How to choose a medical-cannabis doctor in South Africa

**HPCSA registration in good standing.** South African doctors are registered with the Health Professions Council of South Africa. The number is public — every legitimate practitioner can show you their HPCSA practice number, and you can verify it on hpcsa.co.za. If a "doctor" cannot or will not produce a current HPCSA number, that is the entire conversation.

**Section 21 application capability.** Cannabis medicines are not registered for general use in South Africa. Every prescription requires a SAHPRA Section 21 named-patient authorisation, applied for by the prescribing doctor on the patient's behalf. A clinic that says "we prescribe cannabis but don't do Section 21" is either misunderstanding the framework or operating outside it.

**A licensed dispensing pathway.** Even with a Section 21 authorisation, the medication has to be dispensed by a SAHPRA-licensed pharmacy — not by the doctor, not by the clinic, not couriered from an unnamed source. Ask which pharmacy network the doctor works with.

HPCSA verification is the single highest-leverage check. Any registered doctor will list their HPCSA practice number publicly — on the practice website, on the consultation invoice, or on request. The verification process takes two minutes:

1. Open hpcsa.co.za → "Practitioner search"

2. Enter the HPCSA practice number

3. Confirm: name matches, status is "Active", scope of practice covers what they're prescribing for

If any of these three checks fails, do not book.

**Up-front product recommendations before assessment.** A competent prescriber decides what to prescribe (if anything) after reviewing your case — not before. If a clinic site front-loads "we recommend our X product" before you have spoken to a doctor, the consultation is selling product, not assessing the patient.

**No fee transparency.** SAHPRA charges R400 per Section 21 application. Doctor consultation fees vary but are typically R500–R900 for a structured async or video review. Pharmacy dispensing fees vary by pharmacy. If a clinic quotes a single bundled price with no line-item breakdown, you have no way to verify what you are paying for.

**Refund policy that punishes the patient.** Doctor clinical time is non-refundable — that is medical practice norm. But the SAHPRA fee should be refunded if the application has not yet been submitted. A clinic that refuses any refund regardless of approval status is not behaving as a fiduciary.

**Clinical claims that overreach.** No doctor can tell you cannabis "cures" cancer, MS, or any other diagnosed condition. A doctor saying so is not exhibiting clinical competence; they are exhibiting marketing pressure. Walk.

**No clear written prescription.** Section 21 medication arrives with a written prescription specifying dose, formulation, and titration plan. If a clinic delivers product with no written instructions, the clinical record is incomplete and you have no titration baseline.

A first cannabis-medicine consultation is, in clinical terms, an evaluation for whether cannabinoid therapy is appropriate for your specific case. A doctor doing this competently will:

Take a complete medication history — what you currently take, what you are allergic to, prior treatments tried for the same indication. Cannabinoids interact with several drug classes (warfarin, certain antipsychotics, hormonal contraceptives via CYP450), and these interactions need flagging before prescribing.

Probe for contraindications — personal or strong family history of psychotic illness, current pregnancy, active psychosis, certain cardiac conditions. THC-dominant therapy is generally avoided in those settings.

Discuss titration plan and review cadence — cannabinoid dosing is conservative-start-and-titrate, not single-shot. Expect to be told you will start low (often 2.5 mg THC equivalent), hold for 5–7 days, then adjust upward in small steps with check-in.

Set realistic outcome expectations — cannabinoid therapy is one tool among several. A doctor who promises clinical certainty is overselling. A doctor who explains likely benefit, likely timeframe, and what would justify discontinuation is doing the job correctly.

Most repeat cannabis-medicine consultations are well-served by async (text-based) review of a structured questionnaire, plus the doctor's SAHPRA paperwork. This is the standard format and typically the cheaper one. Video matters when the clinical picture is complex, when it's the first cannabis consultation and you have many questions, or when the doctor needs to assess things async-format cannot — speech, mood, observable symptoms.

Either format is valid. The doctor is the same; the SAHPRA pathway is identical; the prescription is the same. The format is a UX choice, not a clinical-quality difference.

Compare cannabis-doctor offers by line item — doctor consultation, SAHPRA Section 21 fee per product, medication price, delivery — not by single bundled total. Two clinics quoting "R1,800 all in" can mean very different things: one might cover one product's SAHPRA fee plus consult, another might cover three products' fees but at a higher consult markup. Without line-item breakdown, you cannot compare like-for-like and you cannot identify what changes when, say, your doctor decides to prescribe two products instead of one.

For full transparency: Docto24 is structured around the principles above. HPCSA-registered doctors only, line-item pricing (R500 consult / R400 SAHPRA per product / pharmacy-set medication), no platform mark-up on medication, refund policy that returns the SAHPRA fee if not yet billed. The intent is not to be the only option but to remove the asymmetric-information cost that SAHPRA-curious patients otherwise pay just to figure out what is and isn't legitimate.

Whichever clinic you choose, ask the questions in this article first. The answers should come quickly and confidently from a competent prescriber.