India: Bill to legalize cannabis before Parliament

A bill to legalize cannabis in India will be presented to the Indian Parliament during the winter parliamentary session.

Dharamvira Gandhi, the MP behind the bill, is a former cardiologist and a long-time supporter of decriminalisation and cannabis legalization.

In his opinion, the 1985 law that currently regulates psychotropic and narcotic substances (Narcotic Drugs and Psychotropic Substances Act) in India did not achieve the expected results given the constant demand for drugs.

The proposed law seeks to change the way India manages its drug policy by removing criminal prosecution and regulating the legal market for cannabis for both medical and recreational use. It also seeks to differentiate between soft and hard drugs, in order to create a legal framework for both types of substance.

«The 30 years of implementing NDPS Act Dharamvira Gandhi explained in November. »30 years on, where do we stand? The fact is that NDPS Act has not only failed to achieve its objectives, but the war on drugs has produced results that are the opposite of what was intended. There can be no better verdict or assessment of such punitive laws than the admission by the United Nations Conference of March 12, 2009 that the war on drugs is a failure».

Back in 2013, a petition asked the Indian Constitutional Court to remove cannabis from the NDPS.

More recently, in August 2017, the Minister for Women and Child Development, Maneka Gandhi, called for the legalization of medical cannabis. Also in August, the first license for cannabis research was granted. had been awarded to a group of researchers to explore the medical applications of cannabis to treat epilepsy or the side effects of chemotherapy.