The Therapeutic Good Administration (TGA) has approved a record level number of cannabis prescriptions in February through the SAS Category B scheme.
Latest figures released by the TGA show a 31.5% increase in approvals compared to January, and a 125.8% increase from February last year.
The graph shows just how much traction medical cannabis is gaining in Australia, and provides some explanation as to why there is a huge flower shortage happening at the moment. Despite federal health authorities saying “depiction of the situation as a shortage is not accurate”.
Keep in mind that the approval numbers above do not accurately reflect the number of medical cannabis patients in Australia. As from the TGA website:
This is due to the possibility of repeat applications for the same patient. It is also possible that an individual patient may be associated with separate approvals for multiple products.
Even if official patient numbers may be lower than above, the real number of Australians consuming cannabis for medical purposes is far higher, as just 2.7% access the medicine through the legal pathways.
