The Government Is Trying To Have It Both Ways – It Needs To Pick One
More pressing events on the Australia Federal government’s agenda for the next month, sadly, after yesterdays events in my old suburb and surf spot.
But yes there are many issues that will need to be dealt with in the new year.
I do like this short sentence by the ABC commentator Alan Kohler
Most of it is being imported from Canada for some reason.
The ABC reports 15 December 2025
A few pharmacies around the country have been scrambling lately to replace a doctor who has been banned from prescribing cannabis by the Medical Board of Australia.
The doctor, Justin Welsh, is appealing against the decision, which he describes as “totally disproportionate”, and the ban is set to be reviewed today. It was apparently triggered by Western Australia’s chief pharmacist raising concerns that Welsh had exceeded the state’s 30 gram per month limit.
Some chemists I know have had to ring hundreds of customers to move them to a new prescriber so their prescriptions remain valid.
You see, Welsh only prescribes cannabis. He told The Age: “This year alone, I have written 14,711 prescriptions. That’s 102,977 cannabis products worth an estimated $9,782,815 to the cannabis industry.”
That’s about 65 scripts a day, which is good, steady cash flow. You can see why pharmacies are keen to replace him.
How does he write so many? Telehealth.
Welsh is, or was, one of a band of specialist telehealth cannabis prescribers and clinics that are part of a very efficient, very profitable $1 billion a year cannabis supply chain that has materialised since the drug was legalised for medicinal use by the Coalition government in 2016.
Most of it is being imported from Canada for some reason.
A source of revenue
The system of legalised dope dealing has become so efficient and lucrative, that a growing number of pharmacies have come to rely on the revenue from it, and the Australian Medical Association, the Pharmacy Guild, the Therapeutic Goods Administration and the Labor government are alarmed about it.
But they don’t really know what to do.
Well, the AMA and Pharmacy Guild know — they want it to be controlled like other prescription medicines, instead of through the “special access regime” established by the Coalition in 2016 that allows cannabis to be prescribed by GPs and supplied by pharmacies without having gone through the usual trials to establish quality, safety and efficacy.
The non-profit drug research and advocacy group the Penington Institute, on the other hand, says it should be legalised, and has published a 21-point plan to do so, as well as a major report on the Australian cannabis industry late last month.
The problem with treating it like other TGA-approved medicines is that, unlike other medicines, it competes against a well-functioning illegal market, which the Penington Institute estimates is worth $5 billion, and also against customers who can grow their own.
No pharmaceutical company is going to pay for expensive trials knowing it will have to compete against home-grown products and a lot of crooks, and only ever get access to about 15 per cent of the market.
But full legalisation is fraught as well. In a lot of places that have decriminalised it completely, medical bodies are pushing for it to be made illegal again, especially psychiatrists and neurologists.
