Agriculture Reference
In-Depth Information
to facilitate, and promote patient access to
cannabis for medical purposes. Such access
may be through its sale by chemists, but may
also be through providing patients with the
possibility of cultivating the plant themselves.
This last position is in direct opposition to
international law.
for example) are repeatedly presented to the
US Senate. US federal law forbids the
cultivation and sale of cannabis, considering it
to be a narcotic. However, 13 states have
adopted laws that legalize the use of cannabis
for therapeutic purposes. The compassionate
use of the plant was authorized in California in
1996. Other states, including Colorado and
Alaska, have decriminalized in part the posses-
sion of small quantities of this drug. Many asso-
ciations (Cannabis Buyers' Clubs) campaign for
the drug to be made available to patients and,
in particular, those suffering from AIDS, for
whom the drug represents an important line of
therapy. Three dispensing machines installed
in Los Angeles, where they are used by holders
of a specific card that allows the collection of
up to 1 oz of 'grass'/patient/week, were
adjudged by the International Narcotics Control
Board (INCB), in early 2008, to contravene
the international treaties controlling access to
narcotics.
In 2001, Canada was the first country to
codify the medical use of cannabis (Elkhasef
et al
., 2008). It is hardly surprising, therefore,
that Canada boasts more cannabinoid-based
medicines than any other country. Other than
the plant, which is itself licensed, Sativex©,
Marinol© and Cesamet© are all sold in phar-
macies. That said, in 2008, the founder of the
Grant W. Krieger Cannabis Research
Foundation, an advocate of the therapeutic use
of cannabis and victim of multiple sclerosis,
was convicted of trafficking drugs to a number
of clients suffering from chronic pain or in the
terminal stages of their condition and keen to
improve their quality of life.
A consequence of the prohibition of
medical cannabis in a number of countries
has been the rise in the number of cases of
employees using cannabis for medical pur-
poses being detected during the course of
drug-testing programmes. Public opinion,
however, would tend to support the use of
cannabis for medical purposes. Thus, 72% of
American adults would support the legali-
zation of cannabis therapy, while 70% of the
population in France surveyed a few years
earlier, thought the use of cannabis for medi-
cal purposes was justified.
15.8.1 France
Cesamet© and Marinol© may be prescribed
provided the onerous and dissuasive adminis-
trative formalities are respected. A lessening of
these procedures seeking to promote the com-
passionate use of cannabis and its derivatives
together with the prescription of synthetic can-
nabinoids, as promised in 2001 by the then
Health Minister, Bernard Kouchner, has not
been enacted. The prescription or use of can-
nabis for therapeutic purposes remains illegal.
15.8.2 Other countries
The situation is very different in many other
countries. In Canada, the UK, Australia,
Holland, Belgium and Switzerland, as well as in
35 US states, the prescription of cannabis is
possible, although strictly controlled. The fol-
lowing serve as examples.
Since 2003, certain chemist shops in
Holland have been authorized to supply can-
nabis when presented with a doctor's prescrip-
tion (Engels
et al
., 2007). In 2008, the Dutch
Supreme Court went further when ruling on
the case of a patient suffering from multiple
sclerosis who was unable to find the exact
form of cannabis needed to control his pain.
Their ruling now makes it possible for individu-
als, in Holland, to cultivate cannabis for medi-
cal purposes.
In the USA, only the University of
Mississippi is authorized by the federal govern-
ment to produce cannabis for the purposes of
clinical research. Legal proposals aimed at
clarifying policy to protect from prosecution
individuals who use cannabis therapy outside
official trials (on prescription by their doctor,
