A cancer patient who had no other means than the consumption of medical cannabis for relieve severe pain and chronic, had seized the Ethics and Cancer Committee by questioning it on the ethical character or not of the prohibition of cannabis in a therapeutic context. This consultative body announces in a review that she has just published, that she “could not identify any proven harmful effect serious enough to oppose such a practice by adults suffering from a serious, potentially fatal disease and who claim to benefit from it”. However, health authorities recommend not to smoke it and to consume it in another form to avoid smoking it, “in order not to be exposed to the deleterious effects of this mode of consumption”.
Cannabis is, in France, considered a narcotic whose possession and use are prohibited. Nevertheless “none of the arguments possibly in favor of such consumption appeared of such a nature as to continue to prohibit it”estimates the ethics and cancer committee chaired by Professor Axel Kahn, geneticist and honorary president of the University of Paris-Descartes.
The consultative body also considers it necessary that assessments of the various potential benefits of the active substances of cannabis be carried out. “Such evaluations would thus have the merit of specifying the indications and contraindications of these substances, the methods of their use (route of administration, dosage) and the precautions to be observed” they explain.
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