EXCLUSIVE: Australia is set to host its inaugural Medicinal Cannabis Awareness Week (MCAW) in February, with organisers urging the industry to support the campaign and help broaden public understanding of the medicine.
Separately, efforts are underway to revive the Parliamentary Friends of Medicinal Cannabis Group (PFMCG) in Canberra, following the dissolution of the previous group ahead of last year's federal election.
Health and aged care minister Mark Butler is also weighing a request for A$800,000 to support the Australian Medicinal Cannabis Association's compassionate access scheme.
United in Compassion (UIC) and AMCA co-founder Lucy Haslam said MCAW will run from February 20 to 24, a date chosen to align with the seventh anniversary of medicinal cannabis legalisation and the eighth anniversary of the death of her son Dan.
Dan passed away from bowel cancer in 2015 at the age of 25, and the obstacles he faced in obtaining cannabis to ease his suffering drove Haslam to found UIC and to continue fighting for improved patient access.
The week is designed to reduce stigma surrounding the medicine — among both the general public and healthcare professionals — and will feature a series of major announcements spanning training, research, representation and best practice.
Haslam is encouraging other industry players to support the initiative by registering their announcements or events with UIC/AMCA for inclusion in a media pack being distributed to mainstream news outlets early next month.
She said: "Companies aren't allowed to advertise their products, but we can still talk about the subject without making it about sales.
"We can talk about the growing numbers of patients. We can talk about the high quality of Australian products. We want a strong industry so patients get lower prices, and that's in everyone's best interests."
"We want to get as many medicinal cannabis stories out there as possible, to get everyone talking about it in the hope of normalising the conversation and supporting patients and the industry.
"This will also help to get it back on a political footing and support consideration of the compassionate access scheme proposal which is already in the hands of the Labor Government."
In a pre-Christmas meeting with Butler, AMCA pressed the Government to contribute $800,000 in funding to establish the scheme.
Haslam said: "We told him the industry has come to us and said they would like to do this, but we need money to have someone set it up and run it.
"So we asked for seed funding for a couple of years to see if it would work. It's not a big ask, really."
A letter has also been sent to members of parliament by Labor senator Anne Urquhart and Liberal MP Warren Entsch — both of whom served in the previous PFMCG — calling for expressions of interest in joining a new group during the current parliament.
Haslam said she was confident enough MPs would come forward to re-establish the group, which Urquhart and Entsch would co-chair. Parliamentary Friendship Groups are automatically disbanded at the close of each parliament.
She added that the group's formation would open another channel of communication with Butler, whom she described as "definitely more open" to medicinal cannabis reform than his predecessor Greg Hunt.
Companies wishing to participate in MCAW should send details of their announcement or presentation to in**@****ca.org. TGA compliance is essential.
