Lucy Haslam's son, Dan, died in February after battling cancer. The 24-year-old was on chemotherapy but only found respite from the nausea and vomiting the chemo brought on when another cancer patient offered him cannabis.
The group was pushing to get a medicinal cannabis bill before the senate by the end of the year, but last weekend federal Health Minister Sussan Ley announced plans to amend the Narcotic Drugs Act to allow the growing of cannabis for medicinal purposes.
Haslam told BuzzFeed News this doesn't change anything about United in Compassion's mission to make medicinal cannabis easily accessible to those in need. If anything it makes it easier.
While public support has been overwhelming, the group has been left to wait on the decision of a select few. Sussan Ley may have come out in favour of medicinal cannabis, but Lucy says her views are problematic at best.
United in Compassion also has a side project regarding Hepatitis C treatment.
One of Lucy's colleagues at UIC had Hep C and was told the medication for treatment would come at a cost of around $100,000 for a three month course. A scientist associated with the not-for-profit found a doctor in South Australia who could obtain the generic equivalent of the drug in China.
"We were able to access this, bring it into the country legally, have it tested, show that it was pure, and then treat my colleague. He is now Hep C free."
United in Compassion wants to make sure treatment becomes more widely available and much, much cheaper - $100,000 being a lot of money for most Australians.
"It works out to be around $1000 a tablet currently," says Lucy, "all for something they say costs about $1 to make."
They hope to create a compassionate access scheme. It's this scheme that has seen the organisation be dubbed an Australian "Dallas Buyers Club."
It's Lucy's hope that by doing the work now, Australia will be ready when medicinal cannabis is inevitably rolled out.
