While medical cannabis is legal in Australia, many patients are finding it difficult to find physicians who are willing to prescribe the substance. This has forced those patients to resort to illicit sources of medical cannabis in order to alleviate their symptoms.
Qualifying patients, such as Trembath Forster who lives in Canberra, say that they have to travel hundreds of miles to access a doctor who is licensed and willing to prescribe medical cannabis. Such trips are not only financially strenuous but also nearly impossible for patients with mobility challenges.
Trembath Forster reveals that she and other patients have encountered ignorance and outright arrogance when they approached many local doctors about a prescription for medical cannabis. Such doctors have no qualms about putting the patients on any strong opioids or prescription medications available, but they become hostile or evasive when the subject of medical cannabis is raised.
Australian law imposes stringent conditions which must be met before a patient can use medical cannabis. First, the patient must find a doctor who has been licensed to prescribe “unapproved therapeutic goods.”
For a physician to get such a license, he or she must have undergone extensive training and acquired expertise in the condition/disease from which the patient is suffering. The physician should also have undergone training on how to use the “unapproved therapeutic goods” to treat the specific condition for which the patient is seeking medical cannabis as a remedy.
The licensed physician is also expected to monitor the condition of the patient while that patient is using medical cannabis. In other words, the physician is responsible for what happens to the patient as a result of that patient’s consumption of medical cannabis.
Benjamin Graham, the Executive Director of a non-profit called Chronic Pain Australia, explains that those stringent conditions could be to blame for the brick wall patients run into when they talk to their GP about medical cannabis. In Trembath Forster’s case, her GP was sympathetic but lacked the license to prescribe medical cannabis.
Graham added that most patients his organization interacts with say that their GPs are either ignorant about medical cannabis or they are biased against the treatment option. He has hope that as more patients request for medical cannabis, more doctors will undergo the needed training in order to get the license from the Therapeutic Goods Administration of the Australian government’s Department of Health.
Sproutly Canada and SinglePoint hope that the authorities in Australia come to the aid of the patients and conduct campaigns to register more physicians on the medical cannabis program. This will make it easier for the patients who desperately need medical cannabis to get a prescription for it.
Source CNW420