Patients wait up to a year for protection for medical cannabis: Red Lotus – El Sol de Tijuana

Tijuana.- People who seek legal protection to consume cannabis for medicinal purposes wait up to a year to obtain a ruling in their favor, said Andrea Cuevas, director of the Loto Rojo Foundation.

“It is a tortuous, difficult process, the best thing you can do is travel to Mexico City, and there are people who sometimes do not have resources, they have to wait for the right instance,” he said.

César Hank Inzunza, state president of the PES. Photo: José Luis Camarillo | Tijuana Sun

He said that the protections can take from 1 month to 1 year to be granted, but in many cases they have certain limitations that do not benefit the patient who requested it.

And these can be requested for different reasons, since each person “has a specific objective” for the consumption of cannabis.

“You have to be very clear, an amparo is not going to give you 100 percent what you are looking for, because if you are a cancer patient and the amparo only allows you so much percentage of THC or so many grams, it is not what I need”, commented

Andrea Cuevas pointed out that legal resources must be filed at the “level of public necessity”, so that the patient has access to medicine depending on whether it is for medicinal or therapeutic use, and not just because he is a cannabis consumer.

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Another problem that patients face is that once this resource is obtained, doctors do not include cannabis in their treatment, something that Cuevas attributes to fear and ignorance.

Photo: Ramón Hurtado | Tijuana Sun

He added that Loto Rojo has a definitive suspension at the federal level, with which “therapeutic use in the patient should not be limited”, and it must also guarantee that they have access to the plant.

“We filed a collective protection of more than 30 patients, who in the process of obtaining this suspension, more than eight died due to the same ineptitude of our public bodies in giving us approval,” said the director of Loto Rojo.

Among these deaths, Cuevas mentioned that there were several minors.

He opined that the use of the plant is something beneficial for the care of any ailment, since the moment the patient manifests symptoms such as a change in appetite and fatigue, it means that “he may be a candidate for cannabis.”