2023-10-01 14:30:06
The wait is long when you are in pain. For six years Mado Gilanton, almost in her seventies, has been relieving the acute pain caused by the rare disease she suffers from with cannabis. She has been obtaining it clandestinely for six years, because nothing else can put out the burning fire she feels throughout her upper body due to an abnormality in her spinal cord. She finds her ” grass “ as best she can and prepares a mixture, mixing it with coconut oil, of which she takes a small spoonful in the evening in the event of an acute attack. : “It’s enough to calm the pain, nothing relieves me as effectively”she says.
On the occasion of the Social Security financing bill for 2024, Mado Gilanton hoped that the use of therapeutic cannabis would finally be generalized in France and that she would thus be able to treat herself without hiding. But the text presented this September 27 to the Council of Ministers does not contain any budget line dedicated to the subject. The examination of the articles in the National Assembly in the coming weeks may eventually make it possible to amend it, but without certainty for the moment.
In this context, beyond Mado Gilanton and patients who are waiting, like her, it is an entire French economic sector which is holding its breath and which fears never being able to take off on this promising domestic market, since it might ultimately concern up to 500,000 patients, or even more. Which would make it, with Germany, the largest market in Europe.
Too passionate subject
For 2024, the Social Security administration had however quantified the cost of this generalization and transmitted its calculations to Matignon. Assuming a reimbursement rate of 30%, it estimated the expenditure at 120 million euros for the Health Insurance budget. But other criteria clearly weighed in the arbitrations, demonstrating the difficulty of moving the lines on the issue of cannabis in France, even though it is the most consuming country in Europe.
“We must understand that, for more than fifty years, there has been a moral panic in France around cannabis: it is a drug, therefore it is considered bad, and the French software in this area is prohibition and repressionregrets Marie Jauffret-Roustide, sociologist and researcher at Inserm. The scarecrow of the dangers that cannabis can represent screens out any debate, even if it is regarding providing relief to patients. »
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