Nicole Cowles gives her eight-year-old daughter cannabis oil to try to help control her seizures.
"Alice has a rare genetic condition, and she has life-threatening seizures. When we have a bad day, she can have up to 20 or 30 seizures a day."
Ms Cowles, from Hobart, spent years looking for something that might help. After trying a range of prescribed medicines, she finally decided to try medical cannabis. She sources it in a liquid form for her daughter.
"She only has .25 of a millilitre - so, a very small amount - every four hours."
Ms Cowles says the result has been significant.
"It's not a question of whether she takes it or not. There's no other option to stop her seizures, and the benefits of the cannabis have been so significant that I could never ... I could never take her off."
Child neurologist Ingrid Scheffer has treated Ms Cowles' daughter. Professor Scheffer says she is concerned about the medical use of marijuana, despite the results in this case.
"There's just so much hype about it at the moment. It's in the press all the time. It's essentially trial-by-media at the moment, and we need to figure out if it really works," Scheffer says.
"Now we've heard it works beautifully in Alice, and I'm thrilled to hear that, but I think that we need proper, randomised, placebo-controlled trials, where you have double-blind crossover. You check if it really works in a blinded manner, and you look for side effects, and you assess it fully. And that hasn't been done.
Tony Bower, who runs his own New South Wales-based medical-cannabis operation, supplies Nicole Cowles with the cannabis oil. And he supplies many other families across the country.
"I don't recommend doing anything with it, no, no. I'm not a doctor or anything. I give it to the parents. The parents choose what they do with it."
Last month, Mr Bower was sentenced to a year in jail for cultivating a commercial supply of cannabis. He is currently out on bail, appealing the severity of his sentence.
Sydney-based criminal lawyer Adam Ly says, although parents across the country are also breaking the law, they are not at as great a risk of prosecution.
"They're not your typical street-marijuana users who grow in conspicuous situations and conspicuous properties. They're not the type of people who police are usually keeping their eyes on."
Bianca Henderson, whose 10-year-old son Declan also suffers from a rare form of epilepsy, is not prepared to take the risk.
"I want it to be done the correct way, under a doctor, under trials. I won't do it illegally. I want it to be done the correct way under a doctor."
But Nicole Cowles say she does not have time to wait.
"When you're faced with losing your child or trialling something that you're told you shouldn't trial, it's not really a choice. You trial it."
