Medical Cannabis Legalization Stalls In Ukraine

Roughly a week ago lawmakers in Ukraine passed a measure that would legalize cannabis for medical use in the country under certain circumstances. Unfortunately, before the nation’s president could sign the measure procedural actions taken by the opposition party Batkivshchyna have delayed the process.

Cannabis opponents in the Verkhovna Rada made significant efforts leading up to the successful vote for medical cannabis to try to prevent a vote from happening via the classic political tactic of introducing needless amendments to the measure being considered.

Those tactics may have failed at the time, however, the recent actions by members of the Batkivshchyna party make the future of medical cannabis in Ukraine murkier, to say the least. Per Marijuana Moment:

The leader of the Batkivshchyna (Fatherland) party, Yulia Tymoshenko, who has consistently opposed the measure, said recently that her party intends to appeal to the Constitutional Court to cancel the legislative vote because “the amendments to the bill were considered in a half-empty chamber,” according to a report in the New Voice of Ukraine.

Tymoshenko, a former prime minister of the country, claimed that the proposal would legalize “drug trafficking and the drug mafia in the country,” though the local news outlet said she failed to provide any evidence for those claims.

The recently passed measure, if it is ever signed into law by President Volodymyr Zelensky, would legalize medical cannabis for suffering patients diagnosed with ‘severe illnesses’ and post-traumatic stress disorder.

Cannabis is currently classified as a List I substance in Ukraine, and if the new measure becomes law, it would reschedule cannabis to List II. That rescheduling would allow cannabis to be prescribed for medical purposes.

Ukraine’s Agrarian Policy Ministry would regulate the nation’s medical cannabis program along with Ukraine’s Police and State Agency on Medicines according to the bill. Medical cannabis imports would be permitted, which would help increase the speed at which the nation’s medical cannabis program could become operational.