NEW ZEALAND – Seriously ill patients in New Zealand seeking medicinal cannabis to ease their symptoms will no longer have to take their cause right the way to the top, but access to the drugs will remain tightly controlled.

The authority to approve applications for non-pharmaceutical grade medicinal cannabis products no longer resides with the Minister.

Instead the Ministry of Health has ultimate sign-off for all applications, Associate Health Minister Peter Dunne announced.

“Last week I wrote to the director-general of Health, advising him that as of February 8, 2017, applications from specialists to the Ministry to prescribe non-pharmaceutical cannabis-based products will no longer need ministerial approval,” Dunne said in a statement.

The Ministry of Health already had the power to sign-off on a specialist’s application to prescribe pharmaceutical-grade drug Sativex, and in December last year, that need for approval was removed for clinicians wanting to prescribe the drug to people suffering multiple sclerosis.

Dunne has hinted more changes could be on the way, to further loosen prescribing rules for specialists wanting to prescribe Sativex for conditions other than multiple sclerosis.

Dunne said Wednesday’s changes recognised that application procedures had been tested to a level where he could feel confident he wasn’t throwing officials under the bus, by delegating them approval authority.

“As I stated in my delegation letter to the director-general, when applications first began to be received it was my view that the final decision appropriately lay at ministerial level, rather than exposing officials to risk, given the complicated and contentious nature of the issue – that is to say the buck stopped with me”.

Health Minister Jonathan Coleman earlier said that the existing process was too bureaucratic.

“The question is whether we could make that process a lot less bureaucratic and give people quicker access in cases where they do need that access.”

Dr Coleman said the real question was whether the drug needed to be signed off by a minister, and the answer was that it probably did not.

“So it might be specialist access, that’s probably more likely than a GP signing it off.”

The Green Party has welcomed the change as a “step in the right direction”, but said it did not go far enough.

“Peter Dunne has removed one hoop New Zealanders have had to jump through to get access to medical cannabis, but there are still many more that need to go before people can get the medicine they need,” said party health spokesperson Julie Anne Genter.

“With the advice and support of their doctor, New Zealanders should be able to access medical cannabis as easily and as cheaply as they do any other prescription drug – the announcement this week doesn’t allow that to happen.”

Professor Paul Smith, professor of neuropharmacology at Otago University said it was a positive step forward, while taking a cautious approach in an emerging area of medicine.

“The evidence that they work for some conditions like neuropathic pain is not entirely consistent or convincing, but they do appear to help some people. So, it is a question of benefit versus burden for a particular condition.

“In the case of terminal illness, there is not much reason to have concerns because the harm will be minimal and the patient may benefit,” he said.

Dunne has been carrying out a review of the regulations around medicinal cannabis for more than a year, and the announcement follows a string of high-profile cases in which terminal patients have died fighting for the drugs to ease pain or seizures.

Most recently, Trade Unionist Helen Kelly died in October last year, after a lengthy battle with lung cancer. In the months before her death, she detailed how tumours had broken her back, but medicinal cannabis was the only thing keeping the pain away.

Kelly applied for a medicinal cannabis product outside the approved New Zealand schedule but the application was later withdrawn from the Ministry of Health.

Both Dunne and Health Minister Jonathan Coleman had expressed comments at the time, that Sativex would have been appropriate.

Kelly said it left her with little choice but to take her own products illegally.

Nelson teen Alex Renton died in July 2015 after being hospitalised in “status epilepticus”, a kind of prolonged seizure. It was not known what caused the seizures.

Dunne approved a petition to the Government from Alex’s family to allow him to be treated with a medicinal cannabidiol oil, Elixinol. Renton’s seizure stopped and he regained consciousness shortly before his death. - Fairfax/PNC