The group of independent experts (CSST) brought together by the National Medicines Safety Agency (ANSM), which published its first conclusions on December 13, estimated “Relevant to authorize the use of cannabis for therapeutic purposes […] in certain clinical situations and in the event of insufficient relief or poor tolerance “ already existing treatments. Two weeks after this positive opinion, the drug gendarme announces in a press release revealed this Thursday, December 27, consider the implementation of an experiment “Aiming to establish a global framework for this use for patients in France”.
Conditions that remain to be defined
“ANSM subscribes to the initial conclusions of the group of independent experts”, indicates the agency. It is therefore in favor of the use of cannabis in the therapeutic situations selected by the CSST, that is to say in the following cases:
- Pain resistant to therapy;
- Certain forms of severe epilepsy;
- As part of supportive care in oncology;
- In palliative situations;
- Pain related to multiple sclerosis.
From now on, five meetings of the committee of experts must take place between January 30 and June 2019 to set up the experiment, and define its modalities. “The idea would be for the committee of experts to define the general conditions before the summer to, ideally, launch the experiment by the end of 2019”, declared Dominique Martin, Director General of ASNM relayed by The Express. The goal, he explained, is for it to answer concrete questions: where is medical cannabis going to be produced? Will it be imported or not? What distribution channel? What mode of delivery?
Different shapes under study
Therapeutic cannabis as envisaged by the ANSM does not concern smoked forms, such as the joint. The expert committee ruled out it because of the harmful effects on health that its combustion would cause. Several other routes of administration are being studied, resulting directly from the cannabis plant: sprays, capsules, drops, suppositories, oils, patches … For the moment, around thirty countries in the world authorize it within the framework of the care. For example, it was legalized last November in the United Kingdom.
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