BY BEN STEVENS SEPTEMBER 29, 2023 IN BUSINESS OF CANNABIS EUROPE, MEDICAL CANNABIS
The future of France’s medical cannabis programme has been thrown into doubt this week as the government failed to introduce any sort of regulatory framework or allocate any funding in its annual budget.
Days later, a group of 17 patients’ associations published a letter in local news publication Le Parisien expressing their concern that the government was now reneging on formal commitments made in 2022, ‘prolonging the suffering of nearly 300,000 patients’.
Government infighting, budgetary issues and an inability of the industry to effectively influence policy mean that this experiment is now highly unlikely to be upgraded into a fully fledged medical cannabis framework in the near future.
However, according to industry expert Benjamin-Alexandre Jeanroy of Paris-based Augur Associates, this is not the final nail in the coffin for medical cannabis in France, but ‘just another minuscule step’.
“It’s disappointing, but the cat will never get back in the box.”
