Germany Legalizes Medical Marijuana
The land of beer and sausages, Germany, has just legalized medicinal cannabis, although the list of qualifying conditions only include chronic illnesses for now such as multiple sclerosis, appetite loss, and chronic pain.
Patients still won’t be allowed to grow their own plant even if it’s for medicinal purposes, and treatment with the plant will be reserved for those ““in very limited exceptional cases”, the draft law says. Germany legalized recreational marijuana in 2024.
Germany health minister Hermann Groehe says, “Those who are severely ill need to get the best possible treatment and that includes health insurance funds paying for cannabis as a medicine for those who are chronically ill if they can’t be effectively treated any other way.” Another spokeswoman from the Health Ministry said that cannabis would only be used as a last resort, such as when other drugs and medications will no longer work on the patient. In these cases, scientific studies would be carried out to analyze the effects of cannabis on these patients.
Germany’s medicinal program has long been complicated before the change in amendments, and access to the plant has been a burning issue for a very long time. Today, medical cannabis patients can get prescriptions from doctors and can also have it refunded by their insurance providers.
The law will most likely take effect by March, since the upper house of parliament first needs to have a procedural hearing. The cannabis used by patients will be imported, until Germany sets up their own state-supervised cannabis farms in the future.
Germany’s 2016 Sales Of Medicinal Cannabis Are High
In a feature from The Local last September 2016, Germany reports soaring numbers for the sales of medicinal cannabis. During the first half of 2015, around 33.8kg of cannabis was sold to patients suffering from serious illnesses but in the first half of 2016, the Federal Ministry of Health reports 61.8kg in sales. By the spring of 2016, there were 647 patients who were granted legal access to medicinal cannabis, up from the 424 permits issued for doctor-supervised use in the previous year.
The health ministry attributes this growth to the increase in legal licenses that were issued. Cannabis has always been illegal in Germany until 2005 when the court ruled that patients could use it for self-therapy although each case had to be assessed. In May of last year, Groehe proposed to legalize the plant for medicinal purposes and for it to be funded by insurance companies.
Reforms in 2015, thanks to the work of Federal Drugs Commissioner Marlene Mortler, allowed chronically ill people to have easier access to the plant through health insurance companies. She also vowed that legislation procedures would be in place come 2016. At the time, patients had no choice but to pay for pricey cannabis-based medications from pharmacies since it wasn’t covered by insurance. The Left Party has long condemned the government since they haven’t been of help to people who need cannabis as medicine, and even cited the deaths of 11 people before they were able to legalize the drug.
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