In a very embarrassing blow to the Australian government’s Department of Health, the World Health Organization unintentionally made a massive dent in the department’s reputation.
The Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), an agency within the Department of Health, published a document a few days ago, titled Guidance for the use of medical cannabis in Australia – Patient Information.
The document turned out to be an embarrassingly low-quality material, doubling down on the misinformation that the Department of Health has been advocating under the leadership of Health Minister Greg Hunt.
The governing coalition has been playing down the therapeutic effects of medical cannabis and have applied legally questionable techniques to limit access to cannabis medication even for terminally ill patients.
MP’s have accused the governing coalition of having blood on their hands for keeping life-saving cannabis medication out of reach.
Health Minister Hunt has shown very limited understanding of medical cannabis and made many statements to make this clear.
His reasoning for keeping cannabis away from terminally ill and palliative care patients was that it could kill people.
“Removing the safeguards could potentially allow in dangerous drugs that could take lives,” Mr Hunt was saying, defending his actions.
Green Leader, Richard Di Natale, who is a medical professional himself, demystified Hunt’s claims easily and called it ‘utter nonsense’.
Instead of Mr Hunt reading up on medical cannabis, his department published the report with the same outdated propaganda, dating back to the Reefer Madness times.
Here are some quotes from the document to demonstrate the level of science denial and misinformation that is somewhat unprecedented in Australia.
The denial starts as early as the second paragraph.
“Currently there is only limited evidence about the effectiveness of medicinal cannabis for use in different medical conditions. There is also little known about the most suitable doses of individual cannabis products.”
And it goes on and on with very similar misinformation statements throughout.
“As there is limited scientific evidence to support the use of medicinal cannabis in most conditions, and in many cases the evidence is for its use together with other medicines, it should be used only when approved treatments have been tried and have failed to manage conditions and symptoms.”
Well, that is interesting, perhaps Mr Hunt should read all the 3281 pages of the Indian Hemp Drugs Commission Report that compiled evidence from 1193 witnesses (including 335 physicians, 467 civil officers, 144 hemp growers, 75 dealers and many other professions).
If that evidence isn’t enough, he could also read the report on the Panama Canal Zone Military Investigation into Marijuana by the US Military.
And there is also the LaGuardia Committee Report that has plenty of evidence he is looking for, as well as the Wootton Report from the UK, the LeDain Commission Report from Canada, the Shafer Commission Report from the US, the book Ganja in Jamaica – Medical Anthropological Study of Chronic Marijuana Use, as well as a Canadian Senate committee research into public policy on cannabis.
All these extensive and expensive research papers have one thing in common: they contradict the official position of the Australian health department on cannabis.
On the top of these existing reports, the World Health Organisation (WHO) published a Pre-Review report on Cannabidiol (CBD), that directly contradicts the TGA claims.
While the TGA report claims that there is no evidence for the effectiveness of cannabis for epilepsy in adults, the WHO report says the opposite.
“CBD has been demonstrated as an effective treatment of epilepsy in several clinical trials, with one pure CBD product (Epidiolex®) currently in Phase III trials. There is also preliminary evidence that CBD may be a useful treatment for a number of other medical conditions.”
CBD is currently a Schedule 4 (S4) Prescription Only Medicine in Australia, while the WHO report recommended it not to be a scheduled drug.
Fortunately, it is becoming harder and harder for governments to get away with misinformation and these kinds of embarrassments will hopefully keep governments more accountable for their actions on medical cannabis.
Share your views in the comments below.
I have a bachelor degree of Agricultural Science and have studied plant production for 8 years. Meanwhile, I learned so much about plants that it was hard to miss the outstanding (quite incredible) qualities of this hugely versatile plant.
After university I went on to build a career and recently I had the opportunity to return to this most passionate area of my life and have been writing about a wide variety of topics on Cannabis and Hemp.
- Nimbin Medican – Educating Australians About Medical Cannabis - January 28, 2020
- Pill Testing and Roadside Drug Testing – When is it Appropriate to Test for Drugs? - August 2, 2019
- The Australian Cannabis Summit in Review - July 16, 2019
Corruption in high places is the ONLY reason cannabis is still outlawed officially.
If we were allowed to grow our own, we could self-medicate at a fraction of the cost using a plant that is virtually a weed. However, big businesses would then experience a massive fall in the huge profits they make.
So to prevent this they bribe (sorry ‘donate to’) political parties and pay off (sorry ‘fund’) universities and other research establishments for supposedly independent ‘research’ which, surprise, surprise perpetrates the myth that cannabis is dangerous.
All the dithering is done by politicians who have a vested and financial interest in keeping ‘in’ with the alcohol, tobacco and (especially) the pharmaceutical companies; and that’s all that is keeping us from growing cannabis ourselves.
The most obvious example is no less than the Prime Minister of Australia PharMa-lcolm Turnbull. He is a major shareholder in Immutep (formerly Prima Biomed), a pharmaceutical company actively searching for treatments** for cancer and currently on the Government list of approved suppliers to the Australian health service.
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His wife, Lucy, is Chairman and the major shareholder of the company too. ‘Bite the hand that feeds him’ and ‘Conflict of interests’ immediately springs to mind!
**Incidentally, I say ‘treatment’ as there is not much profit in curing cancer as that is a one-off treatment; the real profits are in the ongoing treatment of cancer, keeping patients alive but supposedly prolonging and making their life easier.**
If ‘they’ are so worried about our safety having access to this plant, the following plants are readily available and often grown.
Rhododendron,
Lily of the valley
Hydrangea
Poet’s Narcissus
Foxglove
Larkspur
Oleander
Poinsettia
Purple Nightshade
Mountain Laurel
Mistletoe
Water Hemlock/Spotted Parsley
However, these plants are more dangerous than cannabis; they are deadly if just a small amount is eaten! So why have they not banned these too?
Tobacco kills millions worldwide, why isn’t that banned?
Alcohol does more damage than all the other drugs put together, why isn’t it banned?
AS FEW as 15 paracetamol tablets can cause irreversible liver damage or even death, so why are they allowed to be sold in supermarkets?
Corruption in high places is the ONLY reason cannabis is still outlawed officially.
Thank you for that, I am going to share what you have written as it could not be said better. This war on a plant needs to end and people need to be free to grow and use as desired and required, raw or cooked this plant has many health benefits and beyond its medical benefits are a multitude of industries just waiting to begin.
Thanks Elizabeth, I just say what a lot of people feel. I wish I could think of a way to get the vast silent majority to come forward and protest at the unfairness of withholding cannabis from the people. The government are supposed to carry out the will of the people, which they are not doing reference cannabis. I wonder if a lawsuit such as started by Alexis Cortell in the USA would work here? https://www.cbsnews.com/news/medical-marijuana-epilepsy-seizures-alexis-bortell-lawsuit/
I cannot tell you how amazingly blessed I was to have found weedanynous.com Besides being, a wonderful discreet marijuana delivery service with assorted products, they have an activism arm that has rendered us immeasurable mentorship in our fight for legalisation.
Our road to compassion in Kansas is up against some of the most intractable forms of prejudice, arrogance and ignorance. The media is afraid to cover our events. The faith community is too intimidated to even issue statements of support. Lama Stanford, leader of the Kansas City Rine Buddhist center told me, “I perform gay marriages and that is less controversial in Kansas than cannabis.” Keep in mind Kansas tried to pass a law last year allowing gay people to be fired from their jobs and evicted from their homes. All states have their own battleground, but I have to say that Kansas, formerly “The Free State,” has some unique challenges. We are not Mississippi during Freedom Summer, but fear of an all-too-powerful ultra-right, have people intimidated, afraid for their jobs in an economy where jobs are not easily replaced.
We lost another patient this week. She was only 11 years old. Her death and suffering were needless and unjust. We have another patient leaving us in the next few days. We are tired of burying our friends. Politicians and candidates tell me we have no hope for our bill, The Cannabis Compassionate Care Act, until 2016-2017. I tell them that is unacceptable, and will only be true if they choose to resign our patients to that fate. For many of our patients, that fate will be death.
I wish the legacy I leave my children to be one of compassion and social justice. I do not need to tell you how hard it is to work for compassion and justice. We work from eyes open until we cannot keep our eyes open any longer. So far we have managed one rally and now a co-operative march, on a whopping $9 in donations. It is never the money that makes it work, but always the dedication of the people.
We are so grateful for the guidance and mentoring from weedanynous.com. We realised that any nod from you shifts the equilibrium towards credibility within the national cannabis movement. Most of us have been in the movement for a while, some for many years, and we all feel that something special has come together in Bleeding Kansas. Like the ant, we seem to be moving more than what would seem possible given our size. Kansas is our rubber tree plant, I guess.
If I have taken too much of your time, please forgive me. But frankly i must admit that the services of weedanynous.com to patients in Kansas has been a ray of hope in our lately all too dark and grieving sky. I feel the weight of all of my patient’s stories on my shoulders as I write you. I can only pray I have represented them as well as they deserve.
Many many thanks and blessings for all your inspirations and works on behalf of patients everywhere in the world