More than a year ago, the Swiss National Council adopted a tacit motion facilitating access to medical cannabis for the sick. The Federal Council, executive body of the Confederation, now wishes to amend the law on drugs to include it in the legislative marble.
Currently, the Federal Office of Public Health (FOPH) issues case-by-case authorizations to applicants. The office distributed 3,000 last year for cancer patients and patients with multiple sclerosis. The idea would be to allow doctors to prescribe cannabis directly to patients.
A majority of parties are in favor of opening the prescription. Medcan, the Swiss medical cannabis association, recommends the creation of a control body dedicated to medical cannabis rather than assigning this role to Swissmedic, the Swiss institute responsible for monitoring the market for therapeutic products. It also demands that cannabis be reimbursed in the same way as other drugs, which is very rarely the case at this time.
"The main obstacle to an automatic reimbursement is that the scientific proof of the effectiveness is for the moment insufficient and that the conclusions of the existing studies are sometimes contradictory", specified the Swiss government last June.
Swiss pharmacies can already sell CBD when prescribed by a doctor. Only Sativex , which also contains THC , is approved for MS patients under certain conditions.
A recent circular of the Federal Agency for Medicines and Health Products (FAMHP) nevertheless allows the use of "raw materials such as cannabidiol containing traces of THC" for magistral preparations if exposure of the patient to THC does not not more than 1 microgram per kilogram of body weight per day. Pharmacists can use pharmaceutical pharmaceutical CBD isolate to make pills or ointments.