THE vexed question of legalising medical marijuana is gaining momentum in Australia. Only recently NSW Premier Mike Baird said he wouldn't completely rule it out.

Now, Brisbane mum Sally White tells 60 Minutes tonight that her 16-month-old daughter is dying and she wants to put her child on weed. A young cancer sufferer in Tamworth in NSW, his father a policeman, is waging a campaign to have medical marijuana made legal. It is legal in Colorado in the US and other states are investigating.

Properly regulated and with rigorous eligibility criteria, surely if it gives the dying relief, legalising medical marijuana must be investigated in this country.

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TWO Queensland mums have made desperate pleas to legalise marijuana to save their children's lives, including one who is just 16 months old.

Sunshine Coast mum Sally White fears for the life of her 16-month-old daughter Zali, who suffers from a rare genetic disease and cannabis could be the only option to ease her suffering.

Zali was diagnosed with Aicardi syndrome, where a part of the brain is missing, resulting in frequent seizures. Ms White says a cannabis strain in the US, known as Charlotte's Web, is being used to treat children suffering from epilepsy and seizures.

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THE Derwent Valley Council will seek a meeting with farmers to discuss the push to grow medicinal marijuana.

Last week the council gave unanimous support in principle to growing the plant for agricultural, industrial and medicinal purposes.

The disused Hayes Jail Farm will be investigated as a possible location.

A council working party established to look into the issue met for the first time last night and decided to seek a meeting with the Farmers and Graziers Association.

The Huon Valley and Dorset councils have also joined the fight to persuade the State Government to reconsider its opposition to a Tasmanian cannabis industry.

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THE Queensland Premier says he has an open mind about legalising marijuana for medical purposes but will rely on the advice of national health experts.

Medical cannabis could soon be legalised in NSW with senior politicians indicating support, as long as concerns about how it would be regulated are dealt with.

Campbell Newman says any change in Queensland should be made on the basis of advice from the National Health and Medical Research Council (NHMRC), not NSW.

"I have an open mind on these things," he told reporters yesterday.

"There are so many of our life-saving and pain-alleviating drugs that come from nature, and I see it in that context.

"But I'd be interested in what the NHMRC are saying."

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Libs Soften Stance on Medicinal Cannabis

THE State Government has signalled it could step back from its ban on a medicinal cannabis trial under pressure to grow the hemp industry in Tasmania.

Treasurer and Local Government Minister Peter Gutwein has told councils pushing for the trial that the Government will seriously consider the recommendations of an Upper House committee.

"We're supporting that process and obviously we'll be guided by the response that comes out of that process," Mr Gutwein told the Local Government Association state conference in Hobart.

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Tasmania, Big Supplier to Drug Companies, Faces Changes

Now is the sowing season for opium poppies in the Australian state of Tasmania. Tractors chug up and down paddocks, pulling elaborate machinery that drills pairs of adjacent, miniature holes in the dirt, and then drops a dozen tiny kernels of fertilizer in one of the holes and a tiny poppy seed in the other.

By November, the fields will be carpeted in pink flowers with an occasional splash of white or mauve. Then the flowers will drop away, leaving behind distinctive, cup-shaped pods packed with tiny poppy seeds along with the opium latex that surrounds them. When the latex dries two months later, the pods are harvested and hauled to factories, where machinery separates the seeds and grinds up the rest to extract the valuable narcotic alkaloids.

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THREE Tasmanian councils have joined the fight to establish a medicinal marijuana industry in the state.

The Huon Valley Council yesterday said it had been approached by two Tasmanian companies within 24 hours that were fully funded to build a medicinal cannabis growing and production facility.

General manager Simone Watson will meet Premier Will Hodgman to ask the Government to reconsider its opposition.

The State Government launched a parliamentary inquiry into cannabis for medical purposes earlier this month.

"Let's wait to see what comes out of that," Attorney-General Vanessa Goodwin said yesterday.

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Now in her late 20s, Jessica has smoked cannabis since she was 19, describing it as a "creative drug" and a mind-opening experience. She strongly favours legalisation of the drug but rarely consumes it these days.

"I only smoke a little now because I discovered I have a heart condition and I tend to get heart pains when I smoke too much," she says.

Jessica, who asks that her last name not be disclosed, is one of 16 long-term cannabis users whose portraits feature in an exhibition at a Sydney gallery next month.

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DRUG problems have reached "epidemic" proportions on Palm Island say residents, who have called for permanent sniffer dogs.

The community's drug use has reportedly increased since the Alcohol Management Plan was introduced in 2006 because the illegal substances are easier to smuggle in.

Mayor Alf Lacey said he supported the call for drug dogs if that was what the community wanted.

Member for Townsville John Hathaway said he was also happy to work with the Palm Island community, but that it was an "operational" matter.

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Australia Comes Top of Global List for Recreational Drug Use

AUSTRALIA has hit a new low by getting high, with revelations our nation can claim an unenviable gold medal for recreational drug users. The United Nations 2014 World Drug Report has found Australia ranks first in ecstasy use, second for opioids, third for methamphetamines, fourth for cocaine and seventh for cannabis - with experts warning our drug use is rising. AUSTRALIA, a country of sports champions, innovators ... and drug takers.

The nation has the inglorious distinction of having the highest proportion of recreational drug users in the world - an embarrassing new low, albeit from getting high.

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NEW figures show Sunshine Coast state schools have busted students with drugs up to 69 times in a year.

Education Queensland released the data exclusively to the Daily, with numbers showing between 40 and 69 students were suspended from school in 2013 for misconduct involving an illicit substance.

The department spokesman would not narrow down the figures. He said it was a matter of student privacy.

Queensland state schools have a zero tolerance policy on drugs.

The students busted on the Coast were suspended for up to 20 days. Some were expelled.

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Tasmania Has a Unique Opportunity to Grow Medicinal Cannabis for Other States, Writes Dr Alex Wodak

IN the 1960s, Daniel Grinspoon, the teenage son of a Harvard university psychiatry professor, developed acute leukaemia.

Unfortunately, Daniel developed severe nausea and vomiting after chemotherapy. All of the latest treatments were tried but nothing helped stop or even reduce poor Daniel's persistent nausea and vomiting.

Someone suggested to Professor Grinspoon that cannabis might work. And it did.

Professor Grinspoon then started doing research on medicinal cannabis.

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A PARLIAMENTARY inquiry into legalisation of cannabis for medical purposes is expected to receive a huge response when it opens for submissions this week.

A major Tasmanian poppy processor yesterday voiced support for a trial despite the State Government citing poppy industry opposition as one of the reasons for opposing any trials.

TPI Enterprises managing director Jarrod Ritchie said yesterday he could not understand the Government's logic.

The Cressy-based company makes poppy straw concentrate.

Mr Ritchie said he could not understand why poppy growers' representatives would oppose a Tasmanian trial.

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Minister's Talks on Trials

THE State Government will today be lobbied to trial medical marijuana in Tasmania, while the state's peak medical body say they are doubtful they would support such tests.

Australian Medical Association state president Dr Tim Greenaway said that ultimately its position would be decided at a federal level but it was his "own belief that it's doubtful they would support trials".

"The AMA has major concerns about the use of medicinal marijuana as it is the third most addictive drug and is also associated with mental health issues," he said.

"While there is anecdotal evidence it can be helpful for people with significant nausea associated with chemotherapy more evidence is needed."

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A GENETIC link between marijuana and schizophrenia may have been discovered in a groundbreaking study of more than 2000 Australians.

The study - led by King's College London and involving the Queensland Brain Institute and the QIMR Berghofer Medical Research Institute - examined the genetic risk profile of 2082 otherwise healthy Australians.

Researchers found the genes known to be associated with schizophrenia were more often found in those 1011 people who had used cannabis - or used it in greater quantities. Writing in Molecular Psychiatry, the researchers suggest the same genes might be responsible for cannabis use and schizophrenia, countering the popularly held belief that smoking the drug increases the risk of the mental illness.

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Sam Aulton has been forced to break the law to try and save her life.

With cancer waging a terrifying war on her fragile frame, the young Maitland woman turned to cannabis oil in a bid to extend her life and ease her pain.

But instead of the drug yielding the outcome she had hoped for, Ms Aulton's health deteriorated.

She believes if the drug was legalised for medical purposes her outcome could have been different.

"I'm not angry but if this drug was decriminalised then I would have been monitored by the professionals and not forced to go down this - -unprotected path," she said.

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PROPONENTS of medicinal cannabis will today ask federal MPs to allow sick people legal access to the drug.

Drug expert Alex Wodak and Lucy Halam - who is forced to illegally source marijuana for her terminally ill son, Dan - will meet MPs of all political persuasions in a push for the right for doctors to be able to prescribe marijuana.

Hosted by a Greens, Liberal and Labor MP, the Parliamentary Group on Drug Policy and Law Reform hopes to take evidence to Health Minister Peter Dutton to argue for easier access for the sick.

Greens senator Richard DiNatale said: "This is one of those areas where public opinion is well ahead of where politicians are."

Fellow co-convener, Liberal MP Sharman Stone, said people continually raised the issue with her.

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The Deputy State Coroner has recommended that NSW prison cells should be subject to random searches at afternoon lockdown, after the overdose death of a female inmate highlighted the endemic nature of prison drug use. TracyLee Brannigan, 41, died from a heroin overdose at Dillwynia Correctional Centre while locked in her cell on the night of February 24 last year. In handing down his findings in relation to Ms Brannigan's death on Monday, Deputy Coroner Paul MacMahon said there was evidence that 75 per cent of women inmates in NSW had "drug addiction issues". He acknowledged that steps were being taken to address this problem, but found that most drug taking occurred after inmates were locked in for the night.

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Nowra woman Sarah* hates feeling like a criminal because she is giving cannabis to her dying husband.

John*, who is in his 40s, was diagnosed with an aggressive form of oral cancer in February when he was given six to 12 months to live.

Drastic surgery saw most of his tongue and the floor of his mouth removed, while a skin graft was taken from his arm to form a new tongue.

He is now fed through a tube in his stomach and has had trouble speaking, swallowing and sleeping.

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THE campaign to ease the suffering of terminally ill patients by legalising medicinal cannabis is gaining momentum, with high-profile Nationals minister Barnaby Joyce adding his voice to the groundswell of support for cancer sufferer Dan Haslam.

Mr Joyce revealed he has had a change of heart from his usual tough stance on drugs after meeting 24-year-old Mr Haslam and his family, who are forced to break the law so that he can use cannabis to treat his severe pain and nausea from chemotherapy.

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