The World Health Organisation is reforming it’s opinions of the Cannabis plant at a dizzying speed.
After 60 years of the Single Convention that binds all countries to the UN’s vision of a drug free world via eradication and incarceration, the Organisation has this year conceded the humble Dagga bush was never banned as a result of any form of scientific review.
More importantly, now that a multitude of medical qualities are being reported worldwide, they cannot tow the line with the “dangerous dependence producing drug with no medical application” spiel anymore.
To be fair, they are still coming from a place of harm, dependence and negativity, but at least their preliminary review of cannabis in June this year at their HQ in Vienna has escalated to a critical review of the THC component of the plant.
The findings of their review will be made known at the 41st session of the Expert Committee on Drugs Of Dependence in November 2018
All this follows from the WHO’s critical review of CBD this year which culminated in the recommendation to take the cannabinoid out of schedule 1. The bad boy of cannabinoids, THC, will now undergo the same critical review. Not quite as benign as CBD, but it’s obvious to all that this problematic substance for the legislators should not remain in schedule 1.
It’s clear cannabis isn’t going away any time soon. The legalisation cat is out of the bag now, especially in the USA – and it would seem the Trump administration is staying clear of ‘legalised’ States. There is even a bipartisan science bill in the Congressional mix to objectively look at those places that have legalised weed for clues to the long term impact of such a move. Policy based on science. Whoa!
Meanwhile in South Africa, the dark ages persist and we just have to knuckle down and continue our work to end the stigma, and more importantly to us, the arrests and detention in horror story pigsties.
The medical properties of the herb are becoming more and more mainstream, and as this critical review information from the WHO filters down to our head-in-the-sand legislators, they will be unable to continue to hide behind the ‘International Conventions’ as a reason to do sweet FA about South African drug policy reform.
And all this talk about Critical review is making our mouths water for a good smoke……
If the WHO reschedules Cannabis then the UK also will have no excuse but to follow suit. In the UK there have recently been some high profile cases of parents of children with severe epilepsy getting a special license to import a Cannabis extract. So far, the Home Office is fighting tooth-and-nail to restrict any rescheduling of Cannabis to “Cannabis-derived medicines” but the definition of what exactly IS a “Cannabis-derived medicine” hasn’t been forthcoming. They are trying really hard to restrict access to Cannabis to only the most severe cases and only when all available drugs and treatments have been tried and failed. In addition, one of the current requirements is that one has to provide proof that a Cannabis product has been tried and has had positive results. Now, how is one supposed to access a Cannabis product when it’s illegal? The only way that parents can do that is to fly their child to the Netherlands, Germany or Canada and keep them there for months while they are treated using a Cannabis product. That, by definition, means that poor people have no options.
The campaign to restore our right to use one of nature’s most useful plants continues. While standardised products from companies like Bedrocan and Tilray are all that many people need to treat their chronic illnesses, there are many other people who have tried many strains before finding those that work best and their only option is to grow their own medicine. We will not rest until the UK government legalises every kind of medical Cannabis, and then we’ll continue the pressure until our right of choice of what we are allowed to put into our own bodies is fully restored.