2. Then come back and work through the rest with the time you have gained.