Hundreds of local patients and medical practitioners are happy that after months of waiting and pushing for the legalization of medicinal cannabis, the bill providing for its selective use has been approved by the House of Representatives on the third and final reading. A total of 177 members of the House recently voted in favor of House Bill No. 10439 or the proposed Access to Medical Cannabis Act, with nine lawmakers voting in the negative and nine abstentions.
Under the proposed law, those who may use medical cannabis or marijuana are persons who have been diagnosed by an accredited physician as having a medical condition or have symptoms associated with a medical condition who, in the accredited physician's evaluation, should receive medical cannabis as treatment.
If enacted, a Medical Cannabis Office (MCO) under the Department of Health (DOH) will be created, which will be the primary regulatory body for medical cannabis, having administrative, regulatory, and monitoring functions.
The office will be responsible for ensuring that medical marijuana will not be abused and will solely be used for health purposes.
“The MCO shall ensure that medical cannabis shall only be accessed through hospitals, clinics, drugstores, and other medical facilities authorized and licensed by the MCO for the use of qualified patients. It shall also ensure that only accredited physicians shall prescribe medical cannabis to qualified patients with enough supply of the medicine to last not more than one (1) year,” the bill states.
“The MCO shall establish a monitoring system that includes information such as name, address of the qualified patient and the physician, diagnosis, medical cannabis product and formulation, and date of dispensation in strict observance of RA 10173, otherwise known as the ‘Data Privacy Act of 2012’,” it added.
The bill, however, prohibits the following acts:
- importation, cultivation, manufacture, storage and distribution of medical cannabis, its products, or derivative without permit from the MCO;
- selling of or trading with medical cannabis to patients, doctors, drugstores, hospitals, clinics, dispensaries and other medical facilities without authority, license or accreditation from the MCO;
- planting and growing for research and development without authority from the MCO;
- prescription and administration of medical cannabis by non-accredited physician;
- prescription and administration of medical cannabis for more than one year by accredited physician;
- use of medical cannabis without prescription or use beyond the prescribed dosage; and
- other analogous acts performed without authority by the MCO.
Medicinal cannabis, or particularly Cannabidiol (CBD) oil — derived from the marijuana plant and currently a banned substance in the Philippines — is believed to alleviate pain and seizures in some patients battling epilepsy, cerebral palsy, and other neurological conditions.
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