I reminded the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) about information that was provided to me during previous estimates regarding alleged harm from medicinal cannabis. My question was not answered. Instead I was given an excuse as to why adverse events are not recorded for cannabis.
This is not true. There is a second register of adverse events, which is a TGA internal register called AEMS. Medical practitioners have been reporting adverse events to this database for years. The TGA’s own data shows that medicinal cannabis has caused 515 adverse events since 2012. Medicinal cannabis was the sole suspected medication in 454 of these – 174 were serious and 10 were fatal. As Professor Skerritt pointed out in Estimates, cannabis is widely prescribed in palliative care and this outcome is to be expected in end-of-life care where patients are receiving pain relief. In other words, patients died while taking cannabis — not from taking cannabis.
The reason the TGA did not answer my question on the relative harm of cannabis over pharmaceutical medication is because it’s not even a contest. Cannabis has been prescribed over 4 million times across this period and discounting palliative care, medicinal cannabis has not caused a single death or permanent incapacitation. Compare this to over a thousand reports of death just in the last two years from COVID injections. The pharma funded TGA acts in service of the pharmaceutical state and will do everything in their power to ensure medicinal cannabis is not made available to everyday Australians at an affordable price.
One Nation has produced a bill to down-schedule medicinal cannabis so that it can be prescribed by any doctor and filled by any chemist. This simple and long overdue reform has been blocked by the Liberal, National and Labor parties despite strong public support for the measure.
I will continue to advocate for policies that improve the health, well-being and prosperity of everyday Australians.
Sad Fact, the money go round for the manufactured drug peddlers is compromised, equals hide real facts and prosper
I think it is time for a referendum on COVID, These people in power need to be accountable for their deeds, and actions. Most of the Australian people have no input on decision made on us. Yes you give us a voice Thank you 🙏.
I support medical marijuana, I have tried this special medical oil in the past, It relieved my pain and relaxed me. Only issue it costs to much, very expensive 🫰. Also it needs to be on the chemist shelves.
The TGA will never clear Medical Cannabis which works, is not addictive and far safer than Schedule 8 Pain Killers. The main reason is Big Pharma is giving them hush money to ensure they don’t approve MC. As long as MC is derived from a natural plant, Big Pharma can’t Patent it and make big bucks.
Governments’ scream they want people of opioids, while they are making patients lives a nightmare but are a huge money maker for Big Pharma. It’s a catch 22 situation. Suffering from Chronic Pain for 23 years and now being 70, the Govt wants Doctors to stop prescribing opioids and leave patients to suffer while telling us Aspirin or the likes of Ibuprofen will work just as well when patients are walking bone on bone or 23 year prosthetics in knee replacements aren’t troubling us, while the rest of our bodies are rapidly disintegrating. While medicine is talked about, as rapidly going forward in leaps and bounds, it’s not being seen or reached by the patients. My Doctor wants me to keep seeing my Pain Specialist and asking for a pain pump to be inserted in my lower lumbar spine to relieve the pain from bulging discs. Which means going back ever few months to have the pain pump refilled with pain relief medication. This is so she won’t need too prescribe as much pain medication that I currently take as Govt is constantly pushing Doctors to stop prescribing pain meds that work (sched 8). That doesn’t take into account my shoulders are now disintegrating rapidly and now my hips are giving me grief. Not to mention an arthritic ankle that’s painful to walk on. Not all people had a working life of sitting on their bums pushing. At 8 years old, I was delivery grocery too pensioners who lived up one too two flights of steps in the Flat blocks, which included 4 gallon drums of kerosene. Then years of sorting mail with Australia Post, up ending Parcel bags to sort out Parcels that weren’t covered by OPH&S weight restrictions. It’s time patients needs were taken care of by Doctors, not Doctors who are working to Govt restrictions on how Doctors can prescribe for their patients.
Thank you for your persistence to overcome corruption, greed and self-centredness