Medicinal marijuana SA’s chance to create new export industry, says Ken Cole
WITH changing laws and public opinion on medicinal marijuana, now’s the time to begin a new export industry, says Ken Cole. The former Adelaide 36ers coach should know — he sold it for years.
- Importing of medicinal marijuana given green light in Australia
- Outcry over police raid on SA medicinal cannabis producer’s home
- Legal marijuana business plan for Holden site
- Medical marijuana gets overwhelming support from SA voters
- Turnbull urges doctors to apply to import medicinal cannabis
- Why we have a need for weed
HE supplied 14,000 patients with medicinal cannabis from his downtown San Diego dispensary, now basketball legend Ken Cole is putting pressure on all levels of government not to squander its “golden opportunity”.
The Adelaide 36ers’ 1986 championship-winning coach says allowing the bulk importation of medicinal cannabis is the “only way forward” in the short-term, until testing and growing regimes can be set up in South Australia.
As revealed in The Advertiser, the Federal Government announced it would allow the importation and storage of medicinal cannabis — a move heralded as a “welcome step” by University of Sydney cannabinoid therapeutics researcher Associate Professor David Allsop.
Mr Cole, 73, said a meticulous approach to product quality, medical research and testing was needed for SA’s medicinal cannabis industry to live up to its potential and “tramp all over the black market”.
“Everywhere I played and coached basketball I won, and the reason I’ve always been successful is because of my attention to detail — I don’t screw up, I think of all the little things,” he said.
“And that’s what you’ve got to do here, get all the little things right — how to test it, how to store it, how to grow it and how to distribute it.
“If we do this the right way, document every step and run regular blood tests on people, within 24 months we’d have a medical study like no one has ever done.”
Mr Cole, who operated his San Diego dispensary for two and a half years before it was shut down during a federal crackdown, smokes an ounce of cannabis each week at his home in the US to reduce nausea brought on by his terminal bone cancer and diabetes.
He said allowing patients with painful and chronic illnesses to access medicinal cannabis was significant, but only the tip of the iceberg.
“Demand for medical marijuana will exceed all expectations,” he said.
“When you talk about the young kids with epilepsy and incurable conditions who need cannabis oil, you’re only talking about 10 per cent of the people who will benefit from this.”
Mr Cole met with SA Industry Minister Kyam Maher last week during his fleeting visit to Adelaide to support former 36ers boss Ben Fitzsimons’s push to set up a medicinal cannabis hub at Holden’s Elizabeth plant.
“We can become one of the biggest exporters of high quality medical marijuana to the world,” Mr Cole said.
“The Holden facility has the capacity to have its own testing laboratory and training facility in there. It can be a world leader in the industry.”
Mr Cole said he was currently looking to set up a legal dispensary in San Diego as a “model” of how Mr Fitzsimons’s idea might come to fruition.
“Ben would get six-to-eight cameras set up in there and at the press of a button show everyone how a dispensary operates — how we verify medical certificates, store the medical marijuana, our security processes,” he said.
Mr Maher welcomed the Federal Government announcement, but said there were still questions around how Australian companies could obtain licences to cultivate and manufacture medicinal cannabis.