The Avignon Criminal Court has just authorized a patient to smoke cannabis to relieve his pain. This is a first in France.
Marc has had Horton’s disease for 15 years. This inflammatory disease of the blood vessels manifests itself in particular by pain attacks (headaches, painful chewing). Until then outlawed, he smoked cannabis to relieve these symptoms. Since this November 18, Marc can smoke in all serenity: the correctional court of Avignon (Vaucluse) authorizes it very officially. This decision “will count” according to him. He entrusted our colleagues with Provence (subscribers link): “It’s great, I hoped but I didn’t expect it. “
Indeed, court decisions regarding the use of medical cannabis vary from one court to another. And the debate has been raging for several years. This decision stirs up the still hot embers of the last case, in July 2013. The Besançon Court of Appeal (Doubs) then sentenced Dominique Loumachi to a suspended fine of 50 euros. This 40-year-old myopath said he was “sickened” by this decision: “I am not a drug addict, nor a dealer, I am condemned by the disease and I just want to live,” he had blurted out. exit from the hearing.
Yet the government seemed to show the way forward. Since June, a decree has authorized the marketing of drugs containing cannabis and its derivatives. Sprays, capsules, infusions… these forms of therapeutic cannabis can now be dispensed in pharmacies, on prescription. Only patients suffering from serious and painful diseases, such as multiple sclerosis, cancer or even AIDS, will be able to benefit from it. Sativex, a cannabis-based oral spray, should also receive authorization from the Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM) by the end of the year. Until then, patients must be patient with the available solutions.
But this decree does not authorize the cultivation of cannabis… nor its smoked consumption. This is what explains this uncertainty in the courts, which oscillate between leniency, tolerance and severity. Pending the arrival of therapeutic cannabis products, justice will deal with it on a case-by-case basis. In Avignon, the prosecution appealed.
.
