In the growing industry, there are now 54 medicinal cannabis products available to be prescribed by Australia doctors to their patients.

The report, Australian Medicinal Cannabis Market: Patient, Product and Pricing Analysis produced by FreshLeaf Analytics, compared an 18-month period to reach the 500% increase, starting with just 11 products to the now 54 on the market.

Canada is still the main source of our cannabis medicines, with more European companies catching on to our growing demand as well. However, in August 2018, patients were finally able to access the first locally-produced medicinal cannabis oil, by Little Green Pharma out of Perth.

This was a major step in the Australia market, and it’s expected we’ll see more locally produced products become readily available to patients throughout 2019.

Oils are still the cream-of-the-crop delivery method for the medicines, with 80% of all products coming in oil form. Other methods include sprays, capsules, and flowers.

Number of patients

Patient numbers have been growing dramatically over the past year.

The number of approvals made by the Therapeutic Good Administration (TGA) for the Special Access Scheme B (SAS-B) in February 2018 was less than 50. Fast forward a year, and 739 approvals were passed in February 2019.

Experts estimated these numbers will continue to increase to around 15,000 – 20,000 new medicinal cannabis patients to the Australian market in 2019.

Keep in mind that these approvals are for a specific product, for a set amount of time – say 3 or 6 months. The approval will be recounted in the figures upon extension of the original approval. Meaning the numbers above are not wholly representative of the total number of active patients, but likely quite close.

Revenues are forecasted to be around $3.6 million per month for the legal Australian medicinal cannabis market by December 2019.

Looking to the future, the report states:

2019 is expected to be a year of great change, where the industry leaders of tomorrow consolidate their positions in the value chain, costs continue to come down and most importantly more patients get access to medicine that will benefit them.

You can read the full report here.