Health officials in France recently extended the country’s experimental medical cannabis program for another six months, RFI reports.
The rules were set to expire on December 31, 2024, but officials extended the experiment until July 31, 2025. The departing health minister Geneviève Darrieussecq wrote in a letter that the agency enacted the extension “with a view to weaning patients off the drug or finding alternatives,” the report said.
Health officials rolled out the program in March 2021, involving at launch 3,000 patients with chronic diseases and specialist physicians in pain, oncology, neurology, epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, and palliative care. The government’s plan for the program was to study the effects of medical cannabis and its derivatives.
Outside of the program, cannabis remains strictly prohibited in France. Shops selling low-THC, CBD-rich hemp flower products, however, are active in many parts of the country. The government had enacted a ban on the possession, use, and sale of CBD products in December 2021 but just one month later, the Constitutional Council of France ruled that CBD is not addictive or harmful, overturning the ban.
On Wednesday, the new French Health Minister Yannick Neuder said he supports studying medical cannabis but remains opposed to adult-use legalization, The Local reports.
In 2020, several dozen French MPs penned a letter decrying efforts to legalize adult-use cannabis.
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