Doctors don ' t seem interested in medical cannabis, TGA says
By Rachel Worsley 30 May, 2017
Regulators say doctors’ interest in prescribing medical cannabis remains minimal despite growing patient demand.
Just 91 doctors in Australia have been authorised to prescribe medicinal cannabis, TGA officials told a Senates Estimates hearing this week.
The regulator said there had not been“ sufficient demand” from doctors. It also stressed that it was not the role of the TGA to“ advocate” for doctors to prescribe medical cannabis.
“ It’ s the same way as we wouldn’ t want to advocate [ doctors ] to use a particular unapproved cancer medicine,’ said Dr John Skerritt, the TGA’ s deputy secretary of health products regulation.“ The clinical colleges and the GPs have to come to us.”
Doctors can be licensed to prescribe medicinal cannabis by becoming an Authorised Prescriber but applications must go through an ethics committee first.
So far most of the 25 Authorised Prescribers are paediatric neurologists treating intractable epilepsy in children.
But Dr Skerritt said the TGA did recently approve a palliative care specialist to prescribe medicinal cannabis for chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting.
There are a further 66 doctors who have been allowed to prescribe through the Special Access Category B scheme.
Under the scheme, doctors must provide evidence that they have tried all other treatments without success or that their patient has endured intolerable side effects.
The RACGP has been lukewarm about medicinal cannabis, partly because of the lack of published clinical guidelines as well as lack of robust clinical evidence on its safety.
Earlier this year President Bastian Seidel said:“ Our concern is about the push to make medicinal cannabis mainstream. The community perception is that medicinal cannabis can be prescribed for all sorts of indications and that’ s currently not the case.”
He added:“ The concern is that we are driven by the positive effects, but we are neglecting looking at the side effects and consequences of short-, medium- and long-term use. Realistically, there are few long-term studies
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