The medicinal cannabis industry is rolling out a new content series, in partnership with industry title Cannabiz and streaming platform Ticker, in a move designed to demonstrate the medicine’s valuable role in the Australian healthcare system and the critical therapeutic benefit it provides to hundreds of thousands of patients.
In the series, which comes as regulators continue to consider reforms following a public consultation in late 2025, industry leaders will seek to highlight that medicinal cannabis is no longer a fringe medicine but a therapy that is proving efficacious for a range of conditions.
It will also stress the industry’s eagerness to work with the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) in drawing up reforms, but in a way that protects patient access to the medication they need.
“Our industry supports the framework review process currently underway – but we continue to recommend evolution not revolution,” said Kristin Viccars, chair of Medicinal Cannabis Industry Australia (MCIA). “As the TGA considers reforms, we continue to support the regulator in ensuring that patient access is maintained through the transition to the evolved framework.
“We look forward to constructive engagement as we continue to discuss the relevant risk/benefit profiles of medicinal cannabis including deeper data, quality of life tracking, measurement and reporting.
“We firmly believe in the need to focus on outcomes and build a real-world evidence base that then becomes a strong foundation to better inform further policy in this space.”
The series kicks off today with the first of a two-part Cannabiz in Conversation segment on Ticker News featuring Viccars, Releaf Clinics’ Dr Priya Ayyar, Leura Wellness director and co-founder Dr Orit Holtzman and Cannabiz co-founder Martin Lane.
The TGA opened its consultation into proposed medicinal cannabis regulatory reform last August, attracting 800 responses. Health officials, who stressed they had no preconceived ideas of what fresh regulations it may impose, have completed their analysis of the submissions with stakeholder workshops set to begin this month. A second public consultation on potential reforms will follow in April.
Viccars stressed that medicinal cannabis has become a valuable medicine for healthcare professionals and invited the TGA to help build an evidence base from the data it collects.
“When we look at it from an efficacy point of view, there’s hundreds of thousands of Australians who are now using medical cannabis so it’s not a fringe therapy,” he said.
“We would like to leverage the data collected by the TGA and build a national evidence database to support what we are seeing anecdotally.”
Since the consultation opened, industry bodies have made clear their desire to work in partnership with the TGA in drawing up reforms. But while acknowledging – and agreeing – that reform in some capacity is necessary to raise the quality and safety of medicinal cannabis, they stressed patient access should not be curtailed.
Viccars said limiting access would lead to patients returning to the unregulated market, inconsistent dosing and no clinical oversight.
“Genuine patients are the first to be harmed by blunt regulatory responses. If you squeeze the regulated system too hard, patients don’t disappear, they just lose protection,” he said.
“We also lose the ability to build the science and evidence base by the data becoming less transparent. The greatest risk isn’t regulated access, it’s unmanaged use without clinical oversight.”
He said rather than focusing on whether medicinal cannabis should exist, the more pertinent question was how to make it “safe, evidence-based, and centred on patient outcomes”.
Viccars added that analysis of the TGA’s data, which showed an adverse event rate of 0.06%, already indicated the benefits of medicinal cannabis far outweigh the risks.
“When patients see quality of life improvement and relief from the use of medical cannabis under a physician’s care, there’s much greater benefit than risk,” he said. “But we’re very keen to work with the regulators to be a professional partner in applying appropriate reform to improve access and ultimately help those medical cannabis patients who are in need of the therapy.”
Australian Medicinal Cannabis Association (AMCA) chair Dr Teresa Nicoletti, who will appear in the second Cannabiz in Conversation segment to be released on Monday, stressed the industry was supportive of regulatory reform.
“We are very motivated and very keen to work with the regulator so that we can collaborate on the reforms that ensure access to high-quality medicinal cannabis products,” she said.
“But we do need to recognise the number of patients who are taking medicinal cannabis and are deriving benefit from it and any regulatory reforms that we introduce must not compromise access.”
Speaking on the first episode, Dr Ayyar told Ticker News host Ahron Young that she sees evidence of the impact of medicinal cannabis “every day”.
“I work with so many patients day-to-day, getting them some great outcomes,” she said.
“Typically, the early signs of progress and clinical benefit are better sleep, they start down titrating some of their other medications, they start becoming more functional at work and with their families. That’s real-world anecdotal evidence.”
- The second episode of Cannabiz in Conversation, featuring Dr Teresa Nicoletti, Dr Priya Ayyar and Professor Nicholas Lintzeris, will be published on Monday.