Experts say figures from just three years ago showing almost three per cent of the population being treated with medical cannabis are likely to be much higher today.
It follows a National Drug Strategy Household Survey by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare back in 2019 which surveyed 21,500 people aged 14 and over and estimated that 2.7 per cent (600,000) of the population were being treated with medicinal cannabis.
While those figures are now somewhat dated, experts suggest they point to much higher figures today and so the Lambert Initiative at Sydney University has launched a new survey to find out just how many people are currently being treated.
“There’s been a dramatic increase in the number of prescriptions issued for medicinal cannabis in the past two years,” said Professor Iain McGregor who’s Academic Director of the Lambert Initiative for Cannabinoid Therapeutics.
The other reason experts say there is bound to be a much higher figure, lies in the fact there are more doctors prescribing medicinal cannabis.
According to figures collected by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), there were just 144 doctors officially prescribing medicinal cannabis in 2019, whereas today that figure has grown exponentially to 1,701.
As well, there have been 295,515 prescriptions for medicinal cannabis in the past two years, compared with just 1,011 between 2016 and 2019 and according to experts, because these are official figures, the real figure of medicinal cannabis use in Australia is bound to be much higher.
That’s why the Lambert Initiative has begun its ‘Cannabis as Medicine Survey’ (CAMS) in which respondents can answer anonymously about their medicinal cannabis use, whether the cannabis is obtained legally through prescription or obtained illicitly.
