Mark Butler, federal health minister, believes that there may be changes in Australia regarding medical cannabis.
Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency has updated its guidelines for prescribing medical cannabis after seeing an increased number of bad practices. These include consultations which last only a few seconds or minutes and prescriptions without valid medical reasons.
Ahpra said eight practitioners have published more than 10,000 scripts during a period of six months, with one appearing to be responsible for over 17,000 over a two-year span.
In a recent television interview, Minister Butler was questioned about his concern over the unsafe practices of the industry.
He said that medicinal cannabis is helping a wide range of people with a variety of conditions, from children with epilepsy to adults who have difficult-to-treat psychological issues. There are business practices which are unsafe, and undoubtedly unscrupulous.
The Minister asked the regulators to investigate the issue and give advice to the health ministers of each state on the best way to “regulate the industry” in a more safe manner that would allow patients to have confidence in such treatments.
Also, he was asked if cannabis-prescribed workers could be protected in the event that they tested positive for the euphoric cannabinoid THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) while at work. THC in the blood can be detected days or weeks after consumption, even if there is no impairment.
As part of Minister Butler’s reply:
I know that there is a discussion in Victoria on whether the workplace safety and health laws should be changed to accommodate this new treatment. First, people must receive support for their medical treatments. “There will be obvious questions regarding the use of heavy equipment, etc. but I believe it’s time for a debate on updating our laws.”
Transcript of full interview can be found here.
The Australian government legalised medical cannabis in 2016. However, the prescriptions started to skyrocket only a few short years later. Almost two million prescriptions were written since 2020 with more than 800,000. At the end of 2016, 57 doctors were sanctioned by medical boards for prescribing cannabis medicinally.