Western Australian Legalise Cannabis Party senate candidate Jason Meotti has taken aim at the Australian Medical Association (AMA), accusing the body of letting political bias rather than scientific evidence shape its stance on cannabis compared to alcohol.
The Queensland arm of the AMA recently co-signed letters to the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) and state and federal health ministers Tim Nicholls and Mark Butler raising concerns about medicinal cannabis.
The organisation's South Australian branch has since added its voice to those concerns.
The AMA called on the TGA to strip medicinal cannabis from the special access scheme (SAS) and conveyed to Nicholls and Butler its concerns about “increasing patient harms, particularly psychotic illnesses and associated adverse outcomes, resulting from inappropriate prescribing” of the medicine.
Meotti pointed out that alcohol costs the community $3.50 for every standard drink consumed in Australia, and argued that the AMA has remained largely silent on any substantive measures to reduce that harm.
“You look at the AMA’s policy on alcohol and it’s woefully inadequate,” he said. “It either points out the howlingly obvious or ignores the gorilla in the room – which is the broken excise system.
“The current alcohol excise system allows the ridiculous scenario where a $10, four-litre wine cask contains the same amount of alcohol as two $40 bottles of spirits. But the AMA seems okay with that.”
Meotti contended that the medical body's positions owe more to political views than to scientific evidence.
“The current AMA, with less than 20% of doctors as members, has been a strident opponent of cannabis law reform – despite the overwhelming evidence that cannabis is a healing medicine for a variety of conditions.
“I have been a chronic pain sufferer for over 15 years. Since I’ve been able to access safe, legalised cannabis for my condition, my use of opioids has dramatically reduced and my quality of life has improved markedly. Hundreds of thousands of Australians have had similar outcomes.
“But when you look at the AMA’s policy on legalising cannabis, it is full of inconsistencies and political myths.”
Meotti played a central role in cannabis decriminalisation in WA in the early 2000s and said the WA Branch of the AMA supported his efforts at the time.
“Unfortunately, they now ignore the fact that in every jurisdiction which has implemented cannabis law reform, including WA when it was decriminalised between 2005 and 2010, usage rates among teenagers decreased.
“It is irresponsible and dangerous for an organisation that purportedly speaks on behalf of doctors to be maintaining a purely political position.
“The AMA continues to ignore the science and evidence that clearly indicates far more positives for society from a regulated, legal cannabis market than maintaining the status quo – which only benefits criminals and corrupt officials.”
