Doubts about French therapeutic cannabis trials

In an article published in Le Parisien, some 50 doctors and associations, including the president and most of the members of the CST «mise en œuvre de l'expérimentation du cannabis médical en France», cast doubt on the government's willingness to experiment with medical cannabis in France.

Acknowledging the many delays and the absence of a decree allowing the experiment to go ahead, which had been suspected for some time to block at the Direction Générale de la Santé, they call on the government.

«The decree implementing article 43 has been awaited for several months. Without this decree, it is impossible to implement this experiment, as the crucial stage of selecting and authorizing the drugs that will be prescribed to patients cannot be carried out,» reads the article. la tribune.

«Faced with the suffering of patients, we expect strong and swift political decisions, commitments kept, funding adapted to the objectives, starting with the publication of the decree as soon as possible to offer patients these treatments from the first quarter of 2021.»

As underlined on several occasions in our articles, In addition to the missing decree, the issue of funding has still not been addressed, putting at risk, if not the continuation of the experiment, at least its scope, by restricting both the training possibilities for practitioners who will prescribe and distribute cannabis, and the diversity of products offered to patients.

The subject has been blocked since early 2020.

The ANSM recently announced a postponement of the trial. no later than January 2021, This seems untenable under current conditions, with no funding, no calls for tender and no training for healthcare professionals.

«Even if the decree were published in September, I'm not sure we'd be able to get started in January,» doubts Nicolas Authier.