Medical cannabis not included in PLFSS 2025

As in 2024, medical cannabis is absent from the PLFSS. Unlike in 2024, which deputies will be able to submit an amendment in committee to include it in a very tight financing plan?

Between Scylla and Charybdis

To say that the legalization of medical cannabis in France is not gaining political traction would be an understatement. If MP Olivier Véran had elevated the need to experiment with the distribution of medical cannabis, we owe him the inclusion of this experimentation within the PLFSS 2020, a prerequisite for its funding.

Once voted on, the experiment suffered an initial delay in getting off the ground: the The Directorate General of Health was blocking the publication of the decree necessary for conducting the experimentation.

5 months later, the the decree was finally published and gave way to meager experimentation: 3,000 patients with treatment failure could be included and receive products provided free of charge by participating companies, eliminating any possibility of national production of these treatments.

The experiment will finally launch in March 2021, with a 2-month delay on the announced schedule, for an initial duration of 2 years. It will be extended by one year, without valid reason, with all systems go after the different assessments carried out on the experimentation. During this first extension, products were no longer supplied free of charge, and companies were able to be reimbursed, not without difficulty and after sometimes abrupt backstage negotiations, and with the threat of no longer being able to supply patients with a treatment that suited them and to which they were accustomed.

Here we go again this year where the DGS opposes the legalization of cannabis on the heels of the dissolution. Behind the scenes, however, DGS and Mildeca are dragging their feet for obscure reasons. The legalization of medical cannabis is therefore not yet on the agenda. The experiment must now find funding to continue treating the included patients, hence the importance of its inclusion in the PFLSS.

Its absence can be compensated for by an amendment debated in committee. But in a tight budget context and with little political enthusiasm around the subject, which MP will be able to champion it?

And what will happen if patients no longer have treatment? Is a lack of continuity of care truly possible in France in 2024?

If the roadblocks are political today, then the hopes are too. Patients, however, will have to wait.