As medicinal cannabis goes mainstream, Australia isn’t coping

Medical cannabis has become a routine part of healthcare in Australia much faster than many expected.

What started in 2016 as a tightly controlled pathway for patients with complex conditions unresponsive to other treatments has grown into a large, mainstream prescribing market. Today, medical marijuana is increasingly offered through telehealth and online platforms.

But our healthcare system was not designed neither for this demand nor for the change in prescribing practices. Many of the safeguards that apply to other drugs do not exist for medical marijuana.