Denmark: medical cannabis pilot project to be extended

Danish Health Minister Magnus Heunicke has said he is prepared to extend the medical cannabis pilot project to evaluate it meaningfully.

Like France, In 2016, Denmark chose to test medical cannabis on a defined group of patients and for targeted pathologies: multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, spinal cord injuries and nausea and vomiting resulting from chemotherapy. The trial had begun in early 2018.

However, the trial scheme ran into a number of difficulties. In particular, the program did not provide for enough products, which were also too expensive. The plan was for Danish-produced cannabis to provide rapid access to cheaper products, but this was not to be. Danish production not yet ready to market the required number of products with strict safety requirements.

The Danish doctors also criticized the lack of a guide to the medical treatment of cannabis, which would facilitate the prescription and adoption of a new treatment, particularly by doctors who are reluctant or hitherto untrained in the subject. On their own initiative, they have joined forces with researchers from university hospitals to form the Klinisk Cannabis Forum to find constructive solutions to the errors and shortcomings they see in the pilot program.

A recent study by Scleroseforeningen, an association of multiple sclerosis sufferers, has also shown that most patients who treat themselves with cannabis do not acquire it through experimentation, but rather without a doctor's supervision and on the black market.

«We have to be honest and say that those who were skeptical from the start were right to say that there was no ready market in Denmark. You can clearly see that. We couldn't get production ready quickly in Denmark, it was much more difficult than expected, explains Magnus Heunicke.

«It's difficult to evaluate something that hasn't really started. The evaluation of the program has to be done on a proper basis and if, because of start-up difficulties, delivery failures... the trial, as it has been run so far, cannot be evaluated, then we have to respect the scheme that has been defined and make sure that we can get a proper evaluation, and I'm also open to the fact that the program may have to be extended for a few years.»

The evaluation, originally scheduled for 2020, was to be used to decide whether to make medical cannabis permanent.