Senator David Leyonhjelm says medicinal cannabis should be available to Australians now over-the-counter codeine products have been banned.

Senator Leyonhjelm tells Ben Fordham the move to make codeine prescription-only is “ridiculous” but medicinal marijuana could be an alternative.

“I’ve been battling for several years on the medical marijuana issue.

“Almost nobody can get access to it. The bureaucracy is throwing up rules… difficulties of all kinds so that the end result is patients are continuing to suffer.

“Some of those patients would have been using codeine and now maybe the option would be medical marijuana if they could get it.

“People are suffering tremendously because of this bureaucratic red tape that’s thrown in their way.”

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