As war continues in Ukraine, the country’s government is moving to legalize medical cannabis.
Minister of Healthcare Viktor Liashko wrote on Facebook this week that Ukraine’s cabinet had approved a bill “on regulating the circulation of cannabis plants for medical, industrial purposes, scientific and scientific-technical activities to create the conditions for expanding the access of patients to the necessary treatment of cancer and post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from war.”
The draft bill is a reworked version of a bill that lawmakers originally failed to pass last summer, and will now head to Ukraine’s parliament where it needs approval by at least 226 votes, the Kyiv Post reports.
Liashko suggested there will be more support for legalizing medical cannabis this time around.
“We understand the negative consequences of war on the state of mental health,” he wrote. “We understand the number of people who will need medical treatment as a result of this impact. And we understand that there is no time to wait.”
Liashko said the bill will ensure a “full cycle of cannabis-based drug production in Ukraine,” stressing that the country will gradually develop its own industry rather than relying on imports.
It would give the government strict control of the cultivation, production and sale of drugs, the Health Ministry stated.
Liashko noted that cannabis drugs are not “competitors” to narcotics, and that completely different measures are taken to regulate their circulation. He alluded to communications campaigns against cannabis that have tried to discredit its medical value.