“Knowing I’m going to die has made me appreciate life,” he says.

“I don’t sweat the small stuff anymore; I just don’t let it worry me.”

Four years ago, with a baby boy in tow and another on the way, Mr Leahy and his wife Rechelle turned their backs on six-figure jobs in Canberra to buy the historic Commercial Hotel.

The first two years were furiously frenetic, raising a young family while working 100 hour weeks and grappling with the vagaries of a new industry.

So in June 2012, when Mr Leahy began feeling rundown, he naturally blamed it on the workload.

A blood test later revealed the tragic truth – Mr Leahy had stage four colon cancer.

Suddenly, this ordinary family was thrust into an extraordinary battle.

Since his diagnosis, the 39-year-old has endured a litany of operations and a barrage of chemotherapy.

He’s been condemned to death row by more doctors than he cares to remember.

But since commencing a radical chemotherapy regime and taking a daily dose of cannabis oil, Mr Leahy has been given a stay of execution.

His massive abdominal tumour has halved in size and the cannabis oil has allowed him to gain appetite and weight to fight the pernicious disease.

Like Tamworth’s Haslam family and like dozens of families of severely epileptic children, the Leahys are being forced into the underworld for the “crime” of wanting to keep a loved one alive.

Each story that emerges further isolates the narrow, agenda-driven stance of the nation’s health ministers.

The courage of these families has turned the whisper into a roar.

And our politicians, our representatives, can no longer ignore the message: let the dying have dignity and salvage some of your own – decriminalise medical cannabis now.