How a script for medicinal cannabis ended a 27-year health battle
Partner of Australian rugby league Immortal Andrew Johns, Kate Kendall, had a positive experience using cannabis prescribed by her doctor. But while the battle for medicinal use has been won, why is the quest for full legalisation running out of puff?
You can now listen to The Australian's articles. Give us your feedback.
Around the bends that signify the start of the moneyed tip of Sydney’s Northern Beaches, and into an evening dinner party. A backyard affair. As expected, and fed to Instagram – architecture that is broody and angular, set against a lushly woven landscape of palms, pool, fire pit. The 40 or so guests appear to each encircle 50 years. It would make sense: this a celebration marking a half-century.
An alliance of men huddles in open shirts as women sweep the grass in lengthy, colourful silks. A face familiar from film and TV holds court beneath the outstretched arms of a heavy-set fig tree, talking about a recent European sojourn.
My wife’s professional connections have landed us here – a long table dinner, adults only. Garish “Mediterranean” crockery (that likely cost more than it should) cradles gently charred whole fish and hunks of succulent lamb. An accompanying string of salads comes lifted from colourful cookbooks favoured by interior designers while dessert is an unexpected nod to an earlier Australia. “He loves butter cake but he’ll never bloody admit it,” shrieks the party’s co-host, who we’ll call Suz.
It’s all rather fun and familiar – a buoyant late summer gathering not far removed from any other celebration marking a notable birthday. Except, that is, for the amount of cannabis being consumed. Tetrahydrocannabinol or THC – the stuff that gets you high – is being openly smoked, eaten, dropped.
The actor’s regular words are regularly interrupted by hits on what he later describes as a “dab pen”. It’s legal. He holds a medical prescription and orders THC cartridges (which screw into a portable mini vaporiser) via an online dispensary.
Suz and her husband, the birthday boy, also hold prescriptions.
“It was to sleep better at the start … I mean, we’d smoked our way through uni – we weren’t new to weed.”
Suz’s speaking voice is a match for her loud, flame-red hair. In her forties, she works in “a finance related field” – an industry, she says, that affords her a “silly” Sydney mortgage and the prescriptions she’s more than happy to freely, if anonymously, discuss.
“That’s the thing with this medical stuff – it’s not cheap. Oils are around $200 [for 30ml], the flower we get is around $18 a gram and we get it in 10-gram packs, and the edibles, to be honest, I’ve totally forgotten what we pay for them but they’re hard to get.
Professional stress drove waves of insomnia. Suz initially medicated with “all the pams – diazepam, temazepam. I didn’t like the effects, I became a zombie and I just thought, ‘F. k it, I’ve got some friends who’ve got [cannabis] prescriptions, I’ll give it a go’.”
She finds the drug soothing – “Yeah, it’s better for me.” And she openly gets high? “With friends and the hubby – you see us, no one’s out of control, no one’s f. ked up.”
I witnessed a similar caravan of cannabis a while ago, when regularly flying for work hitched to Los Angeles’ entertainment industry. It was a decade on from California’s 1996 decision to become the first US state to establish a medical marijuana market and it appeared, to this outsider, that near every Los Angelino was a card-carrying consumer of prescribed pot.
California’s medicinal years eventually gave way to legal recreational cannabis in 2016 – a match for early adopters Colorado and Washington and the now 24 US states that have passed laws that drive a domestic recreational weed industry conservatively forecast to hit AUD$65 billion in annual retail sales by 2028.
Canada opened to recreational cannabis in October 2018, while earlier this year Germany legalised possession for personal use – the largest European Union nation to do so. It’s now one of 19 countries to have legalised or decriminalised the use of adult-use, recreational marijuana. But is this Australia’s move?
Weed, to sling certain slang, first landed here as hemp seeds aboard the First Fleet in 1788. The botanist Joseph Banks was eager to see an industry sewn into the new lands surrounding Botany Bay with imported Indian strains thought to have eventually brought THC and Australia’s first highs during the 1800s, a period that saw consumption largely framed by broad medical use in the treatment of tetanus, cholera, mental illness, rabies, rheumatism – even asthma and bronchitis.
The plant’s heady scent was said to have regularly accompanied gatherings at Melbourne’s infamous Yorick Club; Marcus Clarke, a founding member and author of 1870’s For The Term Of His Natural Life, was a known user who openly lent on the drug as a writing aid.
Australia signed the 1925 Geneva Convention On Opium And Other Drugs – effectively curtailing use and a move aligned to exported American messaging of the time, arguably best exemplified by the 1936 anti-cannabis film Reefer Madness. The ’60s and ’70s then saw the drug’s central role in various cultural shifts and debates about national drug policy.
The most recent consumption figures detailed in the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare’s National Drug Strategy Household survey show that marijuana is the country’s most used illicit drug (41 per cent of those over the age of 14 reported to have used cannabis in their lifetime; 11.5 per cent reported using it the 12 months prior).
Scripts issued for medicinal cannabis, which was legalised in 2016, have recently climbed beyond a million; 316,879 were penned in 2022 compared to 292 in 2018, according to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA).
Kate Kendall’s script landed at the same time as Sydney’s first Covid lockdowns. A successful fitness entrepreneur and yoga instructor, Kendall adopted the drug to help combat an eating disorder she’d battled for 27 years.
“It softened the whole experience,” reflects the 43-year-old. “I had tried to treat [the disorder] many times before with a lot of talk therapy and I only ever got so far.” As a new mother, her daughter became the acute motivation for getting well. “It had become really painful for me because she was a few years old and I really started to become concerned about what I was modelling for her as a parent.”
Kendall, the partner of Australian rugby league Immortal Andrew Johns, adopted a new and layered approach to her recovery from bulimia, restricted eating and what was ultimately a desire to control. It meant working a 12-step program, engaging an eating disorder coach and dietitian. She’d heard cannabis could act as a further “ally” – used to quell invasive anxiety attached to erroneous thoughts about eating.
“I had trouble sitting with that feeling of fullness, which is why I tended to restrict a lot … So, I had a session with a doctor who was prescribing marijuana as I’d heard that it could help release the tension. I had my practices [meditation, yoga, breath work], and god knows where I’d be without them, but I needed mega support with this.”
Kendall would orally consume drops of cannabis oil prior to a nightly meal – the most confronting of a given day. “I’d take it an hour before eating, and just sit with it and let it come over me and I’d relax – the cannabis softened the anxiety and the overall experience; it relaxed my ‘over controller’ and my body felt more at ease and more welcoming to food; more OK with saying yes to the meal as opposed to freaking out, restricting or rejecting it.”
Kendall used cannabis for six months. “I now have a relaxed experience with food most of the time and I don’t feel the need to use it.”
Marijuana is arguably on the march. At the very least, it’s a talking point that’s moved beyond backrooms and the bottom of the garden.
Members of the Legalise Cannabis Party now occupy seats in upper parliamentary houses of Victoria, NSW and Western Australia. Upscale clinics that both prescribe and distribute medicinal cannabis have opened in the Australian suburbs, while social media platforms feed neatly worded plugs for “plant-based“ medical outfits.
The 2019 NDHS survey marked the first time since it began in 1985 that more Australians supported the legalisation of cannabis than opposed it. This continued in the most recent document, released this February, with support for cannabis legalisation increasing to 45 per cent (up from 25 per cent in 2010), with an unprecedented 80 per cent of respondents believing cannabis possession should not be a criminal offence.
According to the Parliamentary Budget Office, legalisation would generate more than $28 billion in government revenue in the first decade – drawn from GST, company tax and a 15 per cent sales tax.
Greens Senator David Shoebridge is the eager driver of the federal political debate about the drug and questions regarding its possible legal future. Reform, he bluntly tells The Weekend Australian Magazine, is inevitable: “It’s a matter of when, not if.”
It was last August that Shoebridge put forward the Greens’ Legalising Cannabis Bill to the Senate Legal and Constitutional Affairs Committee – seeking to establish a national cannabis licensing scheme and regulator to oversee the commercial growth and sale of certain strains. It presented a non-corporatised approach to the legal sale of the drug via dispensaries and so-called cannabis co-operatives peddling a suite of products – akin to the Canadian model. The Bill also called for households to be able to legally grow up to six marijuana plants. Announcement of the Bill steered the week’s news feed. Quieter was this June’s response – a rejection by the committee, which cited concerns that “the legalisation of cannabis for adult recreational use would create as many, if not more, problems than the bill is attempting to resolve.”
Shoebridge returned serve: “Millions of Australians want this. Millions more people around the world already have this and again, we see the Labor Party and the Coalition just say ‘no’ … This is why people are so sick of politics as usual, controlled by a handful of well-connected corporate interests … If we want to see evidence-based and human-centred reforms like this, we will need to break the stranglehold of politics as usual.”
The senator hasn’t given up, stating in his dissenting report: “The Greens will proceed with this Bill and we will present it to the parliament for a vote.”
Prime Minster Anthony Albanese refuses to openly engage on the matter. Pushed by 3AW’s Neil Mitchell last December about his own cannabis use, Albanese pleaded “the fifth”. Asked directly in the same interview whether he supported legalisation, he was quick to state: “No … Well, that’s a matter for the states … That is not the subject of any of our policy deliberations. I have a big job. I’m not looking to run state governments as well.”
Asked to discuss drug reform for this article, the Prime Minister’s Office directed this publication to the office of Attorney-General Mark Dreyfus. “Whether or not drug use is criminalised is essentially an issue for state criminal law,” a spokesperson for the Attorney-General told The Weekend Australian Magazine. “The Commonwealth has no plans for legislation on this issue.”
Such words outline a sense of federal finality. “You’re joking if you think this is going to travel anywhere or secure any traction,” offers a government source close to the PM. “There’s never going to be a conscience vote on it – it just wouldn’t happen. [The PM] is highly conservative and vehemently opposed to drugs. He does not support legalising drugs.”
In 2019 the now NSW Premier Chris Minns seemed to call time on the criminalisation of cannabis. As the state’s then shadow transport minister, Minns told a gathering of party members it was “time for Labor to have a big debate that includes a commitment to legalising this drug … The bottom line is that we can’t make it go away, but we can make it safer, less potent and less criminal.”
Minns continued: “I’ve got no problem saying to the community that it is risky and bad for your health. However, there are many things that are bad for your health that the state does not ban.” NSW Housing Minister Rose Jackson was present during Minns’ 2019 pronouncement and expressed support for legalisation in her maiden speech to parliament the same year: “You cannot believe alcohol and cigarettes should be legal and not marijuana.”
Since then, things have changed, with Minns walking back his 2019 comments. “[His comments] were made well before prescriptions for medicinal cannabis were as widely available as they are today,” says a spokesman. “In light of that, the views of the Premier have changed … There is no proposal to introduce new laws.” The NSW Premier’s office did not respond to requests for interview.
In the 2023 NSW election the first candidate from the Legalise Cannabis NSW party, Jeremy Buckingham, was elected to the Upper House. He chaired an inquiry into the impact of the regulatory framework for cannabis in NSW in August this year which is yet to report.
The Minns Government will keep a pre-election promise to hold a broader 2024 drug summit – the first in NSW since 1999 – across four days later this year, chiefly in response to the ice crisis. It’s unclear how much cannabis reform will feature in the debate.
Says Shoebridge. “The expansion of the medicinal cannabis market in Australia has been exponential and there would be few families that didn’t know somebody who had either considered or had access to medicinal cannabis.
”Any political party that says no to legalising cannabis in the middle of 2024 is going to look like they belong in the 1950s. If Labor wants to confirm that attitude, particularly amongst young people, I think that’ll be an electoral mistake for them.”
Victoria, as ever, is another story. The state’s Premier Jacinta Allan has acknowledged her previous use of cannabis, while the Victorian Treasurer Tim Pallas has vocalised support for a health-led response to cannabis reform.
“I don’t want to get too far ahead of myself about what revenue might be available, or indeed whether there is a change in policy,” Pallas said last November. “But it is important to deal with the crossbench in the other house with some respect. They’ve sought dialogue around these matters and they’ll get it.”
It’s music to the ears of Rachel Payne, whose Legalise Cannabis Party was registered just weeks prior to the 2022 state election – securing the fourth highest vote outside of the majors and landing two upper house seats for herself and state party colleague David Ettershank.
“We had $20,000 to run a campaign – so it was not about any of the candidates, this was about the core issue,” she says. “I’ve always advocated for cannabis reform because I think it’s just ridiculous, as the law currently stands, that I can have a glass of wine at night but I’m stigmatised if I have a joint.”
Payne holds a prescription. “I’ve suffered badly with period pain, endo [endometriosis] pain – so for me it’s been therapeutic. But my brain is constantly ticking and I’ve also found that cannabis helps me wind down.”
In June 2023 Payne and Ettershank, along with interstate Legalise Cannabis counterparts – Jeremy Buckingham in NSW and WA’s Dr Brian Walker – introduced bills to legalise marijuana for personal use. It was the first time the same bill was tabled in three states on the same day. The proposed reforms largely mirrored moves already enacted in the ACT where the drug was decriminalised in 2020; adults there can legally possess up to 50g of dried cannabis or up to 150g of fresh cannabis and to grow up to two cannabis plants per person (a maximum of four plants per household) and use cannabis within a household.
While the earlier bills failed to garner support, Payne has been encouraged by the premier’s support for her bid to alter driving laws for medicinal patients – meaning it would no longer be an offence for an unimpaired driver to have THC in their system. The closed circuit trial will be conducted in partnership with Swinburne University next month.
“For the first six weeks we were the butt of everyone’s jokes – ‘This debate’s boring, got any edibles?’… But I think they realised pretty quickly that we’ve taken the bull by the reins, so to speak, we’ve thought, ‘We’re only here for four years, how can we get this done?’”
Pallas is “one of the more supportive ministers”, Payne says. “You’d be amazed at how many of my colleagues, from all sides of politics, tell me all about their experiences consuming cannabis.” She and her party favour a social-equity model over the corporate approach seen in US states such as Colorado. “Look, [legalisation] is going to take a really good regulatory model,” she concedes. “We know that Australia is conservative and the model that we land on will be unique and will be cherrypicked from what has worked in other jurisdictions and also reflecting on what hasn’t worked.”
The US approach – a state-by-state rollout – has led to confusion and, in some areas, has done little to diminish the illegal marijuana trade. It’s at best a messy patchwork of inconsistent policy and laws, with glaring problems mostly caused by the fact that the drug remains illegal at a federal level.
Australian Medical Association President Professor Steve Robson doesn’t mince words when it comes to the prospect of legalisation. “We don’t think it’s the right way forward,” Robson tells The Weekend Australian Magazine. “Open slather or recreational cannabis still has potential risks and puts vulnerable people at further risk.”
Robson argues that blanket legalisation promotes an incorrect message that “there’s nothing wrong with [cannabis], that it’s safe, and that’s a signal that’s not quite right. The data on long-term effects are still scant in some respects and that’s an issue … Cannabis use amongst young people, well, it can affect their brain development, it can make them more prone to longer term conditions. In an environment where there is already incredible pressure on emergency departments around Australia it doesn’t make a lot of sense to potentially add to the problems.”
Robson does concede the AMA doesn’t wish “people end up in the criminal justice system for [cannabis]. We’re all for treating people who may have issues with use, have addiction issues, and giving them the help they need.”
The Penington Institute’s 2023 report Cannabis In Australia stated that cannabis accounted for “almost half (47.1 per cent) of the 140,624 drug-related arrests across Australia in 2020-21, with 90 per cent of national cannabis arrests affecting cannabis consumers, rather than providers.”
The same report – released in December 2023 – claimed taxpayers spend $1.7 billion on cannabis-related law enforcement in Australia each year.
What about the soaring take-up of medicinal cannabis and the growing “parallel” recreational market? Robson states: “The community can rest assured that there is oversight and there are standards and there is an esteemed body, the TGA [Therapeutic Good Administration], keeping a line of sight on all of this.”
“I run my own creative business and havefor years,” a man we’ll call Adam tells The Weekend Australian Magazine. “People see me stand up and talk, I’m confident as a leader. But what very few know is that I live with crippling anxiety.”
Adam has tried most things in search of an alleged “normal” – “Yeah, whatever that means. When you have an imbalance like I do, you look around and when you see that you’re the odd one out, you have a desire to fit in.”
It meant years exploring traditional pharmaceuticals.
“Once your life is about highs and lows, how you mitigate and work through them is with medications that tend to take off the extremes and you exist in this middle ground as they dull those highs and the lows. And a reasonable amount of the population is happy with that. But I wasn’t.”
He sought a script for medicinal cannabis three years ago. “I was never a pothead. This was something I had heard was good for sleep patterns, social anxiety and things like that. And it’s been really good for me – I don’t know how to best describe it, but it helps release my anxiety; it helps me function and become my own person instead of becoming a numbed-out person. OK, it can numb you out – but I don’t use it to stone-out, the point of medicinal cannabis is you don’t want to get into some vegetative state.”
Adam uses flower and edibles.
It was the medical hardships faced by families caring for those with terminal cancer across Australia a decade ago that first led the original push for medicinal cannabis law reform and ultimately, change.
Today’s apparent bleed between medicinal and recreational use appears to be a gaming of the system that may yet lead to further change. As Adam puts it, “Now everywhere I turn I know people [with prescriptions]. I don’t really tell too many about mine – I find there’s still a stigma attached – but yeah, you could argue it’s become almost too easy to procure. Suddenly everyone seems to have a mental condition. I’m like, ‘Hey, back off.’”
Shoebridge says it’s time for honesty about the prevalence of marijuana use: “I think we should be frank about it – the medicinal cannabis market [is] currently supplying a recreational market … there does seem to have been a surge of men aged 18 to 44 who are suffering from sleep disorder and mild anxiety.”