Medicinal cannabis is shrouded in confusion, according to University of Tasmania academic Professor Dom Geraghty.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
Professor Geraghty, who is president of the Australasian Society of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacologists and Toxicologists, presented a public lecture addressing myths around medicinal cannabis on Sunday.
“The use of the term ‘medicinal cannabis’ is actually the most confusing aspect of the entire debate at the moment,” he said.
He said the term caused people to envisage consumers smoking marijuana – but that is not the form it would take. It is taken as an oil.
“What the pharmaceutical companies will be producing for consumption and for prescription is in fact purified, or semi-purified, individual compounds,” he said.
“Most importantly, the vast majority of the clinical trials that are going on around the world at the moment do not contain THC, which is the psychoactive agent of cannabis.
“The one that’s really being tested is a thing called cannabidiol … so it’s a non-psychoactive agent.”
The Medicinal Cannabis - Hope or Hype? lecture was part of The Royal Society of Tasmania’s 2017 Launceston Lecture Series, and took place at QVMAG in Inveresk. He said the efficacy of medical cannabis remains to be proven or not proven.
He said although there was strong evidence cannabinoids, or cannabis compounds, were effective in treating severe childhood epilepsy, they were not going to be effective in every disease.
He said trials until 2014 weren’t sufficient enough to convince most medical authorities of widespread use, but there are now about 75 “highly controlled” trials worldwide.
“The strength of the evidence, for or against [cannabinoids’] use, will be much better,” he said.
NSW is conducting medical cannabis trials for severe childhood epilepsy, nausea from chemotherapy, and terminal illness. Tasmania and NSW signed a MOU to work together on medicinal cannabis initiatives in late 2015.
Federal Health Minister Greg Hunt last week said medical cannabis would be imported from abroad while domestic cultivation caught up with demand. Tasmanian Health Minister Michael Ferguson said the state’s Controlled Access Scheme would be rolled out “as soon as practicable” this year.
He said Tasmanian Health Service hospital pharmacies would dispense prescriptions under the scheme.
