Medicinal cannabis sales booming in Australia but with concerns of unethical prescribing

ABC NEWS (Australia)

New data suggests Australians are spending more on medicinal cannabis than ever before, with sales on track to double those from 2023. But a new report has raised concerns about the amount of unethical prescribing in the industry.

Transcript

00:00So, drug policy organisation the Pennington has found for the first half of this year

00:06we spent a record $400 million. That's a big jump in just a few years because back in 2022

00:13we spent around $230 million for the entire year. From the limited data available we can

00:19see that men make up the majority of prescribers through the special access scheme and they're

00:24predominantly seeking medicinal cannabis to treat chronic pain and anxiety. So, demands

00:29really rocketed since medicinal cannabis was legalised in 2016 and CEO of the Pennington

00:35John Bryan says community sentiment around decriminalisation is also changing.

00:42It's something that's new to Australia I guess in the last 10 years and it's been incredibly

00:48successful. Only 20% of the Australian community supports the criminalisation of cannabis.

00:55The community actually wants a health-led response and more than 50% of Victorians for

01:01example support a regulated adult cannabis market.

01:05So what are people's concerns then Paige?

01:07So while the industry is thriving it's also had a lot of bad press recently especially

01:12around inappropriate prescribing by telehealth providers. So the Institute said there are

01:17often commercial conflicts of interest between producers, prescribers and pharmacies and

01:22patients I spoke to said their doctor would often push certain brands on them despite

01:26their wishes or force them to get their scripts filled at specific pharmacies. One even told

01:32me that when they would be on the website for their clinic their online shopping cart

01:36would be automatically filled with products that they didn't need or want and they had

01:40to call to get those removed. So the health regulation watchdog earlier this year said

01:45they were going to crack down on this high volume prescribing and their investigations

01:50are continuing and we've also seen a couple of doctors suspended by the medical board

01:54recently.

01:55And what research do we have on the efficacy of medicinal cannabis?

01:58Yeah so a lot of people report improvements for a range of conditions but the scientific

02:03evidence is still reasonably modest. It's strong for certain conditions including multiple

02:08sclerosis, childhood epilepsies and chemotherapy induced nausea and vomiting. It's moderate

02:14for chronic pain and there's still a lot more research needed but there's still insufficient

02:18evidence that it helps with anxiety and mental health disorders. Researchers want the medicinal

02:23cannabis industry to really crank up the money for this research. They say it will give prescribers

02:28and patients more confidence around treatment options.

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