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In 2019 about 18,000 Australians held a prescription for medicinal cannabis. By early 2024 the number had passed one million. Ten years after the Narcotic Drugs Amendment Act 2016, the Australian Institute of Pharmacognosy has written a report card on the industry, and this explainer walks through the grades.
The manufacturing side scores well. Patients moved off the illicit market (2.7% of medical users had a legal script in 2019, 73% by 2023), GMP rules keep pesticides, moulds and Delta-8-THC out of the product, and TGA testing found most top-selling products match their labelled cannabinoid content. The clinical side is weaker. More than 99% of prescribed products have never been assessed by the TGA for safety or efficacy, dried flower on sale reaches 60% THC when the trial evidence stops at about 22%, and anxiety leads the approvals despite having the thinnest trial support. The TGA sorts products by CBD to THC ratio alone, so terpenes, chemovar and the CBD interactions with clobazam and warfarin go unmanaged.
The report closes with two recommendations for the next ten years: one that clinics can act on now under current law, and one that needs legislation.