Image: Prescriptions for medicinal cannabis have seen a significant rise in recent years. Dmytro Tyshchenko, Shutterstock
Medical cannabis usage has skyrocketed in Australia since the drug was legalised for medicinal purposes in 2016. The industry has now become a half-billion dollar industry, with retailers, pharmacists, and doctors all being able to prescribe and distribute a variety of medical products, such as oils, tinctures, vapes, gummies, or the plant itself.
Across Australia, over 300,000 medical prescriptions for cannabis have been approved since 2016.
But many doctors, mental health practitioners, and citizens have concerns over the drug’s rising popularity and “cult-like” following. Many individuals have been wondering if prescriptions are given out too liberally, while others wonder if comprehensive screenings are conducted with patients before being given medical marijuana.
The drug is still heavily monitored and regulated when it comes to recreational use, yet there are hundreds upon hundreds of “medical” cannabis companies country-wide. And there are nearly 3000 approved providers of medicinal cannabis in Australia, and over 1000 different products for sale on the market.
Medical Cannabis Telehealth Troubles
One problem is telehealth consultations with so-called “telehealth cannabis specialists.” The pay is certainly a factor that may entice a medical practitioner to switch to filling scripts, earning the doctors $120 to even $350 an hour for issuing said prescriptions. One investigation showed that a healthcare practitioner had given out over 12,000 prescriptions over the span of 6 months, which equals to about 90 prescriptions a day, which sounded alarms for the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency (AHPRA).
The main reasons for medical marijuana prescriptions are chronic pain and sleep issues. In fact, over 100,000 medical cannabis prescriptions were issued for chronic pain in 2023. But such telehealth consultations can sometimes not include the whole scope of an individual’s medical history, including factors that would make cannabis ingestion dangerous — even deadly.
Medical cannabis company faces criticism after tragic death and injury
Such deadly cases took Australia by storm this week.
Medical cannabis company “Dispensed” has been criticised recently after the hospitalisation of one of the company’s clients and the suicide of another.
The deceased client’s parents complained after the company continued to send medical cannabis to the house, despite the parents indicating on the online health portal that their son had passed.
Two sets of parents are claiming that Dispensed should not have sold marijuana to their sons, who had numerous mental and physical health issues, and blame the company for one son’s involuntary institutionalisation and one son taking his own life.
Hope For cannabis within healthcare
However, there are many doctors and general practitioners who believe that medical cannabis is very beneficial and can work in tandem with modern medicine. Phoebe McLeod and her brother, Jim Connell, started their own medical company, Heyday, that is focused on combining conventional medicine with natural medicine after they saw what positive effect cannabis had on their mother during her cancer treatment.
“Even though we have these potentially bad players in Australia [in the cannabis industry] – doctors who are providing inadequate education to their patients – Australia probably has the most robust and safest medical cannabis program in the world,” said Connell, one of Australia’s most well-known medical cannabis specialists, to the Sydney Morning Herald.
Owner and founder of Australia’s only medical cannabis publication, CannaBiz, Martin Lane, said, “It’s important to remember that this is a relatively new industry, working within a regulatory framework that wasn’t originally designed for it, so there’s bound to be growing pains.”
“There’s also been something of a green rush in other parts of the world which have legalised the medicine, so it does sometimes attract people who are more interested in making a quick buck than patient welfare,” said Lane.
“But the vast majority of those working in the space are doing so for the right reasons – often because they, or someone close to them, has benefitted from using cannabis as a medicine.”
“While it’s true that cannabis currently lacks the ‘gold-standard’ clinical trial results of some other medicines, there’s enough real-word evidence to show it’s a crucial (and still relatively new) weapon in a prescriber’s armoury,” continued Lane.
The Australian Government Office of Drug Control has compiled lists of approved sellers, growers, producers, and manufacturers that they consider “trustworthy” to the public, although there are still hundreds of unregulated and untested sources that might not be considered safe to consume.
But there are political parties, regulatory bodies, and advocates for the use of medical cannabis in Australia who are changing the course and standing their grounds for the good of those who may need it.
