120,000-130,000 Kiwis have been prescribed medicinal cannabis<\/a>. The Medicinal Cannabis Scheme came into effect in April 2020, with the goal of improving access to quality medicinal cannabis products, according to the Ministry of Health. <\/p>\nPatients must consult a doctor to obtain a prescription for medicinal cannabis under the scheme. People with conditions including chronic pain, epilepsy and glaucoma can qualify for medicinal cannabis in New Zealand, and the costs vary depending on the product and dosage prescribed. <\/p>\n
Some medicinal cannabis products contain tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive, while others are made of cannabidiol (CBD) which does not intoxicate or become addictive. <\/p>\n
Fleming says taking THC oil has halved his burning pain levels.<\/p>\n
\u201cI hardly ever get shock type pain. And if I do, it\u2019s more like someone\u2019s just pinching my thigh a bit, nowhere near as violent as it was. <\/p>\n
\u201cWhen you get shocks like that, it\u2019s really dangerous with whatever you might be doing because you can\u2019t ignore it like you can with other types of pain.\u201d<\/p>\n
He says he hasn\u2019t personally felt any negative side effects, though others might have different experiences.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt did take my body a little while to get used to it \u2013 a few times I felt a bit funny. But I don\u2019t feel that anymore … and now the pain is so much lower.\u201d <\/p>\n
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Andrew Fleming says medicinal cannabis has made all the difference to his chronic pain.<\/p>\n
Fleming is a keen adaptive skier, and says he\u2019s been able to ski while on medicinal cannabis.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt does not impair me … Last year I skied a lot at Cardrona, and my pain levels were the best they had ever been up in that cold environment.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt feels like I can flex the muscles in my thighs. When I lie in bed, I can actually lift my knees a little bit, which is probably a little bit of hip flexion.\u201d<\/p>\n
He knows people will have opinions about using this type of medication.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s a lot of scepticism about THC because that\u2019s what gets people high or stoned. It doesn\u2019t affect me like that. It may affect someone else like that.\u201d <\/p>\n
CBD oil \u2013 which does not have THC in it \u2013 didn\u2019t work for Fleming. <\/p>\n
\u201cBut I am aware of other people with a range of different health issues, that it\u2019s working for them.\u201d<\/p>\n
Medicinal cannabis is not funded in New Zealand; there are only two types approved by Medsafe for specific uses, though the Ministry of Health lists several that meet the \u201cminimum quality standard\u201d and can be prescribed legally.<\/p>\n
The Royal New Zealand College of GPs\u2019 official position statement on medicinal cannabis is that it \u201cshould only be considered when all first-line, conventional, evidence-based treatment options have been exhausted, and after detailed discussions of the potential benefits and harms of medicinal cannabis products with the patient\u201d. <\/p>\n
The college\u2019s medical director Dr Prabani Wood says, \u201cspecialist GPs are sometimes faced with the need to help patients who are unable to manage chronic and debilitating conditions using conventional, evidence-based treatments, and, at times, patient requests to prescribe medicinal cannabis products\u201d. <\/p>\n
\u201cHowever, as with all clinical decisions, GPs need to balance patient-initiated requests for treatment and the clinician\u2019s therapeutic responsibility. The sole medicolegal responsibility for prescribing rests with the prescriber, so it is also imperative to consider legislative and professional requirements before prescribing medicinal cannabis products.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Dr Prabani Wood is a GP at Waikato University Student Health and medical director of the Royal New Zealand College of GPs.<\/p>\n
She says GPs should only prescribe medicinal cannabis if they are confident in doing so and familiar with the dosing regimes that can be used. \u201c[They] may wish to undertake specific courses or training for this.\u201d <\/p>\n
More high-quality research into medicinal cannabis products\u2019 safety and effectiveness needs to be done, Wood says. <\/p>\n
\u201cBalanced, evidence-based general education for the general public and medical practitioners should be made available. The Government should also start monitoring the prescribing and use of medicinal cannabis products to increase confidence in the Medicinal Cannabis Scheme.\u201d <\/p>\n
Doctors at specialist clinics can also prescribe medicinal cannabis. Cannabis Clinic CEO and founder Dr Waseem Alzaher says specialists will take someone\u2019s health history and any other medications into account before prescribing. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe also get people who are referred from their GP or specialist, or other health practitioners that refer them to come and see us and we offer a consultation,\u201d he tells the Herald. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve seen cannabis turn people\u2019s lives around on a daily basis. People come to us and say, \u2018my chronic pain, my sleep has improved, [so has] my anxiety, my mental health, my focus\u2019. People who are, for example, end of life and are vomiting or have nausea and chemotherapy side effects, they are being improved significantly with medicinal cannabis. That\u2019s what keeps us going.\u201d <\/p>\n
Alzaher says some GPs\u2019 hesitancy to prescribe is contributing to the enduring stigma around medicinal cannabis. <\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s been illegal and criminalised for such a long time \u2013 of course there\u2019s no research and research has to catch up. What are we doing as healthcare professionals to enable that research? We know that more and more people are going to be using it and they\u2019re finding a benefit from it.\u201d <\/p>\n
![\"Dr]()
Dr Waseem Alzaher, CEO and co-founder of the Cannabis Clinic.<\/p>\n
Workplace drug testing that doesn\u2019t account for people using legally prescribed medicinal cannabis also \u201creinforces the stigma\u201d, he says \u2013 as will new drug driving rules. <\/p>\n
\u201cWith ACC, in terms of funding cannabis, that\u2019s quite difficult for people. We\u2019ve got the drug driving laws that have been passed that are being rolled out now in Wellington<\/a>, again penalising people for using cannabis and other illicit drugs, but not other potentially impairing medicines,” he says. <\/p>\n\u201cAgain, that just deepens the stigma.\u201d<\/p>\n
Fleming pays for a regular prescription of THC oil and has tried to claim the cost back through ACC, but has been told there is not enough evidence it works. <\/p>\n
\u201cAs the only person that can feel my pain, I have plenty of evidence it works much better than any of the other medicines I had for the 22 years before I was prescribed medicinal cannabis,\u201d he says. <\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m waiting to see what changes happen.\u201d<\/p>\n
In Fleming\u2019s mind, he has nothing to lose; he was told his accident would take a decade off his life. <\/p>\n
He calculates that if he was still on his previous medications today, including Oxycontin, it would be costing the health system $40,000-50,000 a year \u2013 much more than the cost of medicinal cannabis, which for Fleming costs around $3500 a year.<\/p>\n
Fleming hopes the \u201cstigma around medicinal cannabis\u201d will shift, and wants people to be aware of the benefits it can have for people like him as an alternative to drugs like oxycodone.<\/p>\n
\u201cI can understand that doctors need to be confident about what they\u2019re prescribing … I think people should open their minds.\u201d<\/p>\n
Bethany Reitsma is a lifestyle writer who has been with the NZ Herald since 2019. She specialises in all things health and wellbeing and is passionate about telling Kiwis\u2019 real-life stories.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The drug worked to manage his pain for a few years, but Fleming says he then developed an…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":227006,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[135517,6726,1558,17285,13448,1239,28727,6871,42,1357,524,99132,43,2850,3281,32221,312,16715,1361,61,40,38,41,39,3382,6736,102,1530],"class_list":["post-227005","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-headlines","tag-addicted","tag-become","tag-been","tag-cannabis","tag-chronic","tag-condition","tag-gamechanger","tag-has","tag-headlines","tag-lived","tag-medication","tag-medicinal","tag-news","tag-pain","tag-painkillers","tag-prescription","tag-says","tag-taranaki","tag-that","tag-to","tag-top-news","tag-top-stories","tag-topnews","tag-topstories","tag-using","tag-was","tag-with","tag-years"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227005","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=227005"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/227005\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/227006"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=227005"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=227005"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=227005"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}