Yes, you cannabis: Health Minister tells doctors to back medical marijuana
Medicinal cannabis has been legal for four years now but SA doctors are still reluctant to prescribe it. South Australia’s Health Minister wants to change that.
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Health Minister Stephen Wade is taking the extraordinary step of advising GPs that medicinal cannabis is an available, legal treatment option in a bid to improve the state’s lagging prescription uptake.
SA Health is this week writing to more than 1000 GPs and representative organisations, directing them to clinical resources and online training on medicinal cannabis and its uses to treat patients suffering from conditions such as epilepsy.
The Sunday Mail last October revealed that SA doctors were among the least likely in the nation to prescribe medicinal cannabis, forcing some patients to become law-breakers just to seek relief from debilitating pain.
Mr Wade said he wanted to support GPs in considering medicinal cannabis as a treatment option, adding that the final decision over patient access must be made by doctors, not politicians.
“It’s important that clinicians are given the information they need to determine whether medicinal cannabis could be part of an appropriate treatment program for a patient,” Mr Wade told the Sunday Mail.
“South Australia is active in a national framework which includes online applications, which enables faster and streamlined approvals for medical practitioners to prescribe cannabis derived medicine.” Australian Medical Association SA president Dr Chris Moy said despite a great deal of enthusiasm in the community for medicinal cannabis, interest by GPs to prescribe it remained very limited.
Dr Moy attributed their reluctance to very limited scientific evidence of the benefits, knowledge of potential serious side effects, and the red tape to actually prescribe. “It’s not that doctors are heartless as some may perceive,” he said. “GPs are, and should, always be careful in looking at new treatment options for their patients such as medicinal cannabis.”
But he warned cannabis, like opioids, could cause problems of dependence as well as serious physical and mental health effects.
Therapeutic Goods Administration data shows the federal medical watchdog granted 206 exemptions to SA doctors to prescribe unregistered medicinal cannabis products to patients from November 2016 to June 30 last year.
This represents just 2 per cent of the nation’s medicinal cannabis prescriptions – one of the lowest rates in Australia since it was legalised in 2016.
Even taking population differences into account, SA doctors remain the least likely to apply for medical cannabis exemptions for patients (excluding NT and Tasmania) despite State Government support and TGA changes to streamline online applications.