Review of Cannabis by the World Health Organisation

Medical Cannabis Awareness New Zealand

Press Release: History making review of Cannabis by the World Health Organisation.

World Health Organisation’s 40th Expert Committee on drug dependence (ECDD) reviewing Cannabis.

This week marks a historic turning point for cannabis as the World Health Organisation’s ECDD conducts its first ever review of the scheduling of cannabis. Both as a flower and is a concentrated resin. This has never been done before and in fact the scheduling and the single Convention from 1961 was based on assumptions from earlier international treaties, which were not evidence based.

It is the hope of MCANZ that this review will recommend the change in schedule for cannabis flower and resin and in fact take a more granular approach to cannabis products in general between those that do have some risk of dependence or abuse versus those which have none.

To this end MCANZ has submitted a video submission for the open session which will be presented in Geneva Switzerland. Of the 12 submissions New Zealand is overrepresented with both MCANZ and the Hemp Foundation both submitting, due to the unique nature of its timing with the ongoing political process for law reform in New Zealand.

“It is our hope that with the World Health Organisation review would recommending descheduling, and that perhaps our government could use such recommendations to open up access to less refined and more affordable products”.

“It is a privilege to be selected from the various organisations in the public domain worldwide to present to the WHO on this matter”

“Our hope would be that via the scheduling and the UN single Convention of narcotics 1961 that cannabis products are scheduled in a more granular fashion so that the high CBD products are recognised globally as having no risk and therefore schedule differently, it would require a different methodology similar to what is applied to codeine as even high CBD products have a measurable amount of THC in them.”

“It could be argued that nutmeg, a banned psychoactive substance in Saudi Arabia, has more abuse potential than a high CBD product such as Charlotte’s Web or Haleigh’s Hope for example, yet as a tincture or oil, it is schedule 1, the same status as Oxycodone aka “Hillbilly heroin” ” says MCANZ coordinator Shane Le Brun.

MCANZ refers to its resources at www.mc2018.co.nz for a visual indication on the sliding scale of THC potency vs psychoactivity, (image attached below)

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