The therapeutic cannabis will be tested on 3,000 patients from September 2020, but French legislation prohibits the cultivation of plants containing levels greater than 0.2% THC. Where will the products come from?
Voted last October by the National Assembly, therapeutic cannabis should begin to be prescribed in September 2020. This will be an experimental phase over 2 years including 3,000 patients with serious pathologies.
“We selected a certain number of indications: neuropathic pain refractory to drug or non-drug therapies, certain forms of severe and drug-resistant epilepsy, in supportive care, in palliative situations, in oncology, in the case of pain related multiple sclerosis or other pathologies of the central nervous system”, recently specified Christelle Ratignier-Carbonneil, Deputy Director General of the ANSM.
Foreign producers, the emergency solution
The agency has only 8 months to put the terms of this medical trial in place, but in a country where the law prohibits the cultivation of plants containing levels greater than 0.2% THC, it is not an easy task. The ANSM should initially turn to “foreign producers”, affirms Christelle Ratignier-Carbonneil, not however excluding the possibility of appealing to a national farmer: “If he is able to meet the criteria (. ..) it may be retained.”
Discussions are currently underway on the subject at the Ministries of Health and Agriculture. “There is a need, there is a demand, insists Christelle Ratignier-Carbonneil, it is important to be able to provide an answer and a service, but that this can be carried out in the most secure setting possible.”
A French cooperative already positioned
After the vote of the National Assembly, the French cooperative InVivo, aware that a lucrative market was potentially opening up in France, asked the State for authorization “to be able to import cuttings, cultivate and make genetics, in parallel with medical experimentation.”
Yves Christol, managing director of InVivo Food & Tech, fears that Canadian producers will take over the French market: “If you do therapeutics, there must be no taste. If you start doing something that tastes good, you will stimulate addiction”, he underlines, specifying that you have to know how to dose THC. Case to follow.
.
