Experimentation with medical cannabis in France begins

This is an event that was long awaited by several patient associations and part of the medical profession. On Friday March 26, the government will officially launch experimentation with therapeutic cannabis throughout the country. The Minister of Solidarity and Health, Olivier Véran, must go to the University Hospital Center (CHU) of Clermont-Ferrand, that same day, to attend a first prescription before the general deployment of the device, Monday.

For those around the minister, the launch of “This project that he strongly supports from a political point of view” sign a “Collective success in the current period” who answers “To patient needs”.

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The experiment had been recorded, at the end of 2019, by the Social Security financing law for 2020, after the vote of an amendment carried by Olivier Véran himself, then deputy (La République en marche, LRM) of the Isere. In recent months, its implementation had been delayed several times.

In total, the system should concern 3,000 people and be spread over two years. Patients who suffer from chronic neuropathic pain, certain forms of severe epilepsy, those who are in palliative care, those who have central nervous system pathologies such as multiple sclerosis, and finally those who have pain caused by cancer or its treatment methods such as chemotherapy.

Oil or dried flowers

Concretely, if he meets the criteria and within the limit of 3,000 people monitored continuously, a patient can go or be referred to one of the 215 referral medical structures defined in the region. By prescription, he may be prescribed drugs in the form of oral oil and dried flowers to vaporize, then inhale. No medical seal, therefore.

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As cannabis production is banned in France, authorities have appealed “To foreign producers, since only they had cannabis products that were ready to be made available to patients”, indicated the National Agency for Medicines and Health Products Safety (ANSM).

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“Everything has been done to make the experiment as secure as possible (…) with strictly selected drugs, controlled by ANSM laboratories and distributed by French laboratories ”, insisted the agency. It also emphasizes securing the follow-up of patients who “Will be entered in a register” and securing the prescription, “With volunteer doctors and specially trained pharmacists”.

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