Singer, actor, entrepreneur, and health campaigner Olivia Newton-John is the special guest at this year’s Australian Medicinal Cannabis Symposium, taking place on the Sunshine Coast in May.
Newton-John, 72, is using medicinal cannabis to help in her battle against stage four metastatic breast cancer and has found it to be one of the most effective therapies. She recently launched the
ONJ Foundation to help to fund ‘kinder’ cancer treatments including medicinal cannabis.
She and her husband, cannabis expert Amazon-John Easterling, will join delegates for an exclusive interview via video-link from their home in California, USA with acclaimed journalist and medicinal cannabis documentary producer Helen Kapalos acting as the interviewer and main host of the event. In a timely coincidence, Kapalos’s documentary ‘A Life of its Own, the truth about medical
marijuana’ has just gone to air once more in Australia on Fox Documentaries.
The Sunshine Coast will play host to Australia’s premier medicinal cannabis event at a pivotal moment for the industry. With the Therapeutic Goods Administration firing the starting gun for trials
of over-the-counter medicinal cannabis treatments, the race is on to get the first medicines into pharmacies.
The first Symposium was inspired by 24-year-old cancer patient Dan Haslam who, with his mother Lucy, began the campaign to legalise medicinal cannabis after he used it to quell the devastating side
effects of chemotherapy. Their story made international headlines, not least because Dan’s father had enjoyed a long career in the drug squad, enforcing cannabis prohibition.
Dan lost his battle soon after the first event in 2014, but Lucy continues to fly the flag in order to improve patient access through the education of health professionals, politicians and the wider
public.
Lucy said: “I feel proud of what Dan and I achieved by changing the law in 2016, but there are many patients who still struggle to get access to the medicine they need. They can’t afford to buy it legally,
or can’t find a doctor willing to prescribe it. Events like Symposium are vital in showing Australian health professionals and politicians that cannabis is a safe and effective treatment for many patients
with a wide range of conditions.”
Lucy’s latest campaign sees her fighting on behalf of the many military veterans suffering from Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) who are being denied access to subsidised medicinal cannabis by
the Department of Veterans’ Affairs (DVA). Instead, they are forced into using highly addictive opioids or foregoing treatment altogether, too often leading to suicide.
As well as the plight of Australia’s war heroes, the Symposium will explore the use of cannabis to manage intractable epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, and the side effects of cancer treatment as well as the harm being done by the country’s antiquated drug-driving laws.
The Symposium features the first-ever Australian Nurses Medicinal Cannabis Conference sponsored by the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Federation and a training course for health professionals
accredited by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners and run by the newly established Society of Cannabis Clinicians Australian Chapter also established by Lucy.
A separate Industry Program and Trade Expo will be a first for this UIC symposium with strong interest from over 50 exhibitors, so this really is a one stop shop for all things medicinal cannabis in Australia.
With more than 70 speakers, other global names include the ‘father of cannabis research’ Professor Raphael Mechoulam, whose discovery of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), one of the 113 known cannabinoids found in the cannabis plant, jumpstarted the medicinal cannabis revolution.
For more information
United in Compassion
www.unitedincompassion.com.au
May 20-22, 2022