u/Herbaldoge

Ora Pharm put out a media release yesterday confirming that Helius products remain available following its acquisition of the business and key assets.

The release responds to a 9 July newsletter from MW Pharma Limited, trading as NUBU, which said: "Helius Therapeutics has ceased production, and all products are now discontinued".

Ora Pharm says that was incorrect.

According to the release, Ora Pharm completed the acquisition on 18 June 2026, with manufacturing, packaging and nationwide distribution resuming the following day. Helius branded formulated products and locally grown products remain approved and available for patients. 

The NUBU communication was reportedly sent to clinics, GPs and others in the sector, and included guidance on switching patients away from Helius products to NUBU alternatives. That makes it even harder to swallow when NUBU’s own range is made up almost entirely of imported products, while Helius has actually put in the work, investment and regulatory effort required to manufacture medicinal cannabis products here in New Zealand.

When it was first announced that Helius was going, before Ora Pharm stepped in, there was a lot of uncertainty among patients here on Reddit. Many people were genuinely worried they were about to lose access to medicines that were working for them. For anyone who has already spent time and money finding the right product and dose, that kind of uncertainty is incredibly stressful!

It also has real consequences. Doctors may change prescriptions, pharmacies may give patients the wrong information, and people can end up being moved onto products that do not work the same for them.

Ora Pharm says the statement caused unnecessary uncertainty for patients, prescribers and pharmacies, and risked disrupting treatment decisions. So for anyone who was told Helius products were gone, Ora Pharm says that is not the case. Production and distribution are operating, and Helius products remain available.

Patients who have been told otherwise should check directly with their pharmacy or prescriber before changing treatment based on misinformation circulated by NUBU.

NBR has also reported on Ora Pharm seeking an injunction in the dispute with NUBU. The article is paywalled: https://www.nbr.co.nz/primary-industries/injunction-sought-in-row-between-medicinal-cannabis-firms

So after years of banging on about CBD, the Cannabis Clinic has finally added it to its Supported Access Programme.

THC flower has been discounted for ages, while CBD patients kept paying through the roof. THC prices have continued to fall as more products entered the market. CBD, meanwhile, has stayed painfully expensive, helped along by limited choice and barely any real competition.

The timing is hard to ignore. Their Instagram has been full of "it’s easy to switch clinics" posts, and now they’ve finally decided to discount CBD. Amazing what a little competition can do!

Better late than never, I guess, but CBD is still chronically unaffordable for many New Zealanders. Patients needed this years ago, not once the market started becoming less comfortable for them.

A big thank you to the members of this community who keep sending through the messages they receive from clinics, clinic linked people, and accounts promoting clinics behind the scenes.

This is exactly why patient spaces need to stay patient spaces.

The screenshot attached was sent through by another Redditor this afternoon. It shows an unsolicited DM promoting Calyx, telling the person to "try Calyx" and linking them directly to the clinic’s landing page.

Much like the post earlier today, it keeps being Calyx.

I do not have members sending me screenshots of people privately DMing them to promote other clinics.

I do not see other clinic supporters repeatedly targeting patients in DMs and telling them where to go for consults.

I do not see this same pattern of accounts privately promoting consults, product access, or clinic sign ups for anyone else.

This sort of behaviour only further delegitimises Calyx as a real healthcare provider. If a clinic, or people linked to a clinic, need to rely on private DMs into patient communities to push sign ups, that does not look like healthcare. It looks like marketing trying to sneak around our subreddit rules.

And honestly, I have to ask what the motivation is. People do not usually spend their time cold messaging strangers to promote a clinic for no reason. Whether it is formal, informal, social, financial, or just loyalty to the clinic, the outcome is the same: patients are being targeted in private messages to steer them toward Calyx.

That is not acceptable here.

We have also seen unusual voting behaviour today around posts that certain clinics clearly do not like. But the issue is not that clinics dislike what is being said. The issue is that their own actions, and the actions of people promoting them, are what lead to these concerns being shared publicly in the first place.

This is not unique to New Zealand either. Similar patterns have been discussed in r/MedicalCannabisOz, where clinic related content appears to be targeted when it is critical of certain clinic actions.

That is why documentation matters. If members receive messages like this, please either send them through to the mod team or drop them in the comments below. The more this behaviour is documented, the harder it is for anyone to pretend it is not happening.

The traffic patterns on these posts today are also worth noting. Nigeria has again shown up near the top by views on posts about a New Zealand medical cannabis clinic. There is no clear organic reason for Nigerian traffic to be that prominent on this kind of local patient issue. It looks far more consistent with paid or inauthentic engagement than genuine patient interest in what is happening here.

Given the amount of engagement the last post received, I think it is worth being very clear about why Calyx keeps coming up.

This is not new, and it is not some sudden pile on. Around a year ago, I outlined many of these same issues in a post explaining why this subreddit does not welcome Calyx. The fact that we are still seeing the same pattern now is exactly why this needs to be said again.

Some of this is based on patient reports sent to me directly, screenshots, and moderation history. I am not claiming to have independently proven every part of every patient account. I am raising these concerns because the same clinic keeps coming up in reports involving access, pharmacy choice, privacy, industry engagement, prescribing quantities, and possible diversion.

This is not because patients randomly dislike one clinic, and it is not because the mods have some personal issue with them. It is because the same clinic keeps appearing in the same kinds of patient reports, over and over again.

Patients have messaged me about pharmacy choice issues. Patients have messaged me about feeling pressured or blocked when they pushed back. Patients have messaged me about being contacted after speaking publicly about their experience online.

We have also seen accounts openly identifying themselves as connected with Calyx engage in patient spaces. These are not anonymous random accounts where we are guessing. These are people who have historically posted here on r/MedicalCannabisNZ while stating who they are, then gone on to smaller medical cannabis clone subreddits to post about product availability to patients. I have redacted the names in the screenshots attached to this post, but I am confident in what I am looking at. See the 3rd photo attached to this post.

That is not healthcare. That is not patient support. That is clinic linked product promotion in patient spaces, and it is exactly why this subreddit has rules against industry engagement.

I know some members push back on that and think clinics should have the right to engage here. They do not. This is a patient space, not an industry noticeboard, not a sales channel, and not somewhere clinics get to shape discussion around their own commercial interests.

Some members may have also seen industry people posting about this on their own social media, claiming the moderators have a "messiah complex". To be clear, those are their direct words, not mine.

What they call a "messiah complex", I call keeping industry out of a patient community. This is about stopping commercially interested people involved in the supply of products from co-opting this space and using it to steer discussion around products, services, or supply they profit from, or are directly involved in creating.

Patients need somewhere they can speak freely without clinics, pharmacies, brands, reps, or commercially interested people steering the conversation from inside the room.

And then there are the bigger concerns here. Calyx has repeatedly been promoted around huge monthly quantities, strain changes, discounts, and a physical smoke/vape space, as if this is a private cannabis club rather than healthcare.

At one point, concerns were raised with a pharmacy after what appeared to be Calyx connected medical cannabis being offered around online, with pharmacy labelling visible and other users thanking the account for supply. When I alerted the pharmacy to what was happening, the pharmacy itself described the situation as "alarming".

The screenshots attached show exactly why this is such a concern. A Calyx patient appears to have created their own Auckland focused cannabis subreddit, posting things like "New strain just landed" and "HMU if you are looking for proper Medical…" alongside photos of cannabis flower. In one of those photos, Calyx’s partner pharmacy label can be seen on the container, which is exactly why the oversupply and diversion concerns cannot just be waved away.

This is also why the quantity issue cannot be brushed off. Patients here often talk about other clinics limiting them to one or two products at a time, with more normal monthly supply amounts around 30g to 60g. Through the patient verification process on our Discord, I have also seen Calyx patients prescribed up to 5g per day, which works out to 150g per month.

That may be clinically justified in rare cases, but when very high quantities are being promoted as part of the clinic’s appeal, it becomes a serious concern. It is a world away from cautious prescribing, and it creates obvious risks around oversupply, misuse, and diversion.

Calyx is the only clinic I am aware of where the concerns have gone this far. I am not seeing patients from other clinics setting up their own Reddit spaces where prescribed flower appears to be promoted or offered around to others. I am not seeing other clinic names repeatedly tied to huge monthly quantities, pharmacy choice complaints, alleged harassment, astroturfing, and patients being scared to speak openly.

It keeps being Calyx.

And this is exactly why the "120g per month" marketing style chatter matters. When a clinic pushes massive monthly quantities as a selling point, it creates obvious risks around oversupply, misuse, and diversion. That is not some abstract concern. The screenshots show what that risk can look like in the real world.

Now we have the same clinic publicly replying to a Google review by calling a patient a "KAREN", mocking them and their daughter as having a "meltdown", and saying their whole family is permanently banned from the clinic’s services. That is not a healthcare provider setting a boundary. That is a clinic showing everyone exactly why their patients are scared to speak up.

Since that post, the person whose Google review was being responded to has reached out to me directly. I am not going to share their private message in full, but what they described was even more concerning than the public reply itself. Their account was that the clinic owner tried to pressure them over the review, including threatening to terminate access if it was not taken down, and that access was then cut off shortly afterwards.

That is the Streisand effect in real time. The attempt to shut down criticism has only made more patients aware of the behaviour being criticised.

That is exactly the problem. Patients should not feel that leaving a bad review, raising a concern, or telling the truth about their experience could result in their care being cut off or their paid order being held up.

I have also had patients message me about far more serious concerns than bad service. One patient told me they were concerned they could abuse the amount they had been prescribed, while also describing significant mental health struggles. That is not a small issue. When patients themselves are warning that a prescribing model could enable overuse, escalation, or harm, that should be treated as a serious patient safety warning, not dismissed as "clinic drama".

The ridiculous part is that Calyx seems to want all the benefits of being treated like a medical provider, while behaving in ways that patients experience as commercial, retaliatory, and unsafe. You cannot wrap yourself in healthcare language when selling access, then switch to public shaming and pressure when patients complain.

Medical cannabis patients already deal with enough stigma. They already worry about being judged, dismissed, or treated like drug seekers. A clinic behaving like this does not help the sector. It harms it.

Patients deserve care. They deserve privacy. They deserve patient choice of pharmacy. They deserve to raise concerns without being mocked, pressured, or contacted afterwards.

A healthcare provider should not be searching patient spaces, identifying patients from social media posts, and then using patient contact details or the clinical relationship to pressure them over criticism. Under the Health Information Privacy Code, health agencies are meant to collect health information only where it is necessary for a lawful health purpose, collect it fairly, and only use health information for proper purposes. Even where information is publicly available, using it against a patient can still raise serious privacy issues if that use is unfair or unreasonable.

Patients should not be posting about their experience on this subreddit, only to then receive messages telling them to remove it or risk being banned from the clinic. That is not a normal response to criticism. That is pressure being applied through access to care, and it is completely unacceptable.

If Calyx wants to be treated like a healthcare provider, it should start acting like one.

I am also aware that the concerns patients have shared about their experiences are not only seen by patients. Agencies outside the patient community, including health sector regulators and enforcement bodies, have been made aware of these kinds of concerns before. They do not need this post to understand what is happening here. The pattern has been visible for a long time, and patients have been raising these concerns for a long time.

Comments are locked because this is not an invitation for clinics, clinic supporters, or bad faith accounts to relitigate whether patient spaces should be open to industry influence. This post is being made to document the pattern of concerns patients have raised and to explain why this subreddit maintains a hard boundary against industry engagement.

A certain Auckland cannabis clinic has been leaving frankly atrocious public replies to Google reviews, including calling a patient a "KAREN", mocking them and their daughter as having a "meltdown", implying they were unreasonable for needing timely access to cannabis, and then publicly stating that their whole family is permanently banned from the clinic’s services.

Whatever the clinic’s side of the story is, this kind of response is wildly inappropriate from a business that claims to be a healthcare provider.

Patients are allowed to be upset about delays, communication issues, access problems, or poor service. Clinics are allowed to respond and provide context. But a clinic publicly insulting a patient, dragging their family into it, and using language like this on a Google review is not professional, not trauma informed, and not acceptable in medical cannabis care.

What makes this worse is that this certain Auckland clinic seems very comfortable talking about blocking or banning people the moment patients expect their rights, dignity, or access needs to be respected. That is not normal. Patients should not have to worry that raising a concern will get them mocked, publicly belittled, or cut off from care.

To be clear, this is not how medical cannabis clinics across New Zealand generally behave. No other clinic in this country seems to carry on like this online. This appears to be the conduct of one individual connected with one certain Auckland clinic, and frankly, it is embarrassing for the sector.

This sector already has a trust problem. Patients are already nervous about being judged, dismissed, or treated like "drug seekers". Public replies like this only reinforce those fears.

If a clinic cannot respond to criticism without belittling patients online, that says a lot about the culture behind the counter.

Patients deserve basic respect, even when there is a disagreement. Healthcare providers should be held to a higher standard than this.

I have been shared credible information that the Wellington Police are carrying out random roadside drug testing tonight.

This is performative policing dressed up as road safety. Oral fluid drug tests can detect past cannabis use, but they cannot prove actual impairment.

If anyone is stopped or tested tonight, please consider sharing your experience afterwards so the community has a clearer picture of how this is being carried out in practice.

A human rights advocate working on police accountability has created a great little free online game showing how roadside saliva drug testing can create liability for drivers who have not actually taken any drugs.

It steps you through a real roadside stop, exactly as it happens, and shows how an innocent driver’s outcome can come down to a dice roll rather than the truth.

The point is simple, if the testing device can produce false positives, then "clean" does not always mean safe from punishment. A driver can do nothing wrong, get pulled over, and still end up facing a fine, a 12 hour driving ban, and the start of a criminal record process because the test got it wrong.

It only takes about two minutes to play, and no data is collected.

Play the game here.

More about the Roadside Rights Collective here: https://rrc.org.nz