In a press release issued by the National Medicines Safety Agency, a committee of experts gives the green light to the use of cannabis for therapeutic purposes. This potentially paves the way for its legalization.
Will patients suffering from chronic diseases and serious pathologies soon be able to legally buy cannabis in pharmacies to treat their ailments? This is what the latest press release from the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM) suggests.
Last September, it commissioned a committee of experts to assess the relevance and feasibility of making therapeutic cannabis available in France. The latter has just made its first conclusions, favorable to its use under certain conditions.
Medical cannabis authorized under certain conditions
Among these, that cannabis for therapeutic purposes be reserved for “patients in certain clinical situations and in the event of insufficient relief or poor tolerance of therapies, medicinal or not, accessible (and in particular specialties based on cannabis or of cannabinoids available)”. “This use can be considered in addition to or in replacement of certain therapies”, further specifies the press release.
The experts have thus retained certain therapeutic situations justifying the use of cannabis: in the event of pain refractory to accessible therapies (medicated or not), in certain forms of severe and drug-resistant epilepsy, in the context of supportive care in oncology, in palliative situations and in the painful spasticity of multiple sclerosis.
Stating that therapeutic cannabis cannot be smoked because of the health risks, the committee of experts now wishes that a “monitoring of treated patients be set up in the form of a national register to ensure an evaluation of its benefit. /risk, that an assessment of adverse effects be regularly carried out by the pharmacovigilance and addictovigilance networks, and that research be promoted” with a view to changing the legislation.
No immediate legalization on the horizon
Asked by The Express, Nicolas Authier, who chairs the committee of experts, explains that he “considered, like several other developed countries, that it was unethical to refuse patients a treatment that could relieve them. many patients have not waited for us, which puts them at risk”.
Stating that it is for the moment only a “first way towards legalization”, Nicolas Authier wants to be realistic: the arrival of therapeutic cannabis in pharmacies is not likely to happen in the coming months. “Some parliamentarians say that the process can go quickly, but in reality many questions still remain to be decided. They will occupy our committee throughout the first half of 2019. We will then have to see whether to change the law, or whether a decree will prove necessary. Anyway, I have the feeling that the ministry still wants to take the time for reflection.
.
