Letter to your local Member

📧 Letter to Your Local Member: Human Rights, Home Grow, and Senate Calls

[Your Name]

[Your Address]

[Your Contact Details (Email/Phone)]

[Date]

[Local Member's Name]

Member for [Electorate Name]

[Local Member's Office Address]

Subject: Upholding the Right to Health: Urgent Action on TGA Barriers, Affordability, and Patient Autonomy

Dear [Local Member's Name],

I am writing to you today as a constituent and a concerned advocate for the fundamental human right to health for Australians who rely on medicinal cannabis. While the TGA's role in product safety is acknowledged, the current regulatory structure creates unjustifiable barriers that severely impact patient well-being and access to necessary medicine.

I urge you to consider the following points, which align with principles of patient autonomy, affordability, and the recommendations raised by Parliament itself:

1. 🏥 The Right to Health: Addressing Unfair Financial Barriers

The current system forces patients to bear the full, non-subsidised cost of treatment, often resulting in crippling financial hardship. This is a clear breach of the principle of equitable and non-discriminatory access to healthcare.

• Affordability & Compassion: Unlike many other necessary medications, medicinal cannabis is largely excluded from the Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme (PBS). I call on you to champion urgent reform to subsidise these medicines for those with demonstrated clinical need, ensuring access is based on medical necessity, not wealth.
• The Canadian Model of Patient Autonomy: Jurisdictions like Canada recognise that for some patients, the most affordable and sustainable form of access is personal cultivation (home grow) for medical use under strict authorisation. While I acknowledge existing Australian laws, I urge the government to urgently review its stance on personal cultivation as a compassionate and financially viable option for authorised medical patients, grounded in the right to self-determination over one’s health.

2. 📜 The Need for Regulatory Harmony and Parliamentary Accountability

The government's response to its own inquiries must be robustly monitored to ensure patient needs are met.

• Senate Recommendation 20: The 2020 Senate Community Affairs References Committee Inquiry highlighted numerous barriers, with Recommendation 20 suggesting a framework that would improve the regulatory landscape. While the government rejected the call for a separate regulator, the spirit of this recommendation—to streamline, simplify, and ensure timely patient access—remains paramount.
• TGA Over-Regulation: We must guard against new TGA regulations that, under the guise of safety, only increase costs or delay access for unapproved products via the Special Access Scheme (SAS) and Authorised Prescriber (AP) pathways. Any changes must genuinely reduce the administrative burden on prescribers, as the government has previously committed to doing.

📣 My Call to Action: Championing Patient Rights

I respectfully ask that you actively pursue legislative or policy changes to:

1. Introduce Subsidies/Price Controls to uphold the right to affordable healthcare for medicinal cannabis patients.
2. Initiate a Review into regulated medical personal cultivation (home-grow) for authorised patients, using models like Canada’s as a case study for sustainable patient access.
3. Ensure TGA Reform is Patient-Centric, prioritising timely access and clinical autonomy over unnecessary administrative complexity.

By acting on these issues, you will be taking a tangible step to ensure the right to health is a reality, not just a promise, for all your constituents.

I look forward to your support and welcome the opportunity to discuss this further.

Sincerely,

[Your Name]