News » Germany To Approve Medical Marijuana





Germany’s government will soon approve medical marijuana for qualifying patients, according to a report from The Local. Unlike similar actions in the U.S., however, German marijuana would be treated like any other prescription drug: doctors write prescriptions and patients get them filled at a pharmacy. The only difference is that some patients (or their caregivers) may also qualify to purchase starter plants to grow their own.

Many hospices and long-term care facilities would also be able to dispense marijuana for pain relief, especially to the terminally ill. The new law marks the end of a long struggle between German officials, doctors, and health insurers over medical marijuana as new scientific evidence has proven assumptions against it to be wrong.

“With this,” says Ulrike Flack of the Free Democrats Party in Germany, “the sickest people will always have a pain-relieving substance available.”

Other countries such as Great Britain (in liquid form) and Israel have also approved medical marijuana.

UPDATE: CannaCentral reader Carlos sent us the following email, which linked to similar information on his blog (in Spanish, English here). We have been unable to corroborate his information:

Please, don’t spread that news about “Germany plans to legalize medical marijuana”…is not true at all. Please check the official sources. it is not about the plant or Cannabis in natural estate! The government just want to make money together with the pharma-industry authorizing the distribution of products like “Sativex” and only in very limited cases. That’s the same as it happened last month in Spain and in the UK. The conservative government here does not want to legalize Cannabis in no way. Patients, doctors and activists in Germany are really angry about the “manipulation” of this news a couple of days ago.

[source The Local]

Tags: Germany, medical