Ukraine has legalized medical cannabis, with first batches of imported product expected later this year
FILE PHOTO: Activists march for the legalization of marijuana in Kiev, Ukraine, October 26, 2019 © Pavlo Gonchar / SOPA Images / LightRocket via Getty Images
Ukrainian President Vladimir Zelensky has signed a bill legalizing the medical use of cannabis, with officials arguing it would help both soldiers and civilians to treat post-traumatic stress disorder amid the ongoing conflict with Russia.
“A draft bill on regulating the circulation of plants from the hemp class… has been signed by the president,” the Ukrainian parliament said in a notice on Thursday. Ukrainian lawmakers adopted the bill overwhelmingly in a 248-16 vote in December.
The law will take effect in six months and will regulate the circulation of hemp plants for “medical, industrial purposes, scientific and scientific-technical activities” in order to expand “patient access to the necessary treatment of oncological diseases and post-traumatic stress disorders, received as a result of the war,” according to the text.
Lawmakers will now work on the necessary regulations to allow the import of cannabis-based products, as developing domestic cultivation will take more time. An “independent European medical cannabis advisor,” Hanna Hlushchenko, who has been working with the Ukrainian pro-marijuana lobby told Forbes that her “estimate is that the first products will be on the market by Q3 or Q4 of this year.”
President Zelensky had promoted the measure as a way to relieve pain and anxiety among the Ukrainian populace, arguing that Ukraine must follow Western examples. “All the world’s best practices, all the most effective policies, all the solutions, no matter how difficult or unusual they may seem to us, must be applied to Ukraine,” Zelensky told the parliament last year.
The critics of the measure, including ex-Prime Minister Yulia Timoshenko, argued that the law is flawed and will allow “trillion-dollar drug businesses and drug mafias” to bribe their way into the country.
