France’s Health Ministry Olivier Veran announced the launching of a two-year nationwide medical cannabis experiment campaign to study the positive and side effects of the plant and its derivatives on certain pathologies. The campaign officially started on Monday 29th March.
The cannabis medical experiment involves 3,000 patients and will last two years. Patients with different pathologies including chronic diseases will be admitted to 215 tertiary referral centers in about 170 hospitals around the country.
Doctors specialized in pain, oncology, neurology, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and palliative care will be participating in the experiments. The founder of the project is Nathalie Richard, director of the Medical Cannabis Project at the ANSM Medicines Agency.
Patients are eligible if they suffer from serious illnesses but only “in case of insufficient relief or poor tolerance” with already existing treatments, states the ANSM.
Children may be included, most particularly for cases of resistance to epilepsy treatments or in oncology.
These drugs, imported, in the form of oral oil (in bottles of drinkable solutions) or dried flowers by inhalation using a vaporizer will be available in different dosages of the active substances – tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). Cannabis for smoking is excluded from the protocol.
The aim of the experiment is to gather data about the effectiveness and safety of medical cannabis in the treatment of chronic diseases. Depending on the results of the experiment, the government is seriously thinking about legalizing the substance.
The first prescription is planned in the department of Prof. Nicolas Authier from the Clermont-Ferrand University Hospital (Puy-de-Dôme), president of the temporary scientific committee on cannabis for medical use.
The launching of the experiment was first scheduled for September 2020 after the French parliament approved it in 2019, but it was delayed due to COVID-19 spread in the country.
Almost 20 countries in the European Union have already authorized treatments with medical cannabis.
