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Medical Marijuana in Australia

Australia has suddenly taken the lead in the rapidly accelerating global debate over marijuana's medical use.

Last November, politicians in the Australian Capital Territory voted to allow doctors to determine when marijuana is medically appropriate. The decision enraged the Australian Federal Police and intensive lobbying efforts began to reverse the legislative action. In a scene that has become all too familiar, legislators caved-in to the demands of the police, reversed their earlier action, and voted to block doctors from legally prescribing marijuana.

Despite this political confusion the med-pot debate has rapidly spread to other Australian states. According to numerous press accounts, Australian physicians, backed by AIDS and cancer groups, are supporting political moves to end the medical prohibition of marijuana. Similar political actions are being planned in New South Wales and West Australia.

"Most Australians think doctors and patients -- not bureaucrats and vice cops -- should decide when marijuana is medically needed," said Robert Randall, president of the Alliance for Cannabis Therapeutics (ACT). Randall called reversal of the Australian Capital Territory action, "A shocking, even frightening display of overt police interference in the political process, and in the practice of medicine."

Australian efforts to end the medical prohibition of marijuana are part of a rapidly expanding global debate over the inexpensive plant's therapeutic importance. Among recent global developments:

• In February 1994, the British Medical Association reported 70% of physicians in the United Kingdom think marijuana should be legally available by prescription.
• The powerful California Medical Association has endorsed marijuana's prescriptive medical use in the treatment of life- and sense-threatening diseases including AIDS, cancer and glaucoma.
• Dutch authorities have recognized that social coffee shops are not an adequate response to the AIDS crisis. As a result, Holland is working to establish legal means so Dutch physicians can prescribe marijuana to desperately ill patients.
• U.S. courts in several states have already ruled marijuana can be a drug of "medical necessity" in the treatment of AIDS, glaucoma and multiple sclerosis.
• Thirty-five U.S. states have voted to end the prohibition of medical marijuana. U.S. drug police, however, have strongly resisted political efforts to expand marijuana's medical availability.
• A 1991 Harvard survey of U.S. cancer specialists found 44% of American oncologists privately advise patients to break the law to obtain medically needed marijuana.

"There is a growing global awareness of marijuana's tremendous medical importance," Randall said. "In Australia we are witnessing the first political efforts beyond the United States to replace Reefer Madness with a more sane and humane system of physician-mediated medical access to marijuana."

ACT News - Spring 1995