Medical cannabis treating at least 2.7 percent of population

Professor Iain McGregor - An estimated 600,000 Australians are using medical cannabis - but that's according to data from 2019. Considering the dramatic increase in the number of doctors registering to prescribe in the past two years, and the rapid growth of applications for prescriptions, the figure today is likely to be much higher. To find out, researchers from the Lambert Initiative are launching the latest edition of the Cannabis as Medicine survey (or 'CAMS22') this week. "There's been a dramatic increase in the number of prescriptions issued for medicinal cannabis in the past two years," said Professor Iain McGregor , Academic Director of the Lambert Initiative for Cannabinoid Therapeutics at the University of Sydney. "But we have good evidence that the number of people using cannabis to treat ailments is substantially higher than this." The National Drug Strategy Household Survey, conducted every three years by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, estimated that 2.7 percent of the total Australian population (or about 600,000 people) were using cannabis for medical purposes, either always or sometimes in 2019. The survey involved 21,500 people aged 14 and over. Sharp rise in doctors prescribing cannabis.