It seems like everybody is coming to the same conclusion i did about 8 months ago..
Give the AMA & RACGP a stick to beat you over the head with and undoubtedly they will beat you over the head with it.
If the providers weren’t quite so greedy for the cash money as the old school hip hoppers used to say, then this wouldn’t have happened.
This will now mean stricter rules than are necessary as an inevitable backlash swings into action. If everybody had started with moderation in mind then maybe, just maybe, this wouldn’t have occured.
ABC Australia
Medicinal cannabis providers can sell it without sufficient government oversight, quality control or safety guidelines, Australia’s peak medical bodies have warned.
The criticisms come from the Australian Medical Association (AMA) and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners (RACGP).
RACGP vice president Michael Clements said medicinal cannabis telehealth providers typically employed their own in-house doctors, which he viewed as a clear conflict of interest.
He said doctors were incentivised to quickly sign off on medicinal cannabis prescriptions, regardless of whether the patient actually needed it.
“We shouldn’t be able to profit or make money from the treatment we’re recommending,” Dr Clements said.
“These companies solely exist for the purposes of mailing out the cannabis product, so you don’t have to try very hard to convince a doctor that that’s the product for you.
“As long as you press the right buttons in the right [order] you’re going to end up with a script for a product that you ask for, and that just doesn’t sit with us well as GPs.”
‘Wild claims’ about benefits
Dr Clements says some medicinal cannabis telehealth companies advertise their products using cryptic language to get around Australia’s advertising laws, which ban the promotion of prescription products.
He said advertisements typically referenced “leaf-based medicine”, “green therapies”, and other coded language to circumvent the laws.
Dr Clements said he had seen “wild claims” on social media about the benefits of medical cannabis that were not supported by good scientific evidence.
He was concerned that doctors could make untrue or unproven claims about medical cannabis to “cash in” on the very high demand.
Read more
