He was running late for the plane he was hoping to catch out of Canberra that night and back to his refuge, the farm in Victoria's Otway Ranges. "I don't care who does it, whether it's the government or us, as long as it happens," he said to his adviser as they hurried down the long corridor leading to the Senate entrance of Parliament House. "I know that, but it's important that some of the credit is seen to come back your way, you need to think of that too," the adviser told him, pushing against the heavy brass-handled door to where the government cars were waiting outside. A flood of issues had been landing on his desk at an alarming rate recently - a blur was how he had described it to his party colleagues and supporters. But one issue he had been working hard on since before the craziness began was starting to look promising - an overhaul of the longstanding prohibition on cannabis for medicinal use.

Interactive timeline: Pressure for change grows NSW, Victoria and Queensland had joined forces to begin clinical trials of the drug, BRW rich listers Barry and Joy Lambert had just made a surprise $33 million donation to cannabis research at the University of Sydney and surveys showed the public was largely on side. "I want to be very clear on this, there needs to be a strong line between recreational use and people with genuine medical need," he said, as he presented his plan, although in truth he knew there would always be a grey zone. If it meant a few people on the margins would get access to cannabis so that those in end-stage cancer with intractable nausea would get the treatment they needed, so be it. Like many GPs, his training had taught him that cannabis was a dangerous narcotic that had no place in modern medicine. But his political experience had taught him otherwise, as patient after patient already using the drug illegally presented their compelling stories to him. He had spent hours reading through the 191 submissions that had arrived since the Senate had referred his bill for a regulator of medicinal cannabis to committee for review. Greens leader Richard Di Natale prepares to leave his Parliament House office. Credit:Jay Cronan

The doctors, researchers, support groups and government officials had warned him it wouldn't be easy, but with patients overseas seeing impressive results and a growing body of credible scientific literature, there was an overwhelming case in favour of making the drug available here too, he thought. There is certainly more to learn about medicinal cannabis, but we know more than enough to act now Medical Journal of Australia But nothing happens fast in this building, especially without supporters. Through his role on the joint parliamentary committee on drug law reform he had managed to carefully piece together support for his bill from across the political spectrum, including from some surprising places: conservative Coalition MPs, Labor and even a few government ministers. "We have a big opportunity in front of us, and I'm optimistic - no, I'm confident, yeah, I'll say confident - that if we were to allow this bill to be debated and voted on in the Senate this year it would be passed," he said. But as he looked further into the issue, he discovered a fiendishly complex web of regulations, narcotics laws and international obligations standing in the way. It wasn't politics this time that was blocking reform - it was red tape.

The first and foremost barrier was the Therapeutic Goods Administration, the body responsible for authorising the use of medicines in Australia. To get a medication approved by the TGA required an application that typically cost about $200,000 - not a large sum for a drug company expecting to make millions off a new product. But unlike the unique molecules patented for other commercial drugs, cannabis medicine developed by pharmaceutical companies had a cheap and readily available competitor - plants that grew like weeds in most parts of the country, severely limiting the amount a company could earn selling a commercialised medical version. Extracting the compounds to make oil was also relatively straightforward, and the few companies that had tried to break into the Australian market with products like Sativex had struggled to make an impact against the herbal alternative. To get a drug on to the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods also required significant scientific evidence that could take years to compile locally - years that those who had written the submissions sitting on his desk didn't have. While he was fully supportive of the need for further trials, he could also see the potential for them delaying change. Having studied Tasmania's opium poppy industry, he had decided the best way to get change through quickly was to sidestep the TGA altogether, creating a regulator that could authorise strictly vetted growers and distributors to put together a reliable, stable product that could be prescribed with confidence by doctors. Snapshot of recreational cannabis use

Having watched states and territories across the country, including the ACT, NSW, and Victoria launch their own attempts to help medicinal users, he had formed a firm view that any change needed to happen at the national level. What he didn't want to see was a repeat of the experience in the United States, where cannabis remains illegal federally, but has been approved by 23 states for various uses, including in some states, recreational. "If the federal government doesn't pass national legislation we could end up with this tangled mess of state laws where people don't have any certainty about what the penalties are that apply to them and whether they are still getting access to a known quality dose. All the current state and territory laws currently do is stop people being prosecuted for possession, but they don't deal with supply. "We either treat this as a medicine, or we don't," he said. He was even hoping to hand over presentation of the bill to the government to ensure it was given enough time to be debated properly. But powerful groups were beginning to line up to voice their objections.

"The creation of a new regulator solely to regulate medicinal cannabis has the potential to fragment the regulation of medicines in Australia as well as lead to confusion and unnecessary duplication," Pharmacy Guild of Australia executive director David Quilty said in his submission. "This will introduce an additional level of regulation that is unnecessary; existing provisions for regulating medicinal cannabis products are effective and have been used," Medicines Australia said in theirs. "The bill as currently drafted leaves a number of important legal and practical issues unidentified and/or unresolved, leading to the risk of regulatory gaps, overlapping laws, lack of clarity and … possible inconsistency with other existing laws," Department of Health secretary Martin Bowles warned, as he reeled off a long list of international and domestic obligations that would potentially clash with the bill. "I can understand why someone like Medicines Australia might be opposed," Di Natale said. "It doesn't conform to the model of a traditional pharmaceutical and some people would argue it is a competitor. If you look at the US, there's now emerging evidence that there has been decreasing reliance on pharmaceutical opiates and one consequence of that is a reduction in the number of opiate-related deaths. "What this can do is actually remove the need for pharmaceutical companies to be involved at all - but first we need to get this overarching framework in place and just get this done," he said, frustration starting to build in his voice.

As he gathered his papers and prepared to leave, he looked at the form that had been pressed into his hand earlier that day at an Australian of the Year nomination event. He had always been impressed with the individuals in the community who had managed to turn personal tragedy into something positive, and he thought about Lucy Haslam. He thought about the time he had met the Tamworth mother who had become a tireless campaigner for medical cannabis reform, despite having to watch her son slowly die in front of her. Together she and her son Dan had helped convince NSW Premier Mike Baird to put $9 million into clinical trials of the drug. "Losing a 25-year-old son to bowel cancer, that's enough to make most of us want to crawl into a ball and not want to engage with the world," Di Natale said as he looked at the form. "But the way she has used it to really drive this issue, I am full of admiration for her." He folded the piece of paper carefully in half, tucked it into his carry-on bag, snapped out the handle and rolled towards the waiting cars. Maybe it was people like her, rather than the politicians, who had the greatest chance of driving this change. Less than four kilometres away on the other side of Lake Burley Griffin a university researcher, a businessman and another politician from a different parliament were huddled around a table trying to solve the same problem.

The businessman, Curus Medical managing director Andrew McCrea had heard about an ACT bill that, if passed, would open the doors to medical cannabis use in the territory. He had also heard of Greens MLA Shane Rattenbury's idea to establish a legal cannabis industry within the ACT akin to Tasmania's poppy crops, and liked what he was hearing. Like many of those pushing for change, personal experience had led McCrea to cannabis. His wife, Jane, had been crippled by fibromyalgia, a chronic, debilitating muscle condition that left her with extreme pain in 16 points on her body. "Her life is a misery, she's bedridden mostly," McCrea told those around the table. The doctors had told them they didn't have a cure for her, so he went looking for one himself. His journey had taken him across the globe, to countries where sufferers of similar conditions to Jane's were getting access to a drug that had the potential to reduce her symptoms and pain by up to 80 per cent. He had seen a chance to help his own family and thousands of others. But first he needed to find a state or territory willing to recognise the need for change where he could base his work.

"My assessment is this is the simplest way to get a scheme up and operating quickly to help those in need right now. I don't believe there are any insurmountable issues that anyone has put to me that we can't work out," Rattenbury said. Greens MLA Shane Rattenbury wants to establish a medical cannabis industry in the ACT. Credit:Melissa Adams He too had read the reports about mining companies starting to look at medicinal cannabis as a potential alternative income source and the potential $100 billion size of the global market. "Why shouldn't this be a new industry for the ACT?" he asked. "We talk a lot about the need to diversify the local economy, well, here's an opportunity." But like Di Natale, he too was learning that even when there was broad political and community support, sometimes that wasn't enough.

"While I cannot deny there is mounting overseas evidence to support the use in certain medical conditions, my initial thoughts are that we cannot support this legislation in its current form," Australian Medical Association ACT president Dr Elizabeth Gallagher had written in response to his bill. "Certainly, if medical marijuana is to be made legal it should be in the context of a trial, where the risks and benefits can be quantified, where the doses can be monitored, and the method of delivery can be directed and administered in its safest form. Ideally, we would develop synthetic cannabinoids directed at the therapeutic benefits while bypassing the psychotropic and psychological effects." Rattenbury, too, worried that clinical trials could create years of delay. He agreed with McCrea that there was enough clinical evidence already, it just needed to be collated and presented. The academic from the University of Canberra explained that rather than duplicate the trials planned for NSW, the research collaboration Curus was proposing would draw together existing scientific evidence and literature that would give policy makers, doctors and the community the reassurance they needed to allow cannabis into the hands of patients. Rattenbury picked up a Medical Journal of Australia article sitting on the office table and reread the two paragraphs he had circled earlier in yellow highlighter:

"A civilised and compassionate country that supports evidence-based medicine and policy should acknowledge that medicinal cannabis is acceptably effective and safe, and probably also cost-effective. Loading "There is certainly more to learn about medicinal cannabis, but we know more than enough to act now," it said. He stared at the page and placed it back on the table. If only it was that simple.