Pharmacy Daily | Personal use behind cannabis growth

CLOSE to three-quarters of small-scale medicinal cannabis growers in Australia are cultivating crops for their personal use, research from Curtin University's National Drug Research Institute (NDRI) reveals.

The survey of 440 Australian marijuana cultivators found 54% chose to grow their own supplies as they felt it was healthier than cannabis they can buy elsewhere, with 45% saying their cannabis would never contain adulterants, while 48% opted to develop their personal crops to avoid contact with criminals.

The research also noted that one-in-four respondents said they were growing medicinal cannabis to provide to others, while 6% indicated that they were farming crops to sell.

The data, which forms part of the Global Cannabis Cultivation Research Consortium International Cannabis Cultivation Survey, showed Australian growers were more likely to be cultivating crops for medicinal use than their peers elswhere.

NDRI's Professor Simon Lenton noted the international survey, which included responses from almost 7,000 growers, found that while medicinal use was the primary motivation for Australians, it was ranked sixth as a motivator internationally.

"Growing for personal medical use appears much more common in Australia than most other countries and the proportion of Australian growers reporting medical use as a motivator substantially increased from the first survey, from 54% in 2012 to 74% this year," Professor Lenton said.

"This likely reflects shifts in the policy landscape over the past decade, where new legal and medical regimes have brought medicinal cannabis to the forefront of discussion around public health policy."

While a large proportion of Australian cannabis growers indicated they were cultivating crops to provide themselves with medicinal marijuana, 60% also said they were growing it for personal recreational use, the survey revealed.