exhibition on the benefits of the drug in the Chamber

This week, the Chamber of Deputies received an exhibition sponsored by the InformaCann Institute, the Brazilian Society for Cannabis Studies and other pro-“medical” marijuana entities to showcase the “benefits” of “Cannabis” and the commercial advances of the hemp industry, with the objective of trying to guarantee a wider release of marijuana in Brazil.

The exhibition coincided with a public hearing that was held on Wednesday (29), by the Participatory Legislation Commission, which only included participants in favor of the cultivation of the drug in the country. At the time, they demanded regulation for producer associations to democratize access to treatments with “cannabis medicinal” in Brazil.

A People’s Gazette spoke with some opposition parliamentarians who criticized the fact that the act financed by taxpayer money to promote marijuana, mainly on the grounds that it would supposedly be beneficial for the treatment of some diseases or even to improve the country’s economy.

“We see with great concern that this type of exhibition is carried out here in our House, without it even having the adverse side. And people end up being deceived by the discourse that certain substances coming from marijuana could benefit sick people, but, in fact, they want to say that marijuana is something good to encourage recreational use. A great danger for Brazil”, declared deputy Paulo Fernando da Costa (Republicanos-DF).

According to deputy Dr. Jaziel Pereira (PL-CE), there is a very strong lobby in Congress, which tries to sell a “false truth” about the drug for “general release”. “They want to deceive people into a false truth that this active ingredient is good for everything. But what exists is an attempt to release the drug to multiply sales and drug shares in Brazil. It’s just a pretext to ruin the lives of many people,” he declared.

In the opinion of senator Eduardo Girão (Novo-CE), the exhibition was a “maneuver to open the marijuana industry to everything”. “What they want is to earn revenue and allow recreational use in the country. This has already been dismantled in the Senate and in other public hearings, that the industry uses people’s pain”, said Girão. He also reinforced that he presented a bill that guarantees the supply of cannabidiol by the SUS to families whose children have epilepsy or some necessary situation.

“CBD is something produced in a laboratory and there is no need to grow marijuana [em casa]. What they want is to plant marijuana, because their objective is to popularize, glamorize, smoke, and if they wanted to treat children, they would help me approve my project”, stated the senator from Ceará.

The pro-marijuana exhibition occurs at a time when members of the current government have already given favorable signals for the legalization of marijuana, and when the Federal Supreme Court is discussing the decriminalization of small quantities of the drug.

In June, the national secretary of Drug Policies and Asset Management at the Ministry of Justice, Marta Machado, reported that the Lula (PT) government intends to regulate the planting of marijuana to replace the import of the plant’s active ingredients for therapeutic purposes. The information contravenes the Drug Law (Law 11,343 of 2006), which prohibits the cultivation of any variant of marijuana in Brazilian territory.

Furthermore, the Minister of Agrarian Development and Family Farming, Paulo Teixeira (PT), stated that it is “a contradiction not to allow” the advancement of the cannabis-based medicine industry in Brazil. Teixeira pointed out that it is cheaper to grow marijuana for use in medical treatments in the country itself. The minister made the statement in September, during a hearing of the Participatory Legislation Committee of the Chamber of Deputies.

“Medical cannabis”?

One of the information distributed at the exhibition to visitors was produced by federal deputy Luciano Ducci (PSB-RJ), rapporteur of the Committee on Cannabis-Based Medicines and author of a substitute presented to PL 399/15 which allows the cultivation of marijuana for medicinal and industrial purposes. , and commercials.

In the newsletter, Ducci explains what cannabinoids are – THC and CBD – and their active ingredients, defends regulation to lower the cost of the medicine, which can cost “more than R$3,000 per month”, but does not present the studies which prove the effectiveness for the variety of diseases mentioned for the use of Cannabis – which contradicts the scientific evidence on the medicinal use of cannabis, with proof in restricted cases.

Several studies and the Brazilian Psychiatric Association (ABP) itself have already pointed out that there is no definitive scientific evidence about the supposed benefits of the substance for most diseases. There is an exception in cases cited by the Federal Council of Medicine (CFM), such as patients with epileptic seizures related to Dravet, Doose and Lennox-Gastaut syndromes.

Representative Osmar Terra (MDB-RS), who has been following this debate about the lobby behind “medical cannabis” for years, mentioned that only one molecule of the 400 substances in marijuana could have a medicinal effect and is still being studied. “This molecule is already available in the pharmacy, and you don’t need to smoke marijuana or use oil for this, because cigarettes and oil contain all the other substances of marijuana, which can cause a series of damages and incurable diseases. It is not a medicine, no It’s nothing, it’s a drug that causes more damage”, he explains.

For the parliamentarian from Rio Grande do Sul, the exhibition would be “illegal”. Terra states that the real intention is to obtain authorization for the cultivation of marijuana for medicinal purposes, which has occurred through the courts. “There are NGOs that defend medicinal use and are being used as a front for drug trafficking in the Federal District. They say they will sell medical marijuana, it even looks like there is another marijuana, they call it cannabis to say it is something else, but it is all lobby”, he denounced.

PL 399/15 awaits analysis in the Plenary

The pro-marijuana discourse intensified in Congress after the approval of PL 399 in 2015. Originally, the proposal aimed only to authorize the sale of medicines with “extracts, substrates, or parts of the plant called Cannabis sativa”. However, a replacement for this PL, presented by Luciano Ducci, added a series of provisions on planting, processing, research, transport and commercialization of marijuana in Brazil, authorizing, among other things, home cultivation of the plant.

The opposition managed to prevent the text from being sent to the Senate without analysis by the Plenary of the Chamber of Deputies. The text now waits to be inserted into the Chamber’s agenda for the vote of the 513 deputies.

According to deputy Osmar Terra, there was a maneuver carried out by the marijuana lobby with the parties in the special committee, so that they would have more deputies in favor of the project, which is why it ended up being approved by a small tiebreaker in the committee. However, he reinforced that the opposing deputies managed to block it and present a request for analysis of the proposal in the plenary, in the certainty that PL 399/15 will be rejected by the majority.

“We have a majority today not to let it pass. And we have already approved laws that prohibit the consumption of illicit drugs twice and we will approve them again, if necessary. It is an absurd lobby, because it is Congress that represents the Brazilian people who do not want the release of drugs in our country”, said Terra.