The news went unnoticed as all eyes were on the offensive of Ukrainian troops in the Russian Kursk region. However, it is a medical and social revolution that Ukraine began with the entry into force, on August 16, of the legalization of cannabis for therapeutic use. In June, Volodymyr Zelensky publicly supported the text, adopted in Parliament in December 2023.
The law authorizes the cultivation of hemp for medical, industrial and scientific purposes “in order to create the conditions for expanding patients’ access to the necessary treatment for cancer and post-traumatic stress disorders” [post-traumatic stress disorder, PTSD] »According to the Ministry of Health, around six million Ukrainians could benefit from medical cannabis, three times more than the two million potential patients estimated before the Russian invasion, by February 2022. An increase due almost entirely to the rise in the number of people suffering from post-traumatic stress since the start of the large-scale offensive.
Only people with a medical prescription will be able to legally obtain cannabis, the sale and distribution of which will be strictly controlled by the government. “The prescription will be prescribed by the doctor to the patient based on his condition, as is currently the case with morphine”explained lawmaker Yaroslav Zhelezniak. However, the sale of cannabis for recreational purposes remains prohibited.
Legislative subtlety
While there are no national statistics, it is estimated that PTSD could ultimately affect between 30% and 50% of Ukrainians. Over the past two years, the Ukrainian healthcare system has already recorded a significant increase in the number of patients diagnosed with PTSD: there were more in the first two months of 2024 (3,292) than in the whole of 2021 (3,167).
For soldiers and civilians suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder, access to medical cannabis promises to be long and difficult. Because, for the moment, post-traumatic stress is not on the official list of diseases that authorize its use. “This is still the subject of much debate within the Ministry of Health.says Hanna Hlushchenko, founder of the Ukrainian Cannabis Consulting Association. They are the ones who decide which diseases can be included in the list and they are very sceptical about the effectiveness of medicinal cannabis in the treatment of PTSD victims, because they believe that the scientific data is not convincing enough. »
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