Lucy Haslam has formed a new group in the fight for medicinal cannabis access after hosting a forum in Sydney on Friday.
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The Australian Medicinal Cannabis Alliance is made up of “academics, scientists, medicos, legal people and patient advocacy groups.”
“We came together as a new group and found that there is a real appetite to challenge how the Government is going in relation to medicinal cannabis, particularly in terms of patient access,” Mrs Haslam said.
“Legislation should be based on what is medically best for the patient, not politics – The best interests of patients are being overlooked in Australia because of political and other vested interests.”
This was a point that was made abundantly clear during a demonstration, where flow charts were made up of how medicinal cannabis prescription systems work in The Netherlands, Israel, Canada and Australia.
While the other three systems could be shown on a piece of A4 paper, Mrs Haslam’s depiction of the convoluted Australian system was over eight foot tall.
The new alliance decided that it would be best to take a scientific approach to their mission.
Together they compiled 20 potential joint mission statements, and then voted in order to rank them from most important to least.
Chatham House Rules were assumed for the entire process, meaning that anyone in attendance can report on the meeting, however the source of each statement could not be identified.
“Patient access was definitely the focal issue of the day, and of the 20 joint mission statements there were two unanimous statements that will be top of that list,” Mrs Haslam said.
“They are to do with human rights around medical necessities, and imposing restrictions that increase patient health risks as they are forced to continue turning to the black market.”
After making plenty of headway with the issue in the direct aftermath of the unfortunate passing of her son Dan, Mrs Haslam has seen her plight “definitely stall” in recent years.
On Friday Shadow Health Minister Walter Secord accused the Berejiklian Government of “purposely delaying medicinal cannabis applications from doctors.”
“There is clearly a lot of people that want to work together on this – we just have to get our ducks lined up first, see how the alliance grows and discuss some further strategies,” Mrs Haslam said.
