A109 Light Utility Helicopter flight with mayor Gisborne City from the air in November 2023.
Opinion
The Government has responded to pressure to relax rules around approval for the use of medical cannabis, following several high-profile cases and a petition late last year signed by 17,000 people.
Associate Minister of Health Peter Dunne announced yesterday that the Ministry of Health will now approve patient applications for
non-pharmaceutical cannabis-based products, rather than the Minister — following a similar shift several years ago for pharmaceutical-grade cannabis products. He took the opportunity to also accuse New Zealand doctors of being too conservative about prescribing medical cannabis, because of “downright prejudices” in some cases.
Two experts at Otago University sounded notes of caution yesterday, both pointing to limited evidence of efficacy for some conditions it is being used for — though supportive of its use for people with terminal illness “because the harm will be minimal and the patient may benefit”.
Professor of neuropharmacology Paul Smith believes that overall this is a positive step that brings New Zealand into line with many other countries, such as the US. However he notes that cannabis-based medicines can mean many different things, and they are not “magic bullets”. “So, it is a question of benefit versus burden for a particular condition.”
Senior lecturer of psychological medicine Dr Giles Newton-Howe had more concerns, particularly over the capacity for doctors to prescribe “non-pharmacological grade” cannabis when they didn’t know what they were giving their patients, and the promotion of greater use of medical cannabis when the evidence base was weak and for relatively small benefit, versus the clear, larger “and relevant to New Zealand” evidence of harms, particularly in those with developing brains.
