About This Episode
Cannabis oil producer Dr Andrew Katelaris was deregistered in 2005 after refusing to stop recommending and supplying cannabis to patients. He says desperate families turn to him because they have run out of options. In defiance of the systemic injustice staring us in the face, he says, “When the law is unjust, resistance is mandatory.” In September, The Herald Sun reported that Dr Katelaris has a secret laboratory in which cannabis oil and tincture is produced. From here (near Sydney), parcels of the drug are sent out across Australia and delivered to a dozen or so children across the country.
Dr Katelaris also produces cannabis resin for adult patients, including elderly people who are terminally ill. One of his clients is a high-ranking policeman! His medicine is harvested from a number of crops grown especially for their concentration of cannabidiol. Though the mainstream media focuses on Katelaris’ felonies and the legality of his actions, there is more to the story. Dr Andrew Katelaris has been researching and promoting the industrial and medical uses of cannabis since 1988. He obtained the first ever mainland hemp growing license in 1997 and a medical growing license in 2002. His main areas of research are the nutritional benefits of hemp seed foods and their impact on disease prevention and control, the use of hempcrete for residential building construction and the medical uses of CBD/THC balanced cannabis in a diverse range of human illnesses.
In testament to the police state Australia has long since become, Dr Katelaris has been arrested a dozen times and charged with a range of drug offences—none of which should ever apply to someone providing access to the world’s most potent—and NATURAL—cancer cure! But Katelaris is determined to continue to help the children who have been declared “untreatable” by other doctors. “It’s interesting what necessity does. What the health ministers are doing is criminal. They’re depriving severely incapacitated children from a lifesaving medicine—it’s that black and white.”
Join Brendan D. Murphy and Aimee Devlin to find out exactly why Dr Katelaris vows to continue to defy the traitorous for-profit company known as the police, and provide the public with access to medicinal cannabis oil.
Show Notes
SBS Insight Program: Is Medical Marijuana Doing Good or Harm?
Meet The Panel:
Nicole Cowles
Nicole Cowles gives her 8 year old daughter Alice cannabis oil to help control her life-threatening seizures. Alice has a rare genetic disorder known as CDKL-5 which includes a form of epilepsy. Nicole says that the cannabis oil is the only thing that’s working to reduce the 20 or 30 seizures Alice can have in a day. Nicole says she can’t be sure what’s in the oil she gives Alice because it’s illegal to test it. “When you’re faced with losing your child or trialling something that you’re told you shouldn’t trial, it’s not really a choice, you trial it”.
Tony Bower
Tony Bower provides cannabis oil to Nicole and hundreds of others around Australia. He calls his product medical cannabis tincture; although he says he’s not a doctor. Tony maintains he doesn’t provide cannabis oil to children, “I give it to the parents, the parents choose what they do with it”. Tony was convicted in August this year of cultivating a commercial quantity of cannabis and sentenced to 12 months jail. He is currently on bail and is appealing the severity of his sentence.
Bianca Henderson
Bianca’s 10 year old son Declan also has a rare form of epilepsy, known as F.