Australia - Proponents Argue The Good Use Of Cannabis Oil For Medical Conditions

Small "cannabis clubs" are popping up across NSW as more people seek to use the drugs for medical purposes and pressure builds across the country to allow its legal use. But doctors and advocates warn that patients are essentially operating in a Wild West environment without the medical support and information they need. NSW has set up a committee to establish a trial of cannabis for terminally ill patients, while Victoria introduced a bill last week to make it easier to conduct such trials

 

But community groups are already experimenting with different strains of the drug to treat a range of conditions, connecting growers, often via social media, with people suffering from problems such as severe forms of childhood epilepsy and cancer-related nausea. However, the lack of medical research has led to confusion about what conditions the drug can and cannot treat – with many proponents arguing it should be used to stave off all illnesses including cancer and infections.

And the groups say they are hampered by the need to evade police, cannabis thieves who raid their plots to use the drug for recreational purposes and difficulty accessing strains that are lower in the psychoactive chemical THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) and higher in CBD (cannibidiol), which is thought to carry much of the medicinal benefits of the drug and is approved in the US for the treatment of a severe form of epilepsy called Dravet Syndrome.

Andrew Katelaris, a doctor who has been convicted for growing cannabis for medical purposes and has lost his medical registration over the issue, said politicians are only paying "lip service" to ensuring critically ill people could attempt to try the drug. Dr Katelaris recently undertook a trial using special cannabis from Spain that is high in CBD. "We put a call out on Facebook looking for 12 kids who had been given up on by the medical system, and we got about 1200 [applying]," he said.

All 12 had seen significant improvement in their conditions, with reduced seizures and improved activity. But his supply of the drug is running out. "We are in crisis now as other forms of cannabis don't work as well," he said. "It's just heart-breaking to see these kids who were going forward being dragged back down." Dr Katelaris said he had been using a plot in the country to grow the cannabis, but it had been raided by thieves. He now believes the only solution is to teach individual families of children with conditions such as Dravet Syndrome to grow small amounts of cannabis and turn it into medicinal oil.

Central coast mother Jaylene Siery said she felt like she was being pushed into breaking the law and growing cannabis herself. When her 2 1/2-month-old daughter Larisa began using the oil, her seizures dropped from between 50 and 60 a day to about five. But the quality and availability of the oil fluctuated after a police raid on one high-profile grower. "Without her medicine she was having more seizures again and I know eventually she would die," she said. "It's going to push me and her father into doing something illegal, but anyone in our situation would do anything they could for their child."