Australia’s growing medicinal cannabis industry, which saw Australians spend an estimated $500 million on legal goods last year, is under a lot of scrutiny from the country’s top medical and pharmaceutical organizations. On Tuesday, the Australian Medical Association (AMA) and the Pharmacy Guild of Australia sent out a combined warning saying that the industry is “excessively” prescribing cannabis without enough clinical monitoring.
Eight years after medical cannabis was made legal in 2016, this warning was issued. In a letter to a government inquiry, the groups asked for major changes to the way the medication is acquired and distributed, saying that it needs to be controlled just as strictly as other restricted drugs.
No proof and “exploitation”
Danielle McMullen, the president of the AMA, said that the situation was very serious: “Urgent action is needed to make sure that medicinal cannabis is prescribed, dispensed, and regulated in the same way as other registered drugs of dependence.”
Doctors said that the existing system is being “exploited,” even if there is medical evidence that cannabis can help with some ailments like epilepsy, nausea caused by chemotherapy, and multiple sclerosis.
McMullen said, “There is little or no evidence base for many of the conditions for which it is being prescribed, such as anxiety, insomnia, or depression.” This shows the gap between evidence and prescribing practices.
Worries About Patient Safety and Telehealth
The submission addressed severe concerns about patient safety and new business practices:
More Emergency Cases: Doctors in emergency rooms are saying they need more resources to deal with patients who are having problems associated to using too much cannabis, such as psychosis. The AMA particularly warned that using medical marijuana could be dangerous for people who already have mental disorders.
Telehealth Exploitation: The AMA spoke out against telehealth models that let people get medicines online without having to see a doctor in person. It has been said that these platforms are being “used as commercial pathways for unapproved products.”
These worries came after The Age newspaper published a bombshell story earlier this year that said a single doctor working for the medicinal cannabis company Montu had written 72,000 prescriptions for 10,000 people in only two years. The report also said that some patient visits were only going to last 10 minutes.
As the global medical cannabis industry is expected to grow to over $65 billion by 2030, critics say that the financial demands in the Australian sector are more important than clinical caution.