Cannabis must fill the codeine gap
If the government is to follow an international trend of regulating opioids, it should also embrace medicinal cannabis.
1 February 2018
Liberal Democrats Senator David Leyonhjelm has called on the Federal Government to quit dithering and cut the red tape preventing thousands of Australians suffering chronic pain from accessing medicinal cannabis.
“With prescription-only rules for codeine coming into effect today, it has now become a matter of urgency that seriously ill patients obtain access to an effective and safe alternative,” Senator Leyonhjelm said.
“If the Federal Government cannot remove the bureaucratic barriers doctors are currently facing when trying to legally administer medicinal cannabis, the black market for products such as codeine-based pain killers will flourish.”
Senator Leyonhjelm said there was ample evidence to show that state health bureaucrats were forcing doctors to jump through near-impossible hoops to obtain permission to administer cannabis to patients.
In NSW, for example, GPs must fill out an onerous pile of paperwork that can take several hours to complete for each and every patient. Some NSW GPs say they have been sent letters from NSW Health warning their indemnity insurance may not cover medical cannabis.
“Even for those GPs dedicated enough to spend this amount of time and energy accessing what has become a legal drug, the process is taking so long their patients are dying before they receive permission to medicate with cannabis,” he said.
Overseas experience, such as that found in the US, has shown that the prescription of addictive opioids such as codeine has dramatically declined, along with the associated deaths and overdoses, in states where medicinal cannabis is readily available.
“It’s time for Federal and state bureaucrats to get over their blinkered ideological opposition to medical marijuana and put the needs of chronically and terminally ill Australians first,” Senator Leyonhjelm said.
“Sanctimonious ‘caution’ and bureaucratic restriction by stealth must no longer stand in the way of compassion and common human decency.”
Media: Kelly Burke 0408 734 586
