Despite more than 600 reports of "adverse events" for medicinal cannabis in the past three years, the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) is yet to investigate the safety of most medicinal cannabis products. It has now launched a review.

The whole article is worth reading but this caught my eye.

The Australian Medicinal Cannabis Association (AMCA) said that without suspected adverse events being published and investigated it was hard to draw conclusions about the safety of medicinal cannabis products.

If the only organisation representing cannabis prescribers is unwilling to comment on safety what does that say about the state of the industry?

  • guillem@aussie.zoneEnglish
    0·
    29 days ago

    For perspective, according to drugs.com:

    _The chance of having a drug side effect generally falls in these ranges:

    • Very common: affecting more than 1 in 10 people (>10%)
    • Common: affecting between 1 in 10 people to 1 in 100 people (1% to 10%)
    • Uncommon: affecting between 1 in 100 to 1 in 1,000 people (1% and 0.1%)
    • Rare: affecting between 1 in 1,000 to 1 in 10,000 people (0.1% to 0.01%)
    • Very rare: affecting less than 1 in 10,000 people (< 0.01%)_
    • Joshi@slrpnk.netOPEnglish
      0·
      29 days ago

      In my experience with people who have been prescribed cannabis according to this metric common side effects are acute intoxication and worsening of existing mental health issues. Uncommon side effects are diarrhoea, nausea/vomiting, abdominal pain. Rare is psychosis, I’ve seen it once in maybe 200 patients but it’s probably not 0.5%.

      We really need to define the risks if we’re going to prescribe cannabis at these volumes. Hence the call for TGA to investigate.