There are more than 500 chemicals in the cannabis plant, but in Australia medicinal cannabis products only contain one or a combination of two ingredients: cannabidiol, or CBD, and tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC.
Only two products are currently registered by the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), with the rest only accessible through two different access schemes.
But with the TGA’s decision to make low-dose CBD (less than 150mg per day) directly available over the counter in 2021, these barriers to access may be lowering and companies are now racing to show whether it can treat insomnia.
In this episode of the Science Briefing podcast, Dr Sophie Calabretto talks to Cosmos Magazine journalist Imma Perfetto to find out more.
Read more about medicinal cannabis: Companies racing to prove that marijuana extracts can help with sleep.
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Originally published by Cosmos as Barriers slowly being lowered for medicinal cannabis
Sophie Calabretto
Dr Sophie Calabretto is a mathematician specialising in fluid mechanics. She is Honorary Senior Lecturer at Macquarie University and Honorary Associate Professor, at the ACE Research Group, University of Leicester.
Imma Perfetto
Imma Perfetto is a science journalist at Cosmos. She has a Bachelor of Science with Honours in Science Communication from the University of Adelaide.
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