Chile: a law guaranteeing patients' right to grow their own cannabis makes its way through the Senate

Following her success in the Chamber of Deputies, where she won 88% of the votes, the Safe Farming Act (Law on the Safety of Cultivation) was introduced in the Chilean Senate. This law aims to promote patients’ right to grow their own cannabis and addresses the ambiguities in the previous narcotics law, which legalized personal cultivation for therapeutic purposes but failed to establish a way to distinguish patients from traffickers. This ambiguity had led to the criminalization of many patients.

An ambiguous law

In accordance with Law 20,000, growing cannabis for therapeutic purposes is legal in Chile. Nevertheless, many patients are still convicted, and their plants are seized until a court determines whether the crops are indeed for therapeutic purposes and not for trafficking.

In the meantime, patients are therefore denied treatment and treated like criminals. The Law on the Safety of Personal Cultivation amends the Health Code to include a presumption of innocence. Patients will then be able to keep their plants until they can provide proof that their cultivation is indeed for therapeutic purposes. There is also discussion of allowing doctors’ prescriptions to serve as legal proof and certify the necessity of cannabis cultivation.

The executive director of the Fundación Daya, Ana María Gazmuri, explains : “Law 20,000 should be sufficient to allow patients to grow cannabis, but since it contains ambiguities and, in practice, growers can be prosecuted, this initiative was launched so that the prescription can be used to prevent seizure.» In Chile, there is currently no medical cannabis industry; the only way for patients to treat themselves is to grow and produce cannabis and extracts on their own.

Ana Maria Gazmuri explains in an editorial In it, she criticizes the conservatism of certain political figures who downplay the scope and effectiveness of medical cannabis, noting that more than 35,000 patients use medical cannabis. She adds that this natural alternative has allowed them to avoid heavy opioid treatments, which cause severe addiction and unwanted side effects. For the Mama Cultiva association, it is a matter of compassion: the majority of patients are children with refractory epilepsy who have “no other alternatives to end their suffering.» In addition to these foundations specializing in the field, the initiative has received the support of a Supreme Court justice, Lamberto Cisternas, who believes that criminalization is an excessive measure that is harmful to the community.