Karma Koala Podcast

Kudos to Tim he’s just enabled one of the biggest changes to the Australian hemp landscape and globally we should all be paying attention.

This could be a game changer for both Australia and the region.

I talk to Tim about how he got the enquiry up and running and its findings and proposals including

A) A Review of the advice of early 2025 from the United Nations International Narcotics Control Board with a view to reducing or simplifying, where appropriate, the licencing obligations imposed on stakeholders in the hemp industry.

B) The committee recommends that the Australian Government, through the National Cabinet process, facilitates the recognition of state and territory licences across all jurisdictions.

C)) The committee recommends the Australian Government establish a taskforce to develop a national hemp framework to harmonise hemp regulations nationally.

See all 14 proposals detailed below

We also talk about recent developments in NSW with the state government pumping investment into processing.

Tim says, thank Cannabis party member Jeremy Buckingham. He made it happen. This puts NSW at the top of the Australian hemp reportcard with states like QLD  & Vic now seriously lagging due to repeated refusals to enage with the crop.

Learn More

⁠https://cannabislaw.report/karma-koala-podcast-327-australia-tim-schmidt-the-tasmanian-farmer-behind-the-just-published-30-july-2026-australian-senate-report-opportunities-for-the-development-of-a-hemp-industry-in-austral/⁠

It’s not the sexiest of topics, I grant you that, but i thought it would be interesting to talk to an expert in the space.

Jerry works in the worlds of Cannabis, Vapes & Tobacco and lays bare some of the complexity for small and medium sized US businiess working in the space.

Multiple layers of taxation that fleece the consumer and the retailer and much of it, it seems, purposefully designed to put pressure on smaller  end of cannabis retail.

My first takeaway. If you are in a jurisdiction outside the US and you want to find out how not to do cannabis sales tax, the US is a good place to learn from.

My other takeaway is that i’ve never really noticed the cannabis regulators in each of the states pay much attention to the issue.

They are happy to pretend to support smaller business and equity set ups in words alone but little else.

They’ll make them wait months even years for licenses then actually expect them to run a business with punishing overheads and city and sales taxes that up prices for the consumer and force producers to create mass market high THC cannabis that they have to wholesale at silly prices so that the consumer thinks they are getting some advantage for the cannabis they are buying.

My analaogy would be the fast food market in the US. huge plates of food that aren’t nutritionally balanced or healthy for humans to consume, the same applies to cannabis except substiute large helpings with high THC levels which as we’re all learning isn’t the best for human health.

Legislators, adminsitrators and regulators in states and cities actually have the power to do something about this, but they wont because as we all know a sin tax is a great earner and the thinking will never go beyond that.

Learn more

⁠https://cannabislaw.report/karma-koala-podcast-326-jerry-donnini-founder-and-ceo-of-salestaxhelper-the-complexity-of-us-sales-tax-regimes-in-highly-regulated-sectors/⁠

Thankyou to Ryan for joining the Koalas to talk about the challenges of growing cannabis on a commercial basis both in the early days of legalisation in Canada when Canopy brought him in from the US where he was working with ornamentals to get their first facilities up and running and more recently as the US market consolidates and is trying to get the best opearting structures for profit that they can.

.Ryan has worked in Canada, the US & Colombia both as a grower and consultant and brings a decade and a half experience in cannabis and 20 + years in ornamentals to the table

We talk about those early years and what he learnt and what companies need to learn now.

Like all other industries cannabis companies are making the same mistakes. Head office is getting increasingly separated from where the real action happens, the grow room and management always see solutions in tech and not people. Ryan reckons that’s a big mistake and i’d suggest he’s on the mark.

Learn More

https://cannabislaw.report/karma-koala-podcast-325-ryan-douglas-commercial-cannabis-grower-consultant-talks-about-his-new-book-from-seed-to-success-how-to-launch-a-great-cannabis-cultivation-business-in-record-time/

The koalas are back with the latest instalment of Steve’s long and storied life in cannabis.

The 80's see many changes in Steve's life.

Time for law school!

The university tours continue engaging with students rather than faculty and it's time to decamp to the west coast, Berkeley specifically as California develops an understanding of "medical" cannabis and cannabis in the community.

Two prominent names become more public in their cannabis activism and Steve starts a new phase in his life.

Read More https://cannabislaw.report/karma-koala-podcast-324-the-deangelo-chronicles-part-6-mid-80s-early-90s-law-school-the-nut-house-jack-herer-touring-universities-the-move-to-berkeley/

Great to chat with James who became somewhat more involved with changing attitudes to cannabis after an encounter with the NSW police whilst spending a year in Australia

He's now trying to build an education network about cannabis and using the medium of film and documentary is part of his arsenal.

We talk about his time engaging with growers in NW Pakistan and how things have changed in that part of the world since the Taliban came back into power. James also learnt about various corporate type outfits quietly moving in and making themselves known, he couldn't tell me too much but it sounds like the classic extractive industry playbook may be happening behind closed doors in that part of the world

Listen and learn more.

Thanks James

⁠https://cannabislaw.report/karma-koala-podcast-323-kk-james-gallagher-ireland-filmmaker-exploring-the-current-cannabis-world-of-pakistans-nw-provinces/⁠

I came across Kwasi's paper i knew i had to speak to him about a hidden legal history and the changes in approaches to engendering change through the courts in common law countries

We also get to talk about Mr Tosh and the changes in language since the 1970's and how legal language is struggling to keep up.

Anokye's research draws heavily on African legal history, focusing on landmark decisions like Ghana's historic Nyameneba v. The Republic case. In that case, the court recognized a distinct worldview where cannabis is revered as the "herbs of life"—not a criminal drug. 

Anokye warns that when a government simply "legalizes" cannabis for commercial gain, it leaves spiritual users vulnerable. True freedom requires the state to fully step back and dismantle the colonial laws that banned the plant in the first place.

⁠https://cannabislaw.report/karma-koala-podcast-322-kwasi-anokye-paper-rastafari-sacramental-use-the-limits-of-legalization-2025/⁠

I came across Neil’s report and his newly launched service.

We discuss his first comparative report and how ai can help develop cannabis policy in jurisdictions around the world

Cannavec ai

A patient-governed, evidence-first organisation that stewards the cannabis industry’s most rigorous knowledge base. We exist to ensure that the science behind cannabis is accurate, transparent, independent and accessible to everyone who needs it.

The cannabis industry has a knowledge problem. Patients make decisions based on marketing claims. Clinics prescribe without standardised evidence. AI chatbots hallucinate dosing advice. Product labels use unsubstantiated therapeutic language.

The Cannabis Knowledge Foundation was created to fix this. We maintain a curated, evidence-graded knowledge base covering cannabinoid mechanisms, clinical protocols, safety data, drug interactions, product formulations and regulatory frameworks — all reviewed by a named editorial board with real expertise and lived experience.

Through the Cannavec API, this knowledge becomes infrastructure that any clinic, platform, brand or researcher can build on. The result is an industry where every piece of cannabis information traces back to evidence.

⁠https://cannabislaw.report/karma-koala-podcast-321-neil-cartwright-uk-medical-cannabis-and-driving-law-international-comparison-using-ai-to-draft-cannabis-policy/⁠

The Koalas speak with environmental lawyer Ricky Stone about the Monica Cromhout case and what they hope they can highlight and change with the case in regard to constitutional law in South Africa.

There’s already some element of jurisprudence post the Dagga Couple case.

As i say in the introduction South Africa may well start to lead on this issue in the courts and once again it’s their constitution that allows for a wide ranging debate

During the Hogsback Mushroom Festival and Symposium in mid-March 2026, environmental lawyer  Ricky Stone  announced a landmark legal challenge against South Africa’s criminalization of psilocybin (magic mushrooms) for therapeutic use. 

Key Details of the Challenge

Read More at
https://cannabislaw.report/karma-koala-podcast-320-ricky-stone-lawyer-south-africa-the-monica-cromhout-case-fungi-is-the-real-ai-ancestral-intelligence/

Great conversation with Bart who worked for MJ Biz as a journalist when the floodgates opened and yes it was the wild west of cannabis for a while.

Bart captures the essence of that time and the people involved in what was then, the nascent cannabis industry.

We talk about why he wrote the book, what he and his characters learnt, what he thinks now looking back at that time.

Of the book, reviewers frequently compare Schaneman’s evocative, earth-toned style to authors like Joan Didion and John Steinbeck, so he’s doing pretty well there !

As they say in the publishing world here’s the blurb

Denver, 2019: After one of their marijuana dispensaries is robbed, Taylor Hobson and Danielle Garcia hatch a plan to make back the money. When that ends in disaster, the two friends agree to allow their sales manager to implement aggressive and quasi-legal sales practices. Soon, their reputation as the go-to place to load up on marijuana beyond the legal limit spirals out of control.

Meanwhile, Henry Kaufman is back from a multiple-year stint in Asia. As he attempts to adjust to the reverse culture shock of returning to America, he bounces around, looking for a decent job. He asks his old friends for work at one of their dispensaries, and they agree to hire him as a budtender. He finally has the material to write the investigative journalism piece to make his name as a writer, but at what cost?


https://cannabislaw.report/karma-koala-podcast-319-bart-schaneman-author-of-novel-the-pot-job-denver-in-the-time-of-the-pre-covid-cannabis-goldrush/

The koalas are back with the latest instalment of Steve’s long and storied life in cannabis.

The 1980’s wasn’t all just funny haircuts, Wall Street  and the arrival of Bill & Steve it was also the Reagan adminsitration and the so called “war on drugs” , “Just Say No”, “The Parents Movement” and silly ads like this..

See it all at

https://cannabislaw.report/karma-koala-podcast-318-the-deangelo-chronicles-part-5-the-1980s-its-time-for-reagan-the-war-on-drugs-the-parents-movement-and-the-cocaine-blizzard/