2015 was a big year for weed in Australia, with medicinal use and bizarre sloth-starring anti-drug campaigns taking centre stage.

If you didn't know, cannabis still stands as the most widely used drug in the country, with 35% of Australians over the age of 14 reporting they had consumed it at least once, according to the Australian National Drugs Strategy Household Survey in 2013, but that doesn't mean it's anywhere near legal.

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Australia is still pretty strict on lighting up joints for personal use. Currently, the use, sale, growth and possession of cannabis is illegal across Australia, but is decriminalised for minor offences in South Australia, the Northern Territory and the Australian Capital Territory.

Over in the U.S., legalising weed for recreational purposes has dominated the conversation, but Australia's populace still appears to not be too keen, with 56.8% saying such use should remain illegal. That is compared to 31.8% who want to see the drug legalised for recreational use, according to data compiled by market research firm, Roy Morgan.

Medicinal use gets Aussies on side however, with 91% indicating their support, per Roy Morgan.

With all this in mind, let's take a look back at how Australia dealt with cannabis in 2015.

Australia is finally getting medicinal cannabis right

Australia's government is getting it together on medical cannabis. In December, it announced plans to introduce a national licensing scheme for the cultivation of marijuana for medicinal and scientific purposes in 2016.

The federal government followed the lead of Victoria and New South Wales — both states announced medicinal cannabis trials in 2015 for seriously ill patients and those with epilepsy.

Image: Corbis

Leading the charge, however, was the external territory of Norfolk Island, which gave cannabis producer AusCann a license to grow the plant for medicinal purposes in May, 2015. AusCann is set to list on the Australian share market in early 2016, so it's a serious business.

The country wants to innovate in cannabis research

One state in Australia really wants to step it up when it comes to cannabis research. As part of a medicinal cannabis trial announced in New South Wales, researchers at the Sydney Children's Hospital Network will team up with British based pharmaceutical company, GW Pharmaceuticals.

The trial will focus on cannabinoid cannibidivarin (CBDV), a molecule in cannabis that has shown encouraging effects as an anti-convulsant. It's been tested on adults, and doesn't produce any psychoactive effects.

Meanwhile, Australian medical cannabis company MMJ PhytoTech Limited sold their first cannabis pills in August, albeit only in Europe via a Swiss-based subsidiary, Satifarm. These pills are free of the psychoactive ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), with the active ingredient, cannabidiol (CBD), shown to help patients suffering from cancer, anxiety and epilepsy, according to the company.

Police are still going to police, OK?

One thing remained true in 2015: Australian police will go to town when it comes to making examples of those caught growing or selling pot.

In November, New South Wales police set a marijuana crop larger than a football field on fire, while shutting down a 653-plant hydroponic setup in Sydney in the same month. When it comes to commercial quantities of cannabis, police won't let up — and they're happy to publicise it, too.

Other times, they'll just embarrass users they catch on social media, like Western Australia's Murdoch police did in May.

Are ur Saturdays hectic like this!!! To do list located at search warrant in Cooby. #MurdochLPT3 pic.twitter.com/KdpMbdEYMq — Murdoch Police (@MurdochPol) April 30, 2015

Stoner Sloth misses the mark, by a lot

Can you think of an anti-drug message that has ever been as widely ridiculed as Stoner Sloth?

The online campaign telling young people to stop getting high was commissioned by the New South Wales Department of Premier and Cabinet (DPC) in November, before gaining notoriety in December when it was picked up by every single person on the Internet.

Even the premier, Mike Baird, distanced himself from the ads.

Just saw the #StonerSloth ads. Not sure where NSW Gov's ad guys found Chewbaccas siblings, but those videos are... Quite something. — Mike Baird (@mikebairdMP) December 19, 2015

The ad agency behind the campaign, Saatchi & Saatchi, defended the advertisements and the A$500,000 (US$364,300) spent on them. "The audience is not for adults or long-term cannabis users," it told Fairfax Media.

Stoner Sloth "is planned to run until early in the new year,” according to an emailed statement by the DPC, but with the campaign going viral for all the wrong reasons — spawning a glut of parodies — you'd think the New South Wales government would try a different strategy in 2016.