Medical Cannabis Awareness New Zealand Press Release,

Greens Drug Policy refreshing, rational.

Today the Greens have unveiled a comprehensive set of initiatives around the politically fraught policy area of drug law and reform, showing Moral courage on the issue of Medical Cannabis that has been lacking in parliament.

“MCANZ welcomes the first comprehensive agenda by a major political party to respond to the strong demand for Medical Cannabis, somewhere near 80% public support, and alleviate the suffering of thousands.” says MCANZ coordinator Shane Le Brun

MCANZ agrees with all the points relating to Medical policy. Although MCANZ is almost exclusively focused on promoting legal access as opposed to lobbying for change, we have been contacted by Police on one occasion to provide advice and assistance in reducing penalties for a patient with legitimate medical needs for Cannabis, and to this effect removing penalties for high needs patients as referred to in Para B1 is a positive interim step. “Its hardly groundbreaking to avoid prosecuting terminal/chronic patients, it was recommended in the Law commission report 5 years ago, and considering Helen Kelly was broadcast cooking up Class B drugs on TV with no repercussions, we could argue it is only formalizing what the police are already doing, and removing the racial disparity in the “discretion” that they currently exercise with variable results over the country” Says MCANZ coordinator Shane Le Brun.

MCANZ agrees that the process for accepting Medical Cannabis products is broken, and would welcome the opportunity to provide advice on implementation of system suitable for Medical Cannabis as outlined in para 3b. As an unpatentable medicine, that is effectively an essential oil, a scheme to accept similar products easier without reinventing the wheel with 8 figure trials is essential to reducing costs to the patient and improving patient choice. We have generics for regular pharmaceuticals, and Biosimilars for Biologics. With Biosimilars being accepted its not too much of a stretch to implement a regime for similar Cannabis products. “with cannabis based products, we need to think past the brand names to the content of the medicines, Sativex is just a balanced hash oil in a spray can, there are much cheaper alternatives available in other jurisdictions that do the job just as well” Says MCANZ coordinator Shane Le Brun

MCANZ has already been carrying out the functions of Para 3b of their policy, keeping an eye on the industry for good products, in our experience the closer a product is to pharmaceutical grade the easier it is to convince specialists to make the application, to this end we have had great success with one product from Tilray, with 2 successful applications and several specialists having verbally agreed to make applications, giving patience more choice.

MCANZ doesn’t feel that interfering with Pharmac’s bulk funding of medicines is desirable, however the special one off patient funding option available under the NPPA is broken. Patients who trial Cannabis based products sometimes with excellent results, are always denied NPPA funding as there isn’t enough evidence, ignoring the patients results as testified by their specialists, and sometimes against clinical best practice, where Pharmac is prepared to fund a spinal pump of baclofen, a horrifically invasive option, when best practice is to try Sativex first. In NZ we have had patients with various forms of Epilepsy and even Tourrette’s have excellent results from Sativex, so much so that one DHB has funded Sativex as it was cheaper than covering the frequent Emergency Department visits of the patient without Sativex. “Funding medicines based on cost effectiveness and evidence is Pharmac’s prerogative, but patients who have exceptionally positive responses to Cannabis Based Products deserve funding, it is in the best interests of the state for patients to get the most effective medicines, irrespective of whether 10s of millions of dollars have been spent proving it works for a single condition” says MCANZ coordinator Shane Le Brun

About MCANZ

http://mcawarenessnz.org/our-mission/

Website www.mcawarenessnz.org

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