Judge in Rio Allows Parkinson’s Patient to Plant Marijuana for Treatment

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Judge Rosana Navega, of the 1st Criminal Court of Niterói in the State of Rio de Janeiro, granted an injunction for a woman to plant and transport Cannabis sativa, the marijuana plant, for medicinal purposes. She cultivates the plant to extract the oil used as medicine to treat Parkinson’s disease.

According to the medical reports submitted in the case, conventional medication treated the disease palliatively and with side effects. With the fast progression of the disease, manifested in muscle stiffness, memory loss and traces of depression, the lady’s partner began to seek solutions that would provide a better quality of life and dignity to the patient.

They then requested special permission from the National Health Surveillance Agency (ANVISA) to import medicines made from cannabidiol. In the ruling, Judge Rosana Navega points out that should the injunction for the cultivation of cannabis not be granted, the therapeutic treatment that mitigates the woman’s pain would be unfeasible due to high import cost.

“In other words, the extracts of Cannabis Sativa that the patient uses today with good results are equivalent to the extracts imported and allowed by ANVISA, only with more content of other cannabinoids – therapeutic substances – present in Cannabis Sativa, which the patient needs according to medical prescription. In this sense, one of the advantages of handmade oil is the product’s better adequacy to the specific needs of the patients for whom it is intended”.

The magistrate further pointed out an article by physician Dráuzio Varella on the price and red tape required to obtain medicinal cannabis. He recalled that 35 countries, such as Canada, the United Kingdom, and Peru, have adapted their laws so that patients with severe illnesses may use the treatment with medicines derived from the plant.

In Brazil, there are other cases, including Rio de Janeiro, in which patients have been granted legal permission to grow the plant, which is the cheapest and most affordable means of obtaining the medicinal compounds.

“I would also like to point out that the subscribers to the Habeas Corpus initiative have been able to get experts, among them doctors, psychologists, anthropologists, biologists and pharmacists, linked to various social and research institutions, to work with the aforementioned self-cultivation, in particular, the FARMACANABIS project of the Drug Laboratory of the UFRJ Faculty of Pharmacy”.

Rio’s Bar Association (OAB-RJ) discusses the medicinal use of cannabidiol

Meanwhile, the Medical Law Commissions (CDMC) and the Special Commission on Sanitary and Health Law (CEDSS) jointly held an event on Wednesday morning, November 13th, to discuss the legalization of cannabidiol. The Secretary of the Medical Law Commission, Elaine Lacerda, opened the event.

Next, the president of the commission on the subject in the Subsection of Barra da Tijuca emphasized that patients who are in treatment for several chronic and neurodegenerative diseases have been bringing the prescription of cannabidiol to the courts.

“These are people who are not being successfully treated with other prescribed drugs, and patients have achieved satisfactory results in treatment with cannabidiol,” she said, noting that in 2015 when ANVISA removed cannabidiol from the list of prohibited substances, many patients managed to begin treatment.

Doctor Janaína Barboza provided some of what is expected from the future of cannabidioid medidicine. She explained that the cannabis plant has entered her therapeutic field as one of the plants she is already prescribing. “But when I studied, I realized that it is not just a plant. It’s ‘the’ plant,” she said.

“We have been deprived of using this molecule therapeutically for about three generations. On the other hand, we accepted as a fact that fluoxetine, for instance, is safe. Since it was developed around forty years ago”, she questioned. She has distinguished the different uses of cannabidiol for medicinal purposes, which include diseases in the nervous system, as well as in the bone system, and also helps to regulate the diet.