MCEWG, Meeting 5, 21 May 2025

The Medicinal Cannabis Expert Working Group (MCEWG) met for its fifth meeting on Wednesday 21 May 2025. 

The MCEWG membership is comprised of experts in the medicinal cannabis field including general practitioners, consumer and industry representatives and specialists in pharmacy, mental health and pain management. 

MCEWG discussion

The following topics were discussed:

An overview of jurisdictional legislative requirements around medicinal cannabis: 

There was a discussion on legislative requirements around the use of medicinal cannabis across jurisdictions.  While standardisation would be ideal, there is currently a lot of variation across States and Territories. 

Medicinal Cannabis Clinical Primer Document and online resources

A guest speaker from New Zealand presented on The Clinical Primer on Cannabis: A guide to the rational use of cannabis-based medicines (the Clinical Primer) and associated educational material.  The current key issues on quality, prescribing and dispensing of medicinal cannabis were discussed.

It was suggested that an Australian specific introductory precis highlighting dominant prescribing trends, and emphasising that medicinal cannabis is an unapproved medicine accessible through the Special Access Scheme should be developed.  Other issues important for the Australian context include high-volume schedule 8 storage requirements, labelling, non-compliance, and the concerns regarding cannabis use disorder and the prescribing of high-dose TCH.

Medicinal cannabis guidance documents

Members considered a collection of national and international guidance documents with a view to identifying documents and websites that could be hosted on the TGA website to provide guidance to prescribers and consumers.

Next meeting

The next MCEWG meeting will be held in August 2025.