The new group, which includes licensed medical marijuana growers in Australia, is pushing for increased local production.
You can also find out more about the following: ABC reports The Australian Cannabis Cultivator’s Guild’s first action was to write to Australia’s Federal Health Minister, warning him of “catastrophic” failures in the industry as a result of the Australian market becoming flooded with imports and the expensive licensing process.
Although there is no fee for the licence or permit required to import medicinal marijuana, local producers pay $50,000 annually for inspections and licensing.
Although the minister has not yet responded, it’s understandable as there are still dust clouds from the Federal elections and the final makeup of the Albanese government is to be determined.
One of the issues identified is that of reciprocity – for example, the biggest source of overseas imports is Canada, which doesn’t allow Australian medical cannabis exports. Canada, however, has a problem with oversupply that makes it difficult if you don’t impossible for Australian cannabis growers to get into the market.
ABC reports that domestic producers who outsource production overseas are responsible for Australia losing an estimated 5,500 Australian jobs.
According to the GuildCurrently, the company represents around 80 percent of Australia’s medical cannabis producers. Tasmanian Botanics is one of these companies, along with ECS Botanics Cannaponics, and Cann Group. In total, 18 growers have joined the group.
One of the issues with cannabis industry associations – and this is by no means confined to Australia – is they start up with plenty of energy and good intentions; and then run out of steam. Will be interesting to watch if The Guild suffers a similar fate.
The following is a breakdown of the. Pennington Institute report Australians will spend one billion dollars in 2024, according to a study published last year. Over 2.87 millions medicinal cannabis products have been sold in Australia since the beginning of 2018. This compares to 1.68million sold during the second half 2023. In 2023, an estimated 61% of the medicinal cannabis sold in Australia was imported. That’s a large amount of money that could have been used to support Australian farmers.