No reason to oppose therapeutic cannabis, for the Ethics and Cancer Committee

A ladybug on a cannabis plant, Naundorf, Germany, September 19, 2018Jan Woitas

The Ethics and Cancer Committee, a consultative body, has found no reason to oppose the use of cannabis by adults with serious illness who claim to benefit from it, even if that benefit is not not demonstrated rigorously.

A patient with cancer, who claims that the consumption of this product relieves her of intense and chronic pain and nausea, had asked the Committee about the ethical nature or not of the prohibition of cannabis in a therapeutic context.

It compares the current ban to "a refusal of care," said Tuesday the Committee chaired by Professor Axel Kahn, geneticist and honorary president of the University Paris-Descartes.

Despite the "still insufficient data" on the therapeutic effects of cannabis, the Committee focused on whether there are ethical reasons to oppose the use of cannabis by patients who feel relieved.

"None of the arguments possibly against such consumption has appeared to him likely to continue to prohibit," he said.

"In particular, he has not been able to identify an adverse effect that has been proven to be sufficiently serious to oppose such practice by adult persons with serious, life-threatening illnesses who claim to benefit from it".

But he recommends not to smoke it and to favor other forms of consumption.

According to the Committee, whose opinion is available online (ethique-cancer.fr), access to cannabis or its active substances "should be supervised by the health authorities, in order to provide sick people the necessary guarantees as to the quality, the concentrations and the modalities of optimal use of cannabis or its active substances ".

This "supervision would, moreover, make it possible for sick people to dispense with the use of parallel circuits" to procure them and "would also prevent them from risking criminal prosecution because of their consumption".

The League Against Cancer is at the origin of the creation of the Ethics and Cancer Committee, installed in 2008 by then Minister of Health Roselyne Bachelot-Narquin.

An expert committee of the ANSM Medecine Agency will give its first conclusions by the end of the year on the interest of setting up in France access to therapeutic cannabis.