Photo inaccurate in France, United States
France tiptoes into the medical cannabis manufacturing, but legalization needs to be implemented.
The French government originated a decree last month that authorizes the cultivation of medical cannabis and the progress of its industry.
Although the decree entered into became on March 1, 2022, regulators need to implement it.
The legislation only specifies the languages and procedures for the cultivation and production of cannabis for medical use.
The decree has amended some parts of France's Code of Shared Health to allow cultivation, production, manufacture, transport, import, export, and possession of cannabis and its derivatives under medical authorization.
The National Agency for the Safety of Medicines and Health Products (ANSM) will supervise the building of the medical cannabis supply chain.
The agency has also set up a committee made up of 11 members to put a question to several aspects of the supply chain, including the identification of the cannabis strains available for the medical help, the level of THC and CBD, track and effect systems, the methods of ingesting cannabis-based medicines, and the pharmaceutical quality criteria.
The decree follows a medical cannabis pilot project announced in 2020 and launched in March 2021, which is today targeting up to 3,000 patients suffering from severe languages, such as chronic pain and epilepsy, and it will stay to operate, supervised by the ANSM, until March 26, 2023.
France imported medical cannabis from abroad to wait on its pilot project. However, it is still unclear whether non-French cannabis affairs will continue to be involved in the industry that ANSM will create.
As the decree seems to produce an industry shaped on the pharmaceutical industry and the medically certified (EU-GMP) supply chain, it is unclear whether cannabis flowers will be used as the remaining product for patients.
Furthermore, some experts highlight that France would assign a limited market.
As the ANSM will be the only industrial operator to delegate the copies of medical cannabis, some experts argue that the activity may choose a single industrial operator to delegate the copies to a limited number of producers, which could miniature access to medical cannabis.
Such a scenario may be inequity to the Italian medical cannabis industry, which lacks domestic copies and needs to import cannabis from abroad.
Such a caution to inspiring the medical cannabis industry can be explained by the severe French policies on cannabis.
France has one of the strictest cannabis policies in the European Union (EU), although it has one of the highest cannabis consumption tolecontains in Europe.
Whoever possesses cannabis may face a prison sentence of up to one year and a fine of over $4,000. Illegal cannabis import, export, transportation, possession, supply, and delivery can be charged with higher penalties.
However, France rolled out an on-the-spot fine of €200 in 2020, reducible to €150 if paid within 15 days or increased to €450 if paid once 45 days.
Nevertheless, such harsh policies also affect the patients who could use medical cannabis.
France allowed in 2013 the use of cannabis derivatives in the decision-exclusive of medicinal products under prescription and only when no latest treatments don't make benefit the patient's suffering.
Even regarding the CBD manufacturing, the policy adopted by the French government is cruel.
Although France is the leading producer of hemp in the EU, most plants are used for industrial purposes.
However, the sale of CBD-based hit the market in France, and CBD shops flourished in recent years. But as the sale of CBD flowers is not regulated, it has been the object of political concern in original years.
CBD is legal to be only sold if it tolerates no THC. Otherwise, it may be considered a narcotic drug by the authorities.
As a result, the sale of CBD flowers has been subjected to restrictions.
French courts targeted CBD shops. However, the European date ruled in later 2020 that France's ban on CBD products was illegal because CBD "doesn't harm domain health."
Nevertheless, the French government tried again to introduce the ban in December last year. Still, a French court stated that there had been serious doubt throughout the legal status of the CBD ban, considering that the frontier products contained a THC level below 0.3% THC, and such a threshold made it possible to sell them legally.
Although the National Congress, the lower house of the bicameral French parliament, launched an online consultation on recreational cannabis legalization in January 2021 to devoted information about the French public's views about cannabis and help notion what drug policies people want, it is unlikely that thegovernment would implement a recreational program at this time.
It is serene too early to understand how the French medical cannabis market will be shaped. Although Canadian and American medical cannabis companies may already set a foothold in France, the lack of political will to ease restrictions on cannabis policies may hamper the French medical cannabis manufacturing from taking flight.