COMEDIAN Wil Anderson has called for the legalisation of medical marijuana and opened up about his seven-year battle with debilitating osteoarthritis.

Now pursuing a career in the US, the Los Angeles-based comic uses medical marijuana to cope with chronic back and hip pain. Cannabis is legal for medical use in California.

The 40-year-old Gruen Transfer host began using the drug regularly after experiencing “massive, serious side effects” with “pretty hardcore” conventional prescription medications.

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News_Image_File: Health battle ... Wil Anderson smokes marijuana daily to cope with chronic back and hip pain. “For me the only thing that truly treats it in a day-to-day way, that I can live my life and go on with it, has been medical marijuana,” he said,

“The fact that in one country I can get a legal medicine that treats my pain but when I go back to my own country I either have to go without that medicine or be a criminal...Certainly for me and my situation it would be a lot easier if there was medical marijuana.”News_Image_File: In pain ... Wil Anderson says medical marijunana is the only thing that helps treat his condition.

Anderson’s osteoarthritis is so severe he’s sometimes literally unable to move. He’s been advised by doctors to delay surgery — a double hip replacement — until the technology and failure rates improve.

“There has not been one moment in seven years when I have been completely without pain,” he revealed. “Sometimes that pain is so debilitating that I can’t walk, I can’t get out of bed.”

Anderson created a stir in June when he was filmed smoking marijuana on the online US show Getting Doug With High. But he laughed off the controversy, saying the public was broadly supportive.

“I don’t think anyone gives a s--t about that,” he said. “Comedian smokes pot? That’s your headline?”News_Image_File: TV comic ... Wil Anderson with Gruen panellists Russel Howcroft and Todd Sampson.

Outside of medical use, Anderson acknowledged the drug has “genuine side effects” particularly for young people and those predisposed to schizophrenia. He said he’d also seen comedian friends “be stoners and blow their careers, so there are a lot of downsides as well.”

But he said Australia has the “highest per capita use of marijuana in the world” so the current laws clearly aren’t working.

According to research published in The Lancet in 2012 cannabis use in Australia is three times the global average.

“Alcohol obviously does a lot more damage to society than marijuana does,” he said.

“So there is part of me that thinks wouldn’t it be better if it was regulated and we could warn people and we could sell it and not make people criminals for chosing a drug?

“I’m a person who believes in the principle … that I’m an adult and as long as what I’m doing isn’t hurting anyone else, then I’m not sure what, of anyone else’s business it is.”

Anderson made the comments in an interview with Switched On to promote Seven’s upcoming comedy special Montreal — Just For Laughs 2014.