The nation’s biggest medicinal cannabis company engineered a legally contentious referral scheme and set up an “independent” public lobby group as it built a dominant position in the booming industry.
Many Australians do not realise it is now simple – with a medical script for chronic pain, anxiety, sleep issues or a range of other reasons – to get high-THC concentrate cannabis for smoking, vaping, taking as an oil, or as gummies. Raphael Strauch is heavily involved in cryptocurrency, and posts regular updates on social media showing him on private jets, on the ski field, with vintage sports cars and, this week, with a Porsche 911 in the Dakar rally.In the five years since launching, Montu has become a $100-million-a-year company, importing cannabis and buying locally cultivated products.
“The public is generally exposed to the risk of harm by the publication of information that encourages a person to use or seek out medicinal cannabis products in preference to other medicines that have been prescribed by the person’s medical or health practitioner,” the TGA warns in one of its legal filings.
Montu also operated a Medicinal Cannabis Awareness Week website last year, which the TGA said illegally advertised medicinal cannabis. Christopher Strauch and the company filed their court defence this week, saying that “none of the alleged conduct … posed a risk to public health and safety because, properly construed, nothing published on the Alternaleaf website, the social media accounts, or the Medicinal Cannabis Awareness Week website constitutes advertising and Montu did not contravene the Therapeutic Goods Act”.
“While Montu played a role in founding the council, membership is representative of industry participants and the structure is one of increasing operational independence.” In the past five years, the TGA has issued more than 170 infringement notices and fined companies more than $2.4 million for breaching advertising laws around medicinal cannabis.
Some in the industry also believe aggressive marketing of legal cannabis could undermine the entire sector. Pharmacist Lisa Nguyen founded Astrid, a medicinal cannabis dispensary with outlets in South Yarra and Byron Bay, in 2020.Pharmacist Lisa Nguyen, owner of Astrid dispensaries in Melbourne’s South Yarra and Byron Bay in northern NSW, has watched as the market has grown from just three firms marketing a handful of products in 2017 to 144 brands now in the market and more than 1000 cannabis products.
“Once people realise that it’s actually changing people’s lives and we’re doing it properly and the framework is good, then it has potential to change,” she said. “There’s also been something of a green rush in other parts of the world which have legalised the medicine, so it does sometimes attract people who are more interested in making a quick buck than patient welfare,” Lane says.