How to Prescribe CBD

Below you will find advice on how to prescribe CBD for your patients. This advice is based on Dr Graham Gulbransen’s experience and his lectures given to various forums including GPCME 2019 in Rotorua and Christchurch. You can view slides of the entire lecture in our Presentations section.

Prescribing CBD is very much like any other medicine

You can use a standard prescription form and the generic medicine name is Cannabidiol.

With the passing of the Misuse of Drugs (Medical Cannabis) Amendment Act some products containing Cannabidiol (CBD) are now regulated as prescription medicines and are no longer controlled drugs. This means that General Practitioners can prescribe them for patients in their care.

Your patient can take the prescription to any pharmacy and the pharmacy can order from a pharmaceutical wholesaler and the product will normally arrive the next day. All the products are unfunded and the price will very dependent on the brand chosen, the product pack size and variations in pharmacy mark-ups.

Start low and titrate the dose

A good starting point is 25mg o.d with a view to building up slowly to 25mg q.i.d over the course of 7-10 days.

A sample prescription is shown. You can see that the prescription would result in 25mg of CBD being taken o.d since the product has a dose rate of 100mg/ml (and 0.25ml is prescribed). Medicinal Cannabis products should be prescribed by brand name.

Once the patient is stabilised on a daily dose regimen there may be options to switch to an alternative oral dose form such as capsules for patient convenience and compliance.