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Campaigns &
Projects
Patients For Safe Access has made some great progress since its inception in 2020, We have numerous campaigns and projects at local, and national levels that are aimed at specific changes in laws or regulations. Learn more about our campaigns and projects below.
Advocate for
Medical Cannabis
Patients For Safe Access will host lobbying, media and legal campaigns with an aim to result in important court precedents, new sentencing standards, and more compassionate community guidelines.
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Start doing advocacy right away. Patients For Safe Access has created online advocacy tools for many national, and even local issues.
Policy Positions:
Deschedule Cannabis and Recognize It as Medicine.
While Irish government recognizes the medical value of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD), two constituents of cannabis, and permits the sale of pharmaceutical drugs made by synthesising or isolating these compounds, such as Bedrocan and Tilray, it classifies cannabis as a Schedule I substance under the Misuse of Drugs Act. This makes it illegal to prescribe, dispense, or administer cannabis for medical use. However, many patients find that whole-plant cannabis, cannabis extracts with a broad range of the plant’s constituent chemicals, and other cannabis-containing products more effectively address their symptoms than the aforementioned pharmaceutical products.
Clinical research affirms that cannabis can be used safely and effectively to alleviate the symptoms of serious and chronic medical conditions. Retaining cannabis in Schedule I prevents robust research into maximising the therapeutic benefit that can be derived from cannabis, precludes health insurance coverage for the cost of medical cannabis, and makes criminals of people who rely on cannabis to treat debilitating illness and the people who produce or provide medical cannabis to these patients. Therefore, cannabis should be descheduled and recognised as medicine.
Make Medical Cannabis Available to Anyone Who Could Benefit from It.
No matter the condition requiring medical attention, patients and their healthcare providers must weigh the potential benefits and risks of any treatment they may pursue. The potential benefits and risks of the medical use of cannabis should be weighed against those of all other treatment options under consideration in light of each individual patient’s medical history and circumstances. Unfortunately, many of the states and territories that have legalised the medical use of cannabis have also created restrictive lists of qualifying conditions that preclude access to it by many of the people who could benefit from it.
No enumerated list of conditions is expansive enough to cover every condition for which cannabis may produce medicinal benefit, so writing restricted lists of qualifying conditions into law inevitably results in needless suffering. Additionally, for some individuals with acute injuries, cannabis may be a more appropriate first-line treatment than the alternatives, such as opioid medication, which carries significant risk of addiction and can prove fatal in the case of overdose. To ensure that patients and healthcare providers have as many effective options available to them as possible to combat pain and illness, healthcare providers’ ability to recommend (and eventually prescribe) medical cannabis should be unrestricted, and medical cannabis should be available to anyone who could benefit from it.
Enable and Facilitate Comprehensive Medical Cannabis Research.
Cannabis has been used medicinally for millennia, but modern cannabis research in the United States has been stymied by decades of prohibition. The government has repeatedly acknowledged that cannabis’ Schedule I status prevents research that would provide more information about both the potential benefits and potential harms of cannabis.
While research has been conducted and is ongoing in other countries, dozens of which have legalised medical cannabis at the national level, Ireland has tremendous resources that could be brought to bear to more quickly unlock cannabis’ full medical potential. The government should eliminate barriers to research, immediately let researchers use commercially available cannabis to get a comprehensive picture of cannabis’ medical advantages and drawbacks, authorise producers of medical cannabis for scientific research, fund high-quality scientific studies, and take any other action necessary to enable and facilitate comprehensive medical cannabis research.
License and Regulate Cannabis Dispensaries.
Regulated medical cannabis distribution systems enhance patient access to different cannabis chemotypes and to a variety of cannabis products. Additionally, they offer a means by which to ensure that the cannabis and cannabis products made available for sale to patients pass safety testing and are accurately labeled.
Regulation should permit the medical use of cannabis, and dispensaries should pass sensible regulations to ensure that they are responsibly operated and provide patients with safe and effective products. Regulations should not be unreasonable or onerous, or they may act to reduce patient access to medical cannabis. To ensure that it is feasible for patients to obtain cannabis for which they legally qualify, governments should not be permitted to impose bans on medical cannabis dispensaries.
Allow Home Cultivation for Patients.
There are myriad varieties of cannabis, and it is important that patients have the ability to grow the most effective cultivar(s) for their particular condition at home. Otherwise, they must hope that the needs of the broader market sync up with theirs or risk finding that the cannabis they find most effective is no longer commercially produced. Allowing home cultivation would also reduce the cost of medical cannabis, and affordability is a key concern for many patients. While the existence of a centralised production and distribution system is important, patients should not have to rely on it exclusively. To ensure access to effective and affordable cannabis, the government should allow home cultivation for patients.
Test Medical Cannabis Prior to Sale.
In 2014, American industry standards for testing laboratory analysis of cannabis and cannabis products were created to inform and educate patients, protect patient health, ensure product quality and safety, require that representative samples of commercially produced cannabis and cannabis products be analysed by cannabis testing laboratories and pass all required testing before those products may be distributed to dispensaries for sale to patients.
Create an Office of Medical Cannabis Control.
Government agencies differ from one another in their aims, methods, and missions. For example, the Department of Health exists to enhance the health and well-being of all Irish citizens, while An Garda Siochana exists to enforce the controlled substances laws and regulations of Ireland. This promotes competition for funding among the various agencies involved and impedes progress on important research and federal recognition of cannabis as medicine - featuring dozens of other countries have managed to accomplish at the national level.
It is time to transfer regulatory authority for cannabis to a new agency that will prioritise conducting research, producing a wide range of cannabis products for medical use, and ensuring nationwide access to cannabis-based and cannabis-containing medicines. This new national agency would have centralised regulatory authority, which would result in a consistent and predictable regulatory environment nationwide.
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