Het tsjechisch parlement keurt medische Cannabis goed

[Elmo2007 438]

bron : http://blogs.wsj.com/emergingeurope/2013/0...a-with-a-catch/

 

 

By Sean Carney

 

The Czech Senate Wednesday approved a bill allowing for the legal sale of cannabis for medical purposes, affirming a decision of the country’s lower house of parliament.

 

The proposal, which enjoys very strong support from all political parties in both houses of parliament, should become law later this year, pending an expected presidential signature.

 

But there’s a catch: the text of the bill says that only imported cannabis will be allowed for sale in the first year “to ensure standards.” After that, sales may expand to include registered, domestic production that is strictly monitored.

 

This is a one-two punch that advocates of medical marijuana say will simply make cannabis prohibitively expensive, putting the herb out of reach of most patients while enriching the black market and a few select firms that will be official traders in the goods.

 

“It’s legal, pharmaceutical and economic corruption,” said Dusan Dvorak, a medical-cannabis activist who leads the nonprofit organization Konopi je Lek, or Marijuana is Medicine.

 

“The result of the law should be access to cannabis for research and medical uses. But the real result is that it won’t be made available, it’ll be more expensive, it’ll bolster the black market and the mafia.”

 

The simplest solution, said Alena Gajduskova, the first-deputy Chairwoman of the Senate who voted in favor of the bill despite reservations, would be to allow the country’s many “grandmother growers” who already have cannabis plants in pots on their balconies and in their herb gardens to legally grow their own cannabis, or to at least remove all threats of criminal prosecution.

 

“These medicines are proven; they’re very efficient but shouldn’t be a luxury good. That is completely unacceptable,” Ms. Gajduskova said after the Senate approved the bill with 67 votes for and only two against.

 

“For a long time I’ve supported enabling the medical use of cannabis…but I have to say that I’m very disappointed by what we’ve got on the table today,” she said.

 

The legislation–which will make the Czech Republic one of the only European Union countries to legally condone the sale of cannabis for medical purposes–has been crafted to the benefit of “big business,” Ms. Gajduskova said. The bill fails the country’s seniors as growing a plant on one’s balcony to make tea or ointments will still be technically illegal, she said.

 

“A small amount of [marijuana] for personal use isn’t criminalized, so if we’re able to tolerate that, I don’t see why we couldn’t tolerate the senior ‘grandmother growers’ [for medical use]. And from the position of the Union of Patients of the Czech Republic, we’ll work towards that goal,” she said.

 

Still, the consensus among lawmakers is that while the bill may be imperfect, it’s a starting point.

 

While cannabis is technically illegal in the Czech Republic, the country’s lawmakers in 2010 removed all criminal penalties for cultivation of up to five plants for personal use or for possession of up to 15 grams of dried herb. That law doesn’t explicitly mention medical use of cannabis, which makes otherwise law-abiding “grandmother growers” nervous.

 

In 2011 the Czech government approved sale of medications using cannabis derivatives.

 

Mr. Dvorak, who along with some of the Czech Republic’s top cannabis researchers and physicians featured prominently in the 2012 documentary film Rok Konopi, or The Year of Cannabis, agreed with Ms. Gajduskova. He said lawmakers should simply allow medical users of cannabis to grow their own herbs at virtually no expense to themselves or to insurers, who are wary of any funding of medical marijuana.

 

VZP, the nation’s state-run health insurer, is holding off from saying whether it will cover patient costs for medical cannabis. First the president must sign the bill into law, the insurer’s press office said. Only after the bill is law and the health ministry modifies its list of drugs on which the purchase price is partially or fully covered by health insurers will VZP offer additional comment.

 

The only EU countries with more liberal approaches to cannabis are the Netherlands, where the plant is illegal but the government has an official policy of tolerance, and Portugal, where controlled substances were decriminalized in 2001.

 

Besides concerns over high prices for regular medical use, which cannabis proponents say can easily exceed 10,000 koruna (about $526) a month when bought at pharmacies compared with virtually no cost if widespread home-growing is legalized, the country’s farmers could also get a boost from legalization, said senator Jan Veleba.

 

Local authorities should swiftly allow domestic cultivation of cannabis, said Mr. Veleba, who is also the president of the Agricultural Chamber of the Czech Republic. He voted in favor of the bill.

 

“Each new commodity that farmers can produce and include in their [portfolio of goods] is something good for our agricultural sector,” he said.

 

“In agriculture, there is a terribly large number of buildings, where at one time there was livestock, where there was other technology for processing, but now they stand empty. Farmers would most definitely swoop in on this possibility,” Mr. Veleba said.

 

In addition to being the world’s largest consumers of beer per capita, Czechs are the biggest users of cannabis in Europe. Some 15.2% of adults in the Czech Republic use cannabis annually, compared with an average of 7.1% in west and central Europe, according to the United Nations’ 2011 World Drug Report. Among young Czechs, the figure is even higher; 42% of Czech students said they had used cannabis, compared with a European average of 17%, according to the May 2012 European School Survey Project on Alcohol and Other Drugs.

 

Over the past several decades, the country has produced much research into cannabis’s therapeutic uses.

 

Mr. Dvorak said that in 1954, professor Jan Kabelik created the world’s first cannabis-study laboratory and led the first international conference on the topic, called Marijuana is Medicine. In addition, Zdenek Krejci with Frantisek Santavy were the first in the world to isolate cannabinoids, while Lubomir Hanus in 1992 was the first to describe in detail the structure of anandamide, an endogenous cannabinoid neurotransmitter.

Edited February 1, 2013 by Elmo2007

[bulto 4]

Jammergenoeg is dit een bevestiging van mijn stelling dat de overheden het zullen doen lijken alsof men positief staat tegenover cannabis, ondertussen er voor zorg draagt dat zelf telen de kop in wordt gedrukt.

De hypocriete farizeers hebben een veel effectievere methode ontwikkeld om te voorkomen dat cannabis legaal wordt, kijk even naar nl, "opeens" vinden vele gemeenten het een geweldig idee om zelf gereguleerd wiet te gaan kweken........we kunnen het scenario al voorspellen; enkele "staatswiet telers" gemodificeerd produkt, thc gehalte beperkt, doorstraald, enz.

En streng aanpakken van zelfteelt, want dat is crimineel, er is toch fijne schone doorstraalde genetisch gemodificeerde wiet ?

Sorry voor deze tirade, moest het even kwijt.

[Nighthaunter 1]

Je heb gelijk bulto.

De overheid is een op hol geslagen hoer.

We moeten af van dit soort volks (bedrijfs) vertegenwoordigers.

[Elmo2007 438]

klopt

gaat helemaal nergens over in nederland