Public Hearing on the legalization of cannabis on December 11

The Left Block (BE) will promote next Monday, December 11th, at 17 pm, a public hearing in Parliament to debate the legalization of cannabis. The event, which will take place at the Centro de Acolhimento ao Cidadão, in the Assembly of the Republic (AR), will be open to the general public and will be attended by doctors, activists, researchers, patients, jurists, associations with intervention in the area of ​​risk reduction and all people who want to intervene in the debate.

Moisés Ferreira, deputy for BE and responsible for the draft legislation for the regulation, says that it is necessary to discuss the legalization of cannabis “so that it can be prescribed and dispensed in case of illness and so that trafficking can be fought, promoting the safety of consumers, public health and informed consumption”.

With legalization, BE intends to achieve two objectives: the permission of self-cultivation and the possibility of acquiring cannabis, in a controlled manner, in proper places.

Em interview with Cannapress, last September, Moisés Ferreira had already advanced that the aim is for “doctors to be able to prescribe the plant or its derivatives and that the prescriptions can then be filled in the pharmacy and reimbursed after evaluation by those responsible for the area of government health”. But BE's proposal goes even further and also wants self-cultivation for medicinal purposes to be foreseen, giving this possibility to those who have a medical prescription and limiting the number of plants per person, in order to avoid selling to third parties.

On the other hand, Moisés considers that Portugal should also invest in the research of cannabis for medicinal purposes, since the therapeutic effects of many of its components are already known: “Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is already known and they are starting to be The effects of cannabidiol (CBD) are increasingly proven, but there are many other cannabinoids and terpenes that remain relatively unknown and that certainly have very positive medicinal effects”, he said.

Despite not being a cannabis consumer, Moisés Ferreira is in favor of legalizing it for all purposes, invoking the fight against trafficking and controlling the quality of what is consumed, avoiding the existence of chemically or genetically adulterated products. “Whoever wants to smoke ends up finding it. Legalizing combats trafficking and, perhaps even more importantly, promotes public health, because it allows for regulation and assessment of what is actually being sold and bought. More informed consumption is less dangerous for the individual and society,” he claims.

A Cannativa — Cannabis Studies Association, who met several times with Moisés Ferreira during this year to give his contribution and technical opinion on the plant Cannabis Sativa L., will be present at the Public Hearing, with the intervention of two of its founding members.