Medical marijuana can relieve muscle spasms so severe it breaks bones, Multiple Sclerosis Queensland’s specialist education officer Tim O’Maley has told Fairfax Media.
And Epilepsy Queensland’s chief executive officer Helen Whitehead said medical marijuana genuinely helped control seizures in people living with epilepsy.
Medicinal cannabis will soon be legalised in Australia. Photo: Max Mason Hubers
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk and Health Minister Cameron Dick on Thursday announced Queensland’s first medical marijuana treatments for people living with multiple sclerosis.
Mr O’Maley, specialist education officer with Multiple Sclerosis Queensland (MSQ) – unaware of this morning’s announcement – said cannabis treatments genuinely helped people with MS.
There are “roughly 3300 Queenslanders” living with multiple sclerosis, he said.
“The reality of what we know of cannabinoid-derived therapies is that for people living with MS there are certain symptoms they can provide really good benefit for,” Mr O’Maley said.
“Namely spasticity and pain management,” he said.
Spasticity refers to muscle spasms and muscle stiffness.
“It is when the muscles get so tight and they spasm and that can be really, really painful.
“It can lead to joint and even bone fractures in really bad spasticity.”
Mr O’Maley said MS Queensland and MS Australia’s state bodies all support trials of some form of cannabis-product to help MS suffers which can be “an additional treatment” for sufferers.
He said one cannabis-product – an “under the tongue” spray called Sativex – was already approved by the Federal Government’s Therapeutic Drugs Administration and now available in 15 countries.
However, he said it was not available in Australia.
“It simply cannot be prescribed, even though it has been through clinical trials in many countries in multiple sclerosis,” he said.
Mr O’Maley said “to the best of his knowledge” there was “no Sativex in Australia at the moment.”
“But it is approved by the TGA, which is a really interesting scenario,” he said.
“It is a legislative-type thing where these cannabinoid-derived treatments are not legally able to be prescribed.”
Mr O’Maley said MS Queensland would like to see Sativex trialled and made available in Queensland and in Australia.
“Our assumption would be that it would be using that product to assess the benefit on MS spasticity and pain,” he said.
Sativex is now available in New Zealand, Canada, Europe, Spain and the United Kingdom.
“We would like to see a rather rapid response to making another treatment option available to dealing with a very difficult symptom for our clients,” Mr O’Maley said.
Mr O’Maley said Sativex, a nasal cannabis spray spray to be trialled in Queensland, is not prescribed to control seizures in people living with multiple sclerosis.
“Definitely not seizures, even though that is a very, very painful and relatively common symptom of MS that people do live with,” he said.
The Victorian Law Reform Commission in August 2015 acknowledged the health risks of marijuana and cannabis, however recommended medical marijuana be made available to ease:
- severe muscle spasms or severe pain resulting from multiple sclerosis;
- severe pain arising from cancer, HIV or AIDS;
- severe nausea, severe vomiting resulting from cancer, HIV or AIDS;
- severe seizures resulting from epileptic conditions; and
- severe chronic pain where approved by two specialist medical practitioners.
Epilepsy Queensland – also unaware of this morning’s announcement – welcomed steps by the Queensland Government to begin medical marijuana trials for treatments in Queensland.
“We are really supportive of the idea of a trial,” Epilepsy Queensland’s chief executive officer Helen Whitehead said.
Ms Whitehead said Epilepsy Queensland believed extra scientific data needed to be gathered, but said medical marijuana helped people living with epilepsy reduce seizures.
“Who is going to be assisted by it, and what component of the cannabis is going to be helpful,” she said.
“It is a little bit like creating a new pharmaceutical product – which it is in a sense – we need to know more about its efficacy and its treatment.”
Ms Whitehead said medical marijuana did help control seizures.
“It can be very useful in reducing the frequency or intensity of seizures,” she said.
The Queensland announcement follows steps in Victoria on October 6 – to let the state government cultivate marijuana for medical purposes – and an announcement in New South Wales on October 27 to trial medical marijuana for children suffering severe epilepsy.
Ms Whitehead said Victoria’s official marijuana cultivation plans should be noted.
“That is really important because in Australia we did not have access to affordable, safe and consistent supplies, so that is going to be very, very useful in the overall scheme of things.”
Both organisations said simply smoking cannabis was an unreliable way of receiving pain relief.