Federal Court Fines CDA Clinics $6.5 Million for Cannabis Advertising

The Therapeutic Goods Administration announced on 30 October 2026 that the Federal Court of Australia had ordered CDA Clinics QLD Pty Ltd, trading as CDA Express, to pay $6.5 million in civil penalties for the unlawful advertising of medicinal cannabis to the public in breach of the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989. The court also ordered the company’s former director, Dr Benjamin Jansen, to pay $450,000 in civil penalties for aiding and abetting the conduct, and the TGA put the combined penalties at $6.95 million.

The orders were made by Acting Chief Justice Collier on 30 October 2026 in Secretary, Department of Health and Aged Care v CDA Clinics QLD Pty Ltd trading as CDA Express 2026 FCA 1623, following a hearing on 22 April 2026. Under the orders, Dr Jansen must pay the $450,000 penalty to the Commonwealth within 180 days and pay the Secretary’s costs of the proceeding as they relate to the claims against him, fixed as a lump sum of $20,000, also within 180 days. CDA Clinics must pay the Secretary’s costs of and incidental to the proceeding as they relate to the claims against the company, to be taxed if not agreed. CDA Clinics did not appear at the hearing, its joint and several liquidators were not present, and Dr Jansen appeared in person.

The Advertisements and the Contraventions

The court declared that CDA contravened s 42DLB(1) of the Act during a relevant period running from 20 April 2021 to 30 July 2021, through 22 advertisements across the cdaexpress.com.au website, six blog posts and the CDA Express Facebook page. Annexure A to the orders lists 15 product advertisements, including pages for Tilray Purified CBD 100, MGC Pharma MP100, Medicabilis 100CBD Isolate, LittleGreenPharma CBD50 Oil, Isospec RX oils and CDA-branded oils, capsules and crystal, alongside blog posts with titles such as Is CBD Legal in Australia? and Rebalancing Your Endocannabinoid System.

The declared contraventions fell into four categories. First, product advertisements and blog posts contained prohibited representations concerning the treatment, cure or prevention of cancer, gonorrhoea, depression, anxiety and post-traumatic stress disorder, in circumstances where no permission under s 42DK of the Act was in force. Second, advertisements contained restricted representations referring to fibromyalgia, epilepsy, autoimmune conditions, chronic pain, seizures, meningitis and autism, each a serious form of disease, condition or ailment within the meaning of s 28 of the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code (No 2) 2018, without any approval under s 42DF or permission under s 42DK. Third, all 22 advertisements referred to cannabidiol substances, or goods containing them, included in Schedule 3, 4 or 8 of the applicable Poisons Standard but not in Appendix H, without government authorisation. Fourth, the 15 advertised products were not entered on the Australian Register of Therapeutic Goods.

According to the Secretary’s submissions recited in the judgment, CDA committed between approximately 1,949 and 12,381 contraventions depending on the counting method, with each day an advertisement remained available to consumers treated as a separate contravention. During the relevant period, CDA sold 1,082 units of the products to 676 customers at prices ranging from $49 to $439.

Findings, the Rejected Defence and the Proceedings

Justice Collier found the advertisements “formed part of a deliberate commercial strategy”, accepting the Secretary’s submission that the website, blog posts and Facebook posts worked together to encourage consumer engagement with CDA’s services and to facilitate access to CBD products, and that they were neither inadvertent nor isolated.

The court rejected the defence originally advanced by CDA that the website material was advice or information given directly to patients by health practitioners in the course of treatment under s 42AA(4) of the Act. Justice Collier accepted the evidence of Professor Charlotte Hespe that the website’s Virtual Consult questionnaire was by its nature superficial and that the process was transactional rather than a genuine course of treatment, concluding that no genuine doctor-patient relationship was established. Before about 31 May 2021, eligible customers could access, review, order and pay for products before any CDA doctor had reviewed their questionnaire responses; afterwards, customers who obtained access could still self-select products, with CDA doctors ordinarily reviewing orders only after they had been placed and paid for.

The court also accepted Professor Edward Ogden’s evidence identifying risks including delayed evidence-based treatment, adverse drug interactions arising from CBD’s inhibition of metabolic enzymes, and quality, consistency and contamination risks in products that had not undergone the regulatory assessment associated with entry on the Register, while noting that Professor Ogden accepted low-dose CBD has a relatively low toxicity profile.

The judgment records that the TGA issued a cease-and-desist letter on 2 July 2021, yet the conduct continued until the website was taken down on 30 July 2021 and removed on 31 July 2021. Dr Jansen had attended a TGA webinar concerning medicinal cannabis advertising restrictions before the website launched on 27 April 2021.

The Secretary filed the originating application on 1 December 2023, and the TGA publicly announced the proceedings on 4 December 2023. CDA initially defended the case, arguing the advertisements fell within the health-practitioner exclusion and that the blog and Facebook posts contained factual information rather than promotional material, while Dr Jansen’s response filed on 14 June 2024 noted he had not been a director of CDA since 5 July 2022. On 13 January 2025, CDA’s sole shareholder, CDA Health Pty Ltd, resolved to voluntarily wind up the company, and Justice Collier granted the Secretary leave on 23 February 2026 to continue the proceeding against CDA in liquidation, after the Secretary undertook not to enforce any costs order against the company without leave.

On 9 February 2026, Dr Jansen and the Secretary filed a Statement of Agreed Facts and Joint Submissions in which Dr Jansen admitted that CDA had contravened s 42DLB(1) and that, as sole director of the company during the relevant period, he had aided, abetted, counselled or procured the contraventions. The parties jointly proposed the $450,000 penalty and the $20,000 costs order. At the hearing, Dr Jansen submitted that the proposed penalty was immense and would take “a decade to pay off, if not more”, referred to approximately $500,000 in defence costs and an emotional toll from the proceeding, and pointed to confusion arising from a 2021 TGA webinar and the expansion of telehealth during the COVID-19 pandemic. The court gave the claimed uncertainty limited weight, but took into account his cooperation, the accepted absence of any deliberate intention to contravene the Act and the personal circumstances he raised in accepting the jointly proposed penalty. Justice Collier found Dr Jansen was not a passive director but the individual principally responsible for the development and operation of the CDA model and the website during the relevant period.

For CDA, the court adopted the Secretary’s three course-of-conduct ranges: $3 million to $4 million for the product advertisements, $1.5 million to $3 million for the blog posts and $0.5 million to $1 million for the Facebook posts. After applying the totality principle, Justice Collier found the $6.5 million penalty sought by the Secretary appropriate and proportionate. The Secretary had identified theoretical maximum penalties of at least $21.634 billion, which the court noted demonstrated the seriousness with which the legislature views the conduct.

Professor Anthony Lawler, Deputy Secretary of the Department of Health, Disability and Ageing and Head of the TGA, said advertising prescription-only medicines to the public can create inappropriate demand and expose patients to avoidable risks, and that treatment decisions should be made by patients in consultation with an appropriately qualified health practitioner rather than driven by advertising. He said the TGA would continue to take strong compliance and enforcement action against unlawful advertising, with the TGA listing consequences of non-compliance that include infringement notices, direction or prevention notices, civil penalties or criminal prosecution. The TGA said the action reflects its ongoing compliance and enforcement activities as outlined in its Compliance Principles 2026 and 2027.