Around 53 people have been approved to take medical cannabis in recent years with the number of conditions it can treat likely to be increased. In a parliamentary response to Independent TD Violet-Anne Wynne, Health Minister Stephen Donnelly said the purpose of the programme was to enable compassionate access to cannabis for medical reasons, where conventional treatment has failed.
Mr Donnelly said: "It follows the clear pathway laid out by the Health Products Regulatory Authority in their expert report 'Cannabis for Medical Use – A Scientific Review'."
The review, he said, "stated that the decision to allow cannabis for medical use was as much a societal and policy decision as a scientific one due to the paucity of robust clinical evidence, the recreational use of the product and the strong public and patient-led demand".
The report recommended that cannabis should be made available for the treatment only of patients with specified medical conditions that had failed to respond to all other previous treatments, and where there was at least modest evidence that cannabis may be effective.
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