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Call On Cannabis Medicine
Carol Nader | The Age | 01/23/06

AUSTRALIA'S drug regulator should decide whether medical use of cannabis is permitted, according to the head of the committee developing the first national cannabis strategy.

In a move likely to increase pressure on federal and state governments to allow medicinal use of the drug, Richard Mattick, chairman of the national cannabis strategy, said the Therapeutic Goods Administration determined the effectiveness and safety of medication, and cannabis should be treated the same way.

The TGA's role was to approve new therapeutics in Australia and it was up to it to determine whether medication was safe and effective, he said. "State politicians might comment on whether they think cannabis should be considered for therapeutic users, but the TGA is the group that protects your health and my health with regards to medicine, and to go outside those processes is foolhardy."

Former NSW premier Bob Carr announced in 2003 that the state would conduct a clinical trial of medicinal use of cannabis, but it never took place. The NSW Government is discussing with the Federal Government the establishment of a cannabis trial. The Victorian Government has ruled one out.

Professor Mattick, also the director of the National Drug and Alcohol Research Centre, is part of a panel of drug experts developing the cannabis strategy. It will be presented later this year to the Ministerial Council on Drug Strategy, which comprises health and police ministers.

Federal parliamentary secretary for health Christopher Pyne did not wish to comment, but has previously called for tougher cannabis penalties.

The chairman of the Premier's Drug Prevention Council in Victoria, Rob Moodie, said cannabis might have a place in palliative care, pain relief and HIV.

Problematic cannabis users should be dealt with in the health system rather than the criminal system, he said.

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