Brazil health regulators have approved a set of rules to allow for medical cannabis use; the rules, however, would not allow for domestic cultivation and the program would rely solely on imported cannabis products.
Brazil Approves Medical Cannabis Program Rules
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Brazil’s health regulatory agency Anvisa has approved rules for its medical cannabis program, according to a Reuters report, but they do not include domestic cultivation, relying instead on imports.
Under the regulations – which will be published in the nation’s official gazette and will take effect 90 days after that – patients will only be allowed to buy products in registered pharmacies. At the onset, the program will initially run on a three-year trial.
According to New Frontier Data figures, there are expected to be 3.4 million patients in the Brazilian medical cannabis market.
Andres Galofre, co-founder and vice president of business development for South American cannabis company Khiron, said in a statement that the reforms “will directly benefit the health and wellbeing of a significant number of patients in Brazil.”
Brazilian President Jair Bolsonaro has previously expressed support for medical cannabis but his spokesman Otavio Rego Barros told reporters in August that the administration would “not permit loopholes in the law to be used for the planting and consumption of marijuana,” the AFP reports.
Brazil has allowed CBD importation by people with a prescription since 2015 but it was only allowed for chronic illness and epilepsy. Under the rules, only terminally ill patients and those with conditions for which all other treatments have failed will be allowed access to products that contain more the 0.2 percent THC; all other will only have access to products with a THC concentration of less than 0.2 percent.
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