Australian medical cannabis companies are ploughing millions into research in a race to bring the first over-the-counter CBD product to pharmacies, with the sector expecting stock to hit shelves next year.

However, consumers have been warned to expect prices for these medicines to be higher than in other countries like the US and UK and could run into the hundreds of dollars a month.

Medicinal cannabis products are already available in Australia via prescription, but the Therapeutic Goods Administration (TGA) changed regulations at the end of 2020 that would let pharmacists dispense low-dose products that contain up to 150mg of CBD, an element of the cannabis plant, without a prescription.

Fifteen months on, no product has yet received TGA approval, but industry experts are predicting several companies will have lodged data for these medicines by the end of this year, paving the way for sales in 2023.

Chief executive of biotech Emyria, Michael Winlo, said companies are now getting to “the pointy end” of the research process.

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Emyria, which is backed by Andrew Forrest’s Tattarang, has launched clinical trials for an over-the-counter pill containing a low dose of CBD which is designed to help treat psychological stress.

Mr Winlo said he was confident the medicines regulator wanted to approve the nation’s first pharmacy CBD products swiftly, but said they would be looking for strong evidence that treatments worked.

“We want to be pioneers and tread new ground - but we need to run a very careful study and put our argument [for approval] together very carefully,” he said.