Who we are?
We are medical professionals and Not for Profit Experts. By leveraging our combined skills, we want to focus on research, advocating and education for medicinal cannabis. Our mission To help bring Medical Cannabis to those who need it by helping fund those researching the possibilities, educating those who can prescribe it and advocating to those who can make it available to those who need it. We are funded through private & corporate donations, grants, through educational seminars and through traditional fund-raising endeavours such as events.
Sharlene Mavor
Medical Scientist, Chairperson
Sharlene is a Medical Scientist in Diagnostic Pathology (BAppSc in Medical Laboratory Science (Majors – Immunology, Microbiology and Biotechnology) and Co-Founder and Managing Director of registered education Australian charity/NFO, Medical Cannabis Research Australia (MCRA). She has spent the last 10 years researching the available scientific literature on how Medical Cannabis may treat different symptoms and disorders.
She’s travelled to the US, UK, Canada, Israel, Colombia, and Chile to learn firsthand from the leading researchers and clinicians in this new field of cannabinoid science. She has been able to share this knowledge by running seminars and webinars for medical professionals and patients, with her team, under the banner of MCRA. This charity has over the last 7 years become a leading resource in Australia for education around medicinal cannabis, as well as for advice for patients. She is committed to advocating and lobbying for the use and easier access to medical cannabis for patients in Australia, as well as promoting and contributing to more trialled research, to provide clinicians, both in Australia and in the rest of the world, the evidence they require to pursue this treatment for their patients.
She is an associate member of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians and a founding member of the Australian Chapter of the Society of Cannabis Clinicians. She is also an MC for the Speakers Room at Hemp, Health & Innovation Expos around Australia.
Sharlene is involved in 2 clinical research projects, the first being a clinical trial using Cannabidiol (CBD) for methamphetamine addiction, to be run in Perth, WA. She is an Associate Researcher for this trial. The 2nd is an observational study to observe how 3 different formulations of pharmaceutical cannabis oil medicines affect different self-reported parameters in participants with chronic musculoskeletal pain.
Sharlene has built a hempcrete house in Wilyabrup, Western Australia. The house showcases how beautiful, sustainable, eco-friendly, and superior to other methods of building, hempcrete can be. Indica Hemp House recently won 6 awards at the Master Builders Association 2024 awards including the Best Home in the South West.
Sharlene is a founder, major shareholder and head of research and development, for a new hemp food and beverage company, Omega Assets. This entity owns and runs Valley Social, a brewery which produces hemp-infused beers (the Herbee range), and also sells hemp infused spirits (vodka and gin) in the Swan Valley, WA.
Suresh Rajan
Director
Suresh Rajan is the president of the Ethnic Communities Council of Western Australia. He is a regular contributor on the subject of multiculturalism to media in Perth and has been so for many years.
Suresh is also an Ambassador for people with disabilities and is the former President of the National Ethnic Disabilities Alliance (NEDA).
His career began with the Australian Taxation Office in Perth and over a period of seven years managed various sections of the Taxation Department, in both Perth and Canberra. During this period he was responsible for the development of policy for the Federal Government in regard to taxation issues and the conduct, before the Boards of Review and Supreme Courts, of cases that involved disputes between taxpayers and the Australian Taxation Office.
Suresh Rajan also has an accountant’s background and has regularly appeared on television and radio as an economics commentator. Suresh has a Bachelor of Commerce Degree from the University of Western Australia and a Masters of Business Administration Degree, also from UWA.
Suresh’s passion has always been the better integration of migrant communities with Aboriginal communities. He continues to work towards that end.
Dr Ganesa Pon Raja
Medical Doctor, Director
Dr Ganesa is a Fellow of the Royal Australian College of General Practice and a member of the Skin Cancer College of Australia. He holds a Masters of Surgery from University of Sydney.
Dr Ganesa’s scope of practice experience is varied, encompassing internal medicine rehabilitation medicine, occupational medicine, emergency medicine and intensive care.
Dr Ganesa takes a patient-centred problem-solving approach and is an ardent practitioner of individualised evidence-based medical practice. He considers wellness and good mental health to foundational; that achieving optimal physical health requires a “mens sana in corpore sano” (a sound mind in a healthy body) approach. Dr Ganesa takes a collaborative approach in empowering the patient in their plant medicine care.
Dr Ganesa is a director of Verde Clinic and an authorised medicinal cannabis prescriber.
Paul Mavor – B.Pharm MPS
Secretary, Treasurer
Paul is a registered Australian and UK pharmacist.
The company he founded Health House International (www.healthhouse.com.au) was granted the first medicinal cannabis import and export license in Australia in 2017.
Paul established national and international distribution of medicinal cannabis products to eligible patients. Over the last 30 years he has owned several retail pharmacies and worked both in Australia and the UK. In the last 9 years he has focussed on researching medicinal cannabis and has been to conferences, grow and manufacturing facilities and spoken to patients and prescribers in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, Israel and South America.
Paul is currently director of hemp food and beverage company Omega Assets (www.omegaassets.com.au) that produces HERBEE hemp infused beer and spirits and Chanvre hemp fed beef. He recently co-founded Western Australia’s first dedicated plant based medicine dispensary (www.plantpharm.shop) in Malaga and recently opened his second (www.greenstdispensary.com) in Mount Hawthorn.
Our Position
“Nothing in life is more liberating than to fight for a cause larger than yourself, something that encompasses you but is not defined by your existence alone.”
Senator John McCain
Independence
Medical Cannabis Research Australia does not sell cannabis.
Nor do we recommend any particular brand or product. That decision should best be left to your Prescribing Doctor.
All of our directors and staff are volunteers and are motivated by compassion.
Our objectives are education, advocacy and to promote research for medical cannabis.
We don’t support Black Market Cannabis:
- It’s illegal. We don’t want you in jail.
- The potency/strength is unknown.
- The cannabinoid ratios are unknown.
- Supply isn’t guaranteed.
- It is not tested. Who knows what it was grown in… has it absorbed any heavy metals, weed killer or other adulterants?
Whilst we can absolutely see why black market cannabis is attractive, its legalisation is an entirely different debate to the one around Medical Cannabis.
So if you want to grow it for yourself – go for it at your own risk. You’re still breaking the law, but you’re an Adult and can make your own judgements and decisions.
But if you grow it and sell it, now you’re a Dealer too – even if you give it away for free.
Cost of medicine is something we are acutely aware of but are working through advocacy with private health insurers, state government health departments and veterans affairs to get Medical Cannabis paid for where no other treatment options exist.
We are confident prices will fall as more patients come online and local manufacturers gear up. Some of our Volunteers have a prescription and are just as eager as you to see prices drop.
Giving any kind of home-made concoction to a person whose health is already compromised is risky. Home-made oils or tinctures have the potential to do harm to chronically ill patients.
We don’t want to see the whole Cannabis movement crushed by virtue of unknown, potentially dangerous, black market treatments giving people with compromised health bad outcomes.
Our position is to treat Cannabis like any other medicine.
Medicine needs to be of a known purity and potency. It needs to have been tested. We need to know the supply chain to verify it is what it claims to be.
Medicine is disciplined.
Medicine is Science.
Medicine is empirical evidence.
Medicine cannot be based on anecdote.