Category: Series 2

Interview with Bee Mohamed, 20 February 2024

What was my North Star Ursa Minor moment, some say cannabis comes from the Stars the Canis Major to be precise. Cannabis has been a caring nurse, and a cruel mistress in my life. In 1997, I travelled to Europe and spent some time providing vapes before returning to Australia in 2000 with the hope of helping patients here.  Unfortunately I slipped in a kitchen, hit my head on a small step and crushed a vertebrae in my neck. I suffered a cervical vertebrae injury at the C3 level and this was debilitating.  A horrible injury to deal with and it took me 9yrs to get over with trigger point injections and nerve blocks, the final straw to try and relieve the constant pins and needles. I was prescribed a whole range of pain medications, which eventually forced me to go cold turkey from the Lyrica, Orphenadrine and Endones.  Cannabis helped me through my withdrawals and I started gaining some quality of life. Without this plant, I would have gone to a dark place and I was losing grip of life. After tapering off my pain medications, I was ready to make a return to the workforce.   In 2013, I returned to the cannabis industry. While my injury left me with horrible nerve pain, I wanted to continue to make an impact and make a difference in the lives of patients who could benefit from this plant too. I decided I was well enough to travel and had managed to re-enter the work force. I was sitting in a cafe near the Stradbroke ferry having breakfast when a little girl came up and looked at me with a glazed eye and pulled my breakfast off the table. At that moment I judged this little girl and looked at her parents with a fierce look of, control your child, as she proceeded to have an epileptic fit in front of me on the ground. Thousands of thoughts ran through my mind of the judgement I had just given and the hopelessness of not knowing what to do in that instant. As the parents ran to her, I disappeared into the commotion, feeling horrible for how in my mind I had just judged this little angel.

I am Mark Anthony Smith, the eldest of seven children, a glitch and ghost in the machine. Having been brought up to put myself last and to fight for the betterment of the tribe, I have struggled with life in a big wild world where being selfish is the norm. I'm an idealist and that won't change. In 2015, I held the first therapeutic research licence in The Hunter Valley with Rangi Faulder, only to have the Federal Government hinder our efforts. When the Office of Drug Control was created, we lobbied the government to uphold the special access scheme when they tried to take it away from cannabis patients. There still remains little effort by the Federal Government for a compassionate scheme.  In 2017, I worked for an Italian company to create their first CBD cultivation in Castel Vecchio Abruzzo. I planted the first 3000 seeds of cbd in Greece at a farm in Nea Makri only to have the police come and spray them.      

In Asia, I worked with the Malaysian Government and managed to get a stay of execution from Mahathir’s government for a cannabis criminal, and had the first import licence for seed until the change of government.  I also worked in Thailand for two years, and was the first western speaker in the Thai parliament. We worked to make it legal, inviting Californians and Canadians to be usurped for the capitalist rewards and not the benefit to people, many of the original activists being betrayed by the Government. I have seen many of the original people fighting for everyone's access, defeated to create change. I have seen the destruction to family units because access to cannabis is expensive and difficult. I have witnessed children taken from parents because they wanted to use cannabis as a safe alternative medicine. I have seen parents dying of cancer not being able to continue to afford their oils.     

What is my North Star, you ask? It is to focus on the core purpose of what brought me to this industry. We need to find a way to provide medicine for the most vulnerable communities. We need to create a new access pathway so that children and those who need the medicine the most, are able to benefit from the plant. Home grown must be decriminalised.  We need to find a way to be compassionate again. We must do better in this industry and find a way to ensure that the plant is available to children and vulnerable people who need it the most. 

Interview with Bee Mohamed, 20 February 2024

Bee Mohamed, April 2025 From a young age, I knew my purpose in this world was to help others.  I was born and raised in Singapore, where arbitrary and unlawful execution (by death penalty) for drug-related offences continues. We learnt of the punitive drug laws in primary school, where drug use and/possession would mean you either end up in jail or dead.  I knew from a young age that this was inhumane, but of course my community was shocked by my opinions due to popular beliefs in Singapore that drug use or possession should be prosecuted.  My parents would agree that from a young age, I questioned everything - from the religion I was brought up with, cultural traditions and political systems. There was no doubt that I was always the ‘black sheep,’ non-conformist and odd one out. It was no surprise that I consumed cannabis as soon as I left Singapore, as an act of rebellion of course. I migrated to Australia when I was 19, determined to make an impact in this world. I was always drawn to learning and reading about challenges facing the world - genocide, human trafficking, child soldiers, and the list goes on.

I wanted to be an international human rights lawyer. I volunteered in impoverished areas in Jakarta and taught English in Vietnam for children with HIV. I think we learn empathy naturally when we travel and encounter people in the real world.  When I arrived in Australia, I worked with asylum seekers who were detained on Christmas Island and later on, helped newly arrived refugees from war torn Sudan. It didn’t take me long to realise that injustice existed in our own backyard. Injustice exists in our healthcare system and I ended up in policy work, focusing on health. It was when it took me almost 6 months to advocate for a medical transfer for a Tamil asylum seeker who arrived with an amputated leg that I then realised my passion was better rights and sovereignty within the healthcare system.  I spent my first few years as a graduate in the walls of Parliament House in Canberra when the Gillard Government brought in the National Disability Insurance Scheme in 2012. I worked as a Policy Officer and gathered stories of those who will be impacted by the scheme.

During this time, I was diagnosed with PCOS and suffered from debilitating pelvic pain. As I grew up without pharmaceuticals, cannabis became my medicine of choice as my time in the health space got me intrigued with ‘alternative medicine.’  My life has always been about activism and the biggest milestone was in 2018, when I advocated to the Federal Health Minister, and all State Health Ministers to address the devastating deaths from prescription drug misuse and overdoses.  I witnessed the rising number of deaths caused by prescription drugs. Coroners reports on my desk every week, highlighting polypharmacy that eventually led to overdose fatalities. Families writing to us after losing a family member to a prescription drug overdose. This experience showed me the current practices within the Australian healthcare system and led me to believe that the system was failing in critical ways.   

In September 2019, I started in the medicinal cannabis industry after being approached by Canopy Growth Australia to work in their Government Relations team. Once again, the injustice within the healthcare system was evident. Patients were not able to access a medicine that gave them a quality of life. Affordability was a huge barrier, and continues to be. Legally, patients are not able to drive while on their medications and at times, subject to the discriminatory workplace drug testing. We need to do so much more and this inspired me to start Mata, where I hope through the power of these stories, we are able to create change within the healthcare system, through sovereignty and vitality. Purpose feels good, because it is not really about you. I believe it is about how we can be of service to others and the importance of speaking up against any injustice when we see it.