The news went unnoticed as all eyes were on the offensive of Ukrainian troops in the Russian region of Kursk. However, Ukraine has begun a medical and societal revolution with the entry into force, on August 16, of the legalization of cannabis for therapeutic use. In June, Volodymyr Zelensky publicly supported the text, which was adopted by Parliament in December 2023.
The law allows the cultivation of hemp for medical, industrial and scientific purposes “in order to create conditions for expanding patients’ access to the necessary treatment of oncological diseases and post-traumatic stress disorders [post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD] »According to the Ministry of Health, about six million Ukrainians could benefit from medical cannabis, three times more than the two million potential patients estimated before the Russian invasion in February 2022. An increase due almost entirely to the surge in the number of people suffering from post-traumatic stress since the start of the large-scale offensive.
Only people with a medical prescription will be able to legally obtain cannabis, the sale and distribution of which will be strictly controlled by the government. “The prescription will be prescribed by the doctor to the patient according to his condition, as is currently the case for morphine”explained lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak. The sale of cannabis for recreational purposes, however, remains prohibited.
Legislative subtlety
While there are no national statistics, post-traumatic stress disorder could eventually affect 30% to 50% of Ukrainians, according to estimates. Over the past two years, the The Ukrainian healthcare system has already recorded a significant increase in the number of patients diagnosed with PTSD: there were more of them in the first two months of 2024 (3,292) than in the whole of 2021 (3,167).
For soldiers and civilians suffering from PTSD, access to therapeutic cannabis is nevertheless expected to be long and difficult. Because, for the time being, post-traumatic stress is not on the official list of illnesses authorizing its use. “This is still the subject of major debate within the Ministry of Health.explains Hanna Hlushchenko, founder of the Ukrainian Cannabis Consulting Association. They are the ones who decide which diseases can be included on the list, and they are very skeptical about the effectiveness of medical cannabis for treating PTSD victims, because they believe that the scientific data is not convincing enough.
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