Yes. You can legally advertise a medicinal cannabis clinic in Australia, but only as a health service. In other words, you basically can’t say what you sell (which makes things a lot harder). Here’s the thing: a clinic cannot, under any circumstances, advertise medicinal cannabis itself, directly or indirectly, to the public.
What that means in practice is promoting the consultation, the practitioners, perhaps the pricing on the consultations (NOT the treatment), exemplary service from the clinical team, and the clinical process. Any mention of cannabis, a synonym like “plant medicine”, cannabis imagery, product names, prices or a promise of a prescription is likely to make your ad an unlawful advertisement for a prescription medicine under the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989.
Two regulators set the rules: the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA), which polices advertising of therapeutic goods, and AHPRA and the National Boards, which police advertising of regulated health services. Both apply to every channel: your website, Google and Meta ads, social media, email, SMS, booking forms, comments from the general public, public-facing reviews, and even your business name!
And yet, despite all these stringent rules, the most common question we get from our medicinal cannabis clients is “How can we advertise it?”. Since we’re a bit sick of answering this question every single time, we’ve prepared this guide, written by the SEKHN team, which explains the rules as they stand in late 2026, including the TGA’s June 2026 prescription medicine advertising guidance, and gives a practical playbook for growing a clinic without breaching them.
Why the rules are so strict
Medicinal cannabis is regulated as a prescription medicine, and most products are Schedule 8, the same control level as opioids. Under the Therapeutic Goods Act 1989, prescription medicines cannot be advertised to the general public; they can only be promoted to health professionals.
The policy logic is that whether a prescription medicine is appropriate should be decided by a practitioner after an individual clinical assessment, not driven by consumer marketing. The TGA has made medicinal cannabis advertising a standing compliance priority since at least 2021.
The practitioner regulators have the same concern. When AHPRA and the National Boards released medicinal cannabis prescribing guidance in July 2025, they called out business models built on aggressive, sometimes misleading advertising aimed at vulnerable people, and online questionnaires that coach patients toward a prescription (Medical Board of Australia). Marketing should not be a side-issue for medicinal cannabis clinics (perhaps unlike any other industry); it needs to be at the forefront of most business decisions.
Who regulates medicinal cannabis clinic advertising
A single ad for a cannabis clinic can breach three separate regimes at once. Clinic owners, marketers, agencies, publishers and influencers can all be liable, not just the prescriber.
| Regulator | What it covers | Law | Maximum penalty |
|---|---|---|---|
| TGA | Any advertising that directly or indirectly promotes a therapeutic good, including a health-service ad that points to medicinal cannabis | Therapeutic Goods Act 1989 and the Therapeutic Goods Advertising Code 2021 | Civil penalties of up to 50,000 penalty units for a company and 5,000 for an individual per contravention, plus infringement notices and injunctions |
| AHPRA and National Boards | Advertising of any regulated health service or a business providing one (doctors, nurse practitioners, pharmacists) | Section 133, Health Practitioner Regulation National Law | $120,000 per offence for a company; $60,000 per offence for an individual (AHPRA) |
| ACCC | False or misleading claims, hidden pricing, fake reviews | Australian Consumer Law | Court-ordered penalties for companies run into the tens of millions |
| State and territory health departments | Supply and promotion of Schedule 4 and 8 substances | State poisons and drugs legislation | Varies by jurisdiction |
But here’s an added layer: AHPRA can investigate a practitioner for high prescribing volumes even without a complaint, so an aggressive campaign that drives volume can trigger scrutiny of the doctors behind it.
What you can and can’t say
Advertise the consultation and process (without guaranteeing access to the treatment), never the medicine. The TGA’s own guidance tells businesses whose treatments involve prescription-only medicines to refer only to the type of consultation they offer (TGA).
In June 2026 the TGA published new guidance on advertising prescription medicines to the public and an updated version of its health services guidance, folding the earlier medicinal cannabis guidance into a broader framework. The law did not change, but the TGA spelled out how widely it reads “indirect” references: substitute terms, slang, abbreviations, imagery, business names, logos, booking systems, price lists, condition-specific landing pages, social posts and third-party links all count (Mills Oakley).
| Generally acceptable | Likely unlawful |
|---|---|
| “Consultations that work with your schedule” | “Medicinal cannabis clinic”, “plant medicine”, “natural alternative” or any slang for cannabis |
| Practitioner names, qualifications and AHPRA registration | Cannabis leaves, green-leaf logos, flower or oil imagery |
| Neutral service descriptions such as “integrative health clinic” or “pain and sleep consultations” | Business names or domains containing cannabis, leaf, green, THC, CBD or similar cues |
| How the consultation works, wait times, telehealth availability, consultation fee | Prices for products, product catalogues, strain or brand names |
| “Your doctor will discuss all suitable treatment options” | “Find out if you’re eligible” quizzes that imply a cannabis outcome |
| Educational content about a condition that doesn’t steer to a treatment | Claims a product is safe, natural, TGA-approved or works where other treatments failed |
| Bulk-billing or Medicare information about the consult | “Get a script today”, “no referral needed for cannabis” or any promise of a prescription |
Four traps catch most clinics:
- Removing the word isn’t enough. A page that never says “cannabis” can still breach the Act if the overall impression is that the clinic is a pathway to cannabis. The TGA judges context: imagery, keywords, the condition list and the call to action are read together.
- It goes beyond your public-facing content. Trust us, no person from the TGA is spending hours each day personally combing through hundreds of websites. But automated tools can scan web content at scale, and they read a page’s code as easily as its visible text. What that means is even your source code isn’t safe from scrutiny (basically no ‘medicinal cannabis’ mentions even in your meta description).
- The whole user journey counts. A flow that runs from a condition page to an eligibility check to a “request treatment” button reads as promotion even if no medicine is named, and a disclaimer won’t fix it.
- Gating content doesn’t make it private. Putting product information behind a login, membership or paywall doesn’t remove it from “the public” unless it is genuinely aimed only at health professionals or given to a patient in the course of treatment. Mass emails and SMS to past patients are treated as advertising too.
AHPRA rules that apply on top
Even a TGA-compliant ad can breach the National Law. Section 133 makes it an offence for anyone, not only registered practitioners, to advertise a regulated health service in a way that:
- is false, misleading or deceptive, or likely to be;
- offers a gift, discount or inducement without stating its terms and conditions;
- uses testimonials or purported testimonials about the service;
- creates an unreasonable expectation of benefit; or
- directly or indirectly encourages indiscriminate or unnecessary use of health services.
For cannabis clinics, the testimonial and “unnecessary use” limbs bite hardest. Patient success stories, star ratings about clinical outcomes, reposted reviews and influencer “my journey” content all risk breaching the testimonial ban. AHPRA suggests turning off reviews, comments and tagging on clinic social accounts where you can’t moderate them.
AHPRA’s July 2025 prescribing guidance adds a business-model lens. It says prescribing models that put profit before safety don’t reduce a practitioner’s personal responsibility, warns against single-product models and coaching questionnaires, and confirms AHPRA investigates high prescribers without waiting for a complaint (Medical Board of Australia). Free first consults, “first script discounts” and subscription bundles deserve particular care.
How the TGA is enforcing it
Enforcement has escalated from infringement notices to Federal Court action against clinics, their directors, publishers and PR agencies. Over roughly two years to early 2024 alone, the TGA issued 119 infringement notices worth more than $1.4 million across the medicinal cannabis industry (Hall & Wilcox).
| Date | Action | What was alleged |
|---|---|---|
| Oct 2026 | Montu and Alternaleaf hearing in the Federal Court | TGA argued posts promoting “plant medicine” breached the advertising ban (Law360); not yet decided at the time of writing |
| Aug 2026 | Better Leaf, Better Life Aussie and their director sued | Unlawful advertising of medicinal cannabis, after earlier warnings and infringement notices |
| Jun 2025 | Atlus, Mamamia, News Life Media and Straight Up PR sued | Publisher and PR content promoting a cannabis clinic |
| Jul 2024 | News Life Media fined $56,340 | Medicinal cannabis promotion on Body + Soul |
| Jun 2024 | 35 infringement notices, $627,252, to 6 businesses and 2 individuals | Cannabis advertising on websites and social media |
| 2024 | Dolphins NRL club removed Alternaleaf branding | Sponsorship visibility on broadcast and jerseys (TGA) |
| Apr 2024 | Montu Group, Alternaleaf and their director sued | Using “medical cannabis” and “plant medicine” to promote an online clinic |
| Dec 2023 | CDA Clinics and former director sued | Clinic website and social media advertising cannabis |
| Oct 2022 | Two cannabis clinics fined $239,760 | Website and social media advertising |
The lesson for marketers: the TGA pursues the whole chain. Media owners, PR firms and directors have all been named personally.
A compliant marketing playbook
The clinics that grow sustainably market a genuine multidisciplinary health service, then let clinicians decide treatment in the room. Here is how SEKHN approaches each channel.
- Position the brand around care, not cannabis. Choose a name, domain, logo and colour palette that describe a pain, sleep or integrative health clinic. A rebrand is cheaper than a court case.
- Show the clinicians. Practitioner profiles with qualifications, AHPRA registration numbers, special interests and care philosophy build trust without testimonials.
- Make intake clinical, not promotional. Booking forms should collect history for a doctor to assess, not score “eligibility” for a product or steer patients toward set answers.
- Treat paid ads as the highest-risk channel. Google and Meta both restrict prescription-drug and cannabis advertising, and an ad getting approved by a platform says nothing about whether it complies with Australian law. Run service-only copy and check where every ad lands.
- Lock down social media. No leaf imagery, no slang, no reposting patient content, and no influencer or ambassador deals that reference treatment. Disable or actively moderate comments and reviews.
- Grow referrals from health professionals. Promotion aimed exclusively at GPs, specialists, physiotherapists and pain services is permitted, and referred patients tend to be clinically appropriate. Keep that material behind genuine professional-only access.
- Communicate with existing patients in the course of treatment only. Information a treating doctor gives a patient about their own treatment is exempt; newsletters or SMS blasts promoting products to a patient list are not.
- Earn media carefully. Partner publications, PR placements and sponsorships are all advertising if they point to your clinic. Brief every partner on the rules and review copy before it runs.
Pre-publish compliance checklist
Run every ad, page, post and email through these checks before it goes live.
- No mention of cannabis, CBD, THC, strains, “plant medicine” or any slang or euphemism
- No leaf, flower, oil or other cannabis-associated imagery, colours or emojis
- Business name, domain, logo and social handles carry no cannabis cues
- Copy describes the consultation and conditions assessed, not a treatment outcome
- No promise or implication that a prescription will be issued
- No product names, catalogues or product prices
- Booking and intake flow is clinical assessment, not an eligibility funnel
- No patient testimonials or clinical-outcome reviews, including reposts
- Any offer or discount states its full terms and conditions
- No claims of safety, effectiveness, naturalness or TGA approval
- Linked third-party content doesn’t promote medicinal cannabis
- Emails and SMS to patients are part of treatment, not promotion
- Reviewed by someone who knows the TGA and AHPRA rules, with legal advice for anything borderline
Frequently asked questions
Yes, as a health service. It is illegal to advertise medicinal cannabis itself to the public, and an ad for a clinic that directly or indirectly refers to cannabis is likely to be treated as an ad for the medicine.
No. The TGA treats cannabis references in business names, logos and pictures as advertising medicinal cannabis, and the same goes for synonyms such as “plant medicine” (TGA).
Not in a cannabis clinic context. The TGA reads these phrases alongside the surrounding imagery, conditions and calls to action, and its Federal Court case against Montu and Alternaleaf centres on “plant medicine” wording.
You can advertise the consultation service with condition-led copy, subject to Google’s healthcare policies. Ads, keywords and landing pages must not reference cannabis, and platform approval does not mean the ad is lawful.
Not about clinical outcomes. Section 133 of the National Law bans testimonials about a regulated health service; comments on non-clinical matters such as parking or reception may be acceptable.
Yes. Advertising directed exclusively at health professionals is permitted, which makes GP and specialist referral programs one of the most effective compliant growth channels.
Potentially everyone involved. The TGA has pursued clinics, directors, publishers and PR firms, and section 133 applies to “any person” who advertises.
Under the Therapeutic Goods Act, civil penalties can reach 50,000 penalty units per contravention for a company. Under the National Law, each offence carries up to $120,000 for a company and $60,000 for an individual.
Work with SEKHN
SEKHN is an Australian compliant marketing and digital transformation agency for healthcare SMEs, including medicinal cannabis businesses. We help clinics grow with compliant healthcare marketing, from service-led websites and SEO to practitioner profiles and pre-publish compliance reviews.
If you’d like a second pair of eyes on your clinic’s website, ads or social channels, book a discovery call.
Sources
- Advertising medicinal cannabis products is prohibited, TGA
- Updated advertising guidance for businesses involved with medicinal cannabis, TGA
- Advertising health services that involve therapeutic goods, TGA
- Court action, TGA
- Medicinal cannabis news and updates, TGA
- Dolphins remove medicinal cannabis clinic branding, TGA
- Advertising legislation and guidelines, AHPRA
- July 2025 newsletter on medicinal cannabis prescribing guidance, Medical Board of Australia
- TGA prescription medicine advertising guidance (June 2026), Mills Oakley
- Promoting and advertising medicines, including medicinal cannabis, Hall & Wilcox
This article is general information, current as at October 2026, and is not legal advice. Advertising rules for therapeutic goods and health services change and depend on context; get advice from a lawyer experienced in TGA and AHPRA compliance before launching a campaign.
