On Dec. 3, Brazil approved new rules to allowing the import and sale of medicinal cannabis-based products, but at the same time, it turned down a proposal to allow domestic marijuana cultivation.\u00a0<\/p>\n
Brazil\u2019s medical marijuana program has languished for years and these new regulations could spell significant if still limited progress.<\/p>\n
However, it\u2019s a small step forward and a far cry from any kind of permissive legal cannabis program the likes of which was pioneered by its neighbor Uruguay. Cultivation within the country will be confined to \u201chemp\u201d \u2014 that is, CBD-only strains of cannabis with less than 0.3% THC. And even that is proceeding very slowly.<\/p>\n
Until now, Brazilian patients suffering from specific listed conditions had to apply online at the country\u2019s health agency website to receive cannabidiol (CBD) products. These new regulations will allow both CBD and THC products to be directly available at pharmacies with a prescription. The regulations also establish standards for commercialization, distribution and prescription of medical cannabis products.<\/p>\n
The THC products may take a little longer to become available, as foreign suppliers need to be established.<\/p>\n
Because the health department decided to prohibit domestic cultivation, it appears that Brazil, under the rule of hard-right President Jair Bolsonaro, is not yet preparing to join neighbors Colombia and Uruguay in developing its own vertically integrated medical marijuana sector.<\/p>\n
Separately, however a\u00a0federal judge in Brasilia ruled<\/a>\u00a0on Dec. 3 that one specific company may commence cultivation of hemp \u2014 that is, cannabis with a THC content of below 0.3%. The company in question is Schoenmaker Humako Agri-Floriculture, a subsidiary of\u00a0Terra Viva<\/a>, based in the agricultural interior of S\u00e3o Paulo state.<\/p>\n This is again an extremely limited decision,\u00a0only applying to the one company<\/a>\u00a0that brought the case, which apparently\u00a0intends to grow industrial hemp<\/a>. However, the Brazilian Ministry of Agriculture is now obliged to include hemp on the\u00a0National Cultivar Register<\/a>\u00a0list. This could open the door to other companies applying to cultivate hemp, and potentially to the domestic production of hemp-derived CBD products.<\/p>\n Brazil passed its medical marijuana law in 2015, allowing the importation, sale and use of CBD-only non-herbaceous cannabis products. Cannabis has been decriminalized in Brazil since 2006, but there is no provision for cultivation, and \u201calternative penalties\u201d such as mandatory treatment programs may be imposed on people caught with cannabis.<\/p>\n Cannabis use in Brazil is widespread, and international industry watchers have\u00a0identified\u00a0Brazil as the biggest potential market<\/a>\u00a0in Latin America. With the region\u2019s largest population, Brazil is also home to its greatest number of cannabis users \u2014 an estimated 4.2 million.<\/p>\n There are no signs that Brazil\u2019s government is looking to a legal cannabis sector as a solution to endemic narco-violence, as are the governments of\u00a0Colombia<\/a>\u00a0and\u00a0Mexico<\/a>. And Brazil, alas, is fast catching up to these two hemispheric leaders in that particularly intractable social pathology.<\/p>\n This May, five months after Bolsonaro took office, the\u00a0New York Times<\/a>\u00a0reported a massive escalation of police killings in anti-crime and anti-narco operations \u2014 558 deaths since the leader\u2019s inauguration, or nearly five per day. These mostly took place in the\u00a0favelas<\/em>, or informal settlements of Rio de Janeiro and S\u00e3o Paulo, almost completely abandoned by the government except for increasingly militarized policing, often deploying helicopters and armored vehicles. This leap in deaths at the hands of the police is hardly surprising, as Bolsonaro had campaigned on the unseemly slogan \u201cThe only good criminal is a dead criminal.\u201d<\/p>\n But the power of Brazil\u2019s cartels, such as the notorious First Capital Command, has clearly not been broken. Even when their leaders are imprisoned, they continue to run their empires in cocaine and illicit cannabis from behind bars, often gaining\u00a0de facto<\/em>\u00a0control of the prisons. In July, a clash between rival gangs left at least 57 dead,\u00a0including 16 decapitated<\/a>, at Altamira prison in the state of Par\u00e1 \u2014 but the latest in a\u00a0long and bloody series<\/a>\u00a0of riots and gang warfare in Brazil\u2019s prisons.<\/p>\n TELL US<\/strong>, would you want to get cannabis from your doctor?<\/p>\n The post Brazil Allows Import of THC Products, But Only Cultivation of Hemp<\/a> appeared first on Cannabis Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n
On Dec. 3, Brazil approved new rules to allowing the import and sale of medicinal cannabis-based products, but at the same time, it turned down a proposal to allow domestic marijuana cultivation.\u00a0 Brazil\u2019s medical marijuana program has languished for years and these new regulations could spell significant if still limitedContinue Reading<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":190,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"false","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1104,50,136,296,12950,2154,53,1305,420],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40076"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/190"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=40076"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40076\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":40077,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/40076\/revisions\/40077"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=40076"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=40076"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/cannabiscultivatornews.com\/home\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=40076"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}A Small Opening Amid Spiraling Narco-Violence<\/strong><\/h4>\n
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