The Leaf March - April 2017 | Page 14

Deregistered and Defiant – All in The Public Interest
In 2003 the New South Wales( NSW) Government was going to introduce legislation to allow a trial of medicinal cannabis. Australian researchers had been lobbying the government for two very different schemes. Most favoured transforming cannabis into a pharmaceutical, but one doctor was determined to treat cannabis as a medicinal herb and threatened that if the government locked in a trial with a big pharmaceutical company, he would run his own illegal trial. He was already developing high potency strains of cannabis that could have been tested on the thousands of medicinal cannabis users.
Nearly a decade-and-a-half later, in 2017, and that very same doctor“… is permanently prohibited from supplying or administering cannabis or any of its derivatives to any person for the treatment, or purported treatment, of cancer”. So, what happened?
Dr Andrew Katelaris was a resident medical officer at North Shore Private Hospital in Sydney, Australia in 2003. A fervent campaigner who wanted cannabis to become a low-cost, herbal medicine. He envisaged patients growing their own, but his main goal was to become a licensed cannabis supplier, developing potent strains of plants. In 2002 he convinced the NSW government to grant him the first licence to grow and test cannabis for differences in‘ drug’ content with cooperation of Southern Cross University( Lismore) under an exemption from the Drug Misuse and Trafficking Act.
The research revealed some startling results, with pesticide and herbicide contamination and enormous variation in strength. In 1995 Dr Katelaris had begun growing one of the nation’ s first hemp research crops at Quirindi in northern NSW. At that time, he had been investigating the plant’ s fibre for use in the fabrics and construction industries.
Dr Katelaris never had permission to test‘ street’ cannabis and in 2003 his growing licence was revoked after police declared his property a security risk( a large shed was not padlocked), a decision that wasn’ t revoked despite many letters of support from European textiles companies impressed with the potential for the Australian-grown crop. Dr Katelaris was astounded, his was meant to be a first licence, a photo-chemical survey into the variability of what was available and he had wanted to rapidly follow up with producing quality cannabis and setting up trials, so desperately required. Katelaris was on the phone to the government thereafter, trying to re-establish the cannabis trial, but he was now regarded as a maverick in the science community. In October 2003, the United States government took out patent # 6,630,507 on cannabinoid compounds in cannabis due to their antioxidant and neuro-protective properties. Dr Katelaris recalled being contacted by a 78- year-old patient after he’ d appeared on ABC TV’ s Catalyst program, in 2003, discussing the medical use of cannabis.“ The patient was so desperate for help that she found my name in the White Pages and rang me at home”, he said. The woman was wheelchair bound and in chronic pain and a pain management clinic prescribed morphine, which caused severe constipation, unsteadiness and confusion.“ She had already tried cannabis in cookies, which had provided benefit but … she wasn’ t able to smoke the herb”, Dr Katelaris said.“ I