Opinion – Cannabis Inc.: Decree may revoke CFM regulation for Cannabis

This Monday, deputy Paulo Teixeira (PT-SP) filed a legislative decree to revoke the new regulation on the prescription of cannabis medicine of the CFM (Federal Council of Medicine). Standard 2324/2022 was published last Friday, 14th, by the regulatory body, which guides and supervises medical practice. CFM updated the regulation created in 2014, the year in which the individual import of oil from cannabis by the patient in Brazil. This article had a period of two years to be rewritten, but only now has it been changed.

As the market has changed a lot since then, the expectation was that the CFM would publish rules more appropriate with the current moment of cannabis medicine. It is estimated that at least 300,000 patients are treated with cannabis. Over the weekend, doctors, lawyers and associations participated in lives to discuss the repercussion of the CFM decision.

According to the deputy, the update of the CFM norm “threatens and limits the access and right of patients to be accompanied by prescribing doctors”. The regulatory body can provide guidance on the treatment of cannabis medicinal, for classifying it as an experimental method, which Teixeira refutes. He goes further, he says that the CFM “extrapolates its regulatory power”, by forbidding that doctors can only disclose their work at congresses.

Teixeira was the chairman of the Special Commission on Medicinal Cannabis, whose work led to the writing of PL 399/2015, admitted to the Legislative Chamber in 2021. The project regulates the medicinal and industrial market for hemp (a type of Cannabis with almost zero THC, substance with psychoactive effect). The PL has not yet been voted on.