The Netherlands: will the sale of medicinal cannabis be stopped?
Health Minister Han Hoogervorst is considering abandoning the legal sale of medicinal cannabis in pharmacies and closing the Office of Medicinal Cannabis. In response to questions from the Tweede Kamer (House of Representatives of the Dutch parliament) he said on 17 March that he intends to decide on the future of the program after summer.
Questions were related to the status of the program, which started to sell cannabis in pharmacies in September 2003 and lost 400,000 Euros in 2004. Hoogervorst said that in times of budget cutbacks, such a project was destined to be stopped. He also noted that doctors were not very positive about prescribing cannabis to patients and that patients prefer to buy it from coffee- shops.
Hoogervorst also claimed that the medicinal properties of cannabis have never been proven and that the use of cannabis may cause side-effects such as psychoses. But the Office of Medicinal Cannabis asserted that patients do benefit from cannabis and psychoses occur only rarely. The PvdA (Partij van de Arbeid, Labour Party) called on the minister to put more energy into the success of the program.
(Sources: expatica.com of 18 March 2005, De Volkskrant of 18 March 2005, NRC Handelsblad of 18 March 2005)
