Medical cannabis patients are finally able to get high on Australia’s own supply, but is growing locally going to make it easier to get this medicine?

Medifarm’s cannabis grow-house doesn’t smell anywhere near as dank as you might expect. There’s certainly a familiar scent in the air as you walk between the rows of mother plants (genetic stock) in the climate and humidity controlled greenhouse, but it’s subtle.

What’s not as subtle is the pitch from Medifarm’s director, Adam Benjamin.

"Medifarm came to market to help Aussie patients," he told Hack, launching into a spiel about how he was inspired by countries like Israel, Canada and the US.

"We have patients here so we waited for the laws to change, got our licence and now we're growing."

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Whatsapp Medifarm director Adam Benjamin overseeing the medical cannabis crop

The plants in this growhouse aren’t ready for harvest yet - that won’t come for a few more months - but they show the medical cannabis industry has arrived in Australia.

It’s been a long wait for patients though. Since medical cannabis started being legalised three years ago Hack has reported on the delays sick people have faced, how people have had to leave the country for treatment and how parents have faced jail for sourcing medicine for their kids.

It’s hoped that a domestic supply is a solution to some of those problems and that these farms will make the medicine more affordable.

Adam isn’t allowed to say what Medifarm will sell these drugs for but he’s confident it’ll be cheaper than the imported stuff which, until recently, was the only other legal option.

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Whatsapp Medical cannabis plants in Medifarm's Sunshine Coast growhouse

Homegrown medicine

While Medifarm talks the talk, there’s a WA company that’s beaten them to walking the walk. Little Green Pharma sent out the first Australian grown and produced medical cannabis product to patients last year.

Fleta Solomon, the managing director and co-founder of this company, told Hack they’ve had a great response from patients following their first couple of crops and are now growing their third.

We’ve had to navigate uncharted territory and pave the way for the medical cannabis industry in Australia.

It’s not easy though. To compete with the black market medical cannabis suppliers, Little Green Pharma has to sell their product at at loss.

While their losses can be offset by money made exporting products overseas Fleta is banking on demand increasing here so they can lower their overheads.

"There could be 30,000 patients across Australia in the first year or two so it's really then up to whether we have the product and the produce and then educating the community, including specialists and doctors, about prescribing cannabinoid therapies."

We’re currently a long way off that though, only around 3,500 applications have been approved under the special access scheme. The authorised prescriber scheme, a separate access pathway, had given out prescriptions to 473 patients as of early 2019.

'We really need a system overhaul'

While this industry in Australia is very proud of getting up and running, medical cannabis campaigner Lucy Haslam says the approval process patients face is still a mess.

"Unless there's changes at a legislative level around access then it doesn't matter if you have a local supplier, that'll just be exported to other parts of the world and Australian patients will continue to not receive it," she told Hack.

United in Compassion, the charity Lucy is a director of, advocates for better patient access. She founded the group after seeing how much this drug helped her late son, Dan, deal with side effects of chemotherapy.

She says we’ve signed up to the wrong scheme when it comes to legalising medical cannabis.

It’s kind of subjected cannabis to a regulatory limbo. It’s an approved, unapproved medicine.

"It means it will never be able to listed with the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods and therefore subsidised by the Government, so it's always going to be an expensive product."

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Whatsapp Daniel and Lucy Haslam: Dan lost his battle with bowel cancer in 2015 but his campaign for legalisation helped change the laws in Australia.

On Sunday, three years after the drugs act was amended to legalise the growing of medical cannabis and on the fourth anniversary of the death of her son, Lucy launched the #FixDansLaw campaign to highlight these issues.

"Our whole intention was to make medical cannabis available to sick Australians and that isn't the reality of the legislation that we've ended up."

"We really need a system overhaul, a few bandaids here and there aren't working."