PLANTOGRAM · DOCTORS’ EDUCATION
Medicinal Cannabis Market Growth in Australia: Reading the Data
Understand Australian medicinal cannabis growth figures, the difference between approvals and patients, and how to interpret SAS and AP data.
What does market growth actually measure?
Australian medicinal cannabis growth is often described using approvals, patients, prescribers and product counts. These measures answer different questions. A useful market summary names the measure, reporting period and source before drawing a conclusion.
For a clinician education page, the central issue is not simply whether activity has grown. It is whether the figures are being interpreted correctly and what they do, and do not, say about clinical practice.
| Measure | What it describes | What it cannot establish by itself |
|---|---|---|
| SAS-B approvals | Approved patient-specific access applications. | Unique treated patients, prescriptions dispensed or continuing treatment. |
| AP authorities | Authorisations issued to practitioners for specified circumstances. | The number of patients treated by those practitioners. |
| AP patient reports | Activity reported within an authority and reporting period. | A deduplicated count across every prescriber, product and pathway. |
| Product listings | Products captured under a stated reporting definition. | Current stock, demand, quality ranking or suitability. |
Historical context is different from a current total
Medical Board communications in 2024 described more than one million Australians as having accessed medicinal cannabis and more than 5,700 medical and nurse practitioners using the access schemes. Those are dated historical statements, historical context rather than a current active-patient or prescriber total.
Why approvals cannot be relabelled as patients
A person may generate more than one access record through different products, repeat applications or treatment with more than one practitioner. Conversely, permission to access a medicine does not prove it was supplied. These differences matter when estimating the size of an audience or planning clinical services.
Do not combine a practitioner authority count with patient-report activity and label the result “access approvals”. Do not compare a six-month period with a full calendar year without clearly identifying the different periods.
How to prepare a defensible growth update
Select one source and consistent reporting periods. Record the exact filters, date of export, field definitions and any revisions. Compare like with like, then explain the limits beside the table. The official SAS and AP dashboards are linked below for that purpose.
For a percentage change, use comparable values and calculate (later value minus earlier value) divided by the earlier value, multiplied by 100. Do not calculate a growth rate where either input has an unresolved definition.
What market figures do not prove
More approvals do not establish greater treatment effectiveness or justify broader prescribing. Indication shares describe the recorded reasons for access within a dataset; they do not rank the quality of evidence for those indications. Product-format shares likewise describe activity, not the best route for an individual patient.
References and further reading
- Medical Board: Historical prescribing context, February 2024
- TGA: Access pathways and usage data
- TGA: Special Access Scheme data
- TGA: Authorised Prescriber Scheme data
