Argentina’s Jujuy province is first in country to use cannabis oil for medicinal purposes

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – The Argentine province of Jujuy officials announced that it has become the first to use cannabis oil for medicinal purposes, noting that the Zabala Hospital, in the city of Perico, has received a first batch of 50 vials of the Argentine-produced substance.

Governor Gerardo Morales said that the “CBD 10” medicine doses will be given “free of charge” to the province’s inhabitants, both adults and children, who suffer from refractory epilepsy and multiple sclerosis, among other pathologies.

The government’s goal is to extend the medicine’s use and distribution across the country after it has been delivered to the population of Jujuy, as Morales reported on Twitter.

“We delivered the product to the Zabala hospital in Perico because that is where the first permanent clinics focused on medical cannabis in the country will operate, and it will become a leading public health center in the treatment of pathologies with medicinal cannabis derivatives,” he said.

The product was developed by state-owned Cannava S.E. pharmaceutical company, which used 35 hectares and 9 greenhouses from the El Pongo farm to grow the raw material required for the production of this first batch. Its director, Gastón Morales, said that by 2022 the company expects to extend the planting area to 220 hectares and to 600 hectares by the end of next year.

In this respect, he pointed out that in terms of technology, equipment from the U.S. reached the country in September, carried by a National Ministry of Defense aircraft.

Morales pointed out that this equipment will guarantee sufficient quantities of active pharmaceutical ingredient and finished product to supply the 160 pharmacies throughout the province as of next November.

This initiative will establish Jujuy as a scientific and technological hub for medical development with a focus on cannabis, after the province’s Ministry of Health passed its own law on the medical use of marijuana in 2017.