Health Minister Sussan Ley hopes for bipartisan support for a national scheme to licence medicinal cannabis growers.

The Turnbull government will on Wednesday introduce a national scheme into Parliament to licence medicinal cannabis growers.

Although medicinal cannabis is available for particular patient groups and clinical trials, it is currently illegal to grow and import most medicinal cannabis products, leading some patients to buy them from the black market and run the risk of prosecution for drug use and possession. 

Health minister Sussan Ley hoped for bipartisan support for legal changes, which she said would help chronically ill patients in allowing therapeutic products to be grown on a larger scale to meet patient demand.

She was confident a single cultivation scheme rather than state and territory-based schemes, would hasten regulation and patients' access to medicinal cannabis.

"A national regulator will also allow the government to closely track the development of cannabis products for medicinal...