Cannabis for medical purposes is still a pending debate in the DR
After information was released that Cooperstown Hall of Famer David Ortiz partnered with a company to launch a line of marijuana products, to be called “Papi Cannabis,” the debate over whether the country could using this vegetable for medicinal use came to the fore again.
The use of marijuana, even for medicinal purposes, is prohibited in the Dominican Republic, because the matter is handled as a crime and not as a health issue.
For the executive director of the Open House Association, Juan Raddamés de la Rosa, the use of medical marijuana is a topic that is debated throughout the world and that in recent years it has been discovered that it is a soft drug that does not produce as much damage as it had been saying before.
“The world has been discovering that cannabis has medicinal and recreational dimensions that people can use without causing major problems,” explained the director of Open House.
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Radamés de la Rosa indicated that in several countries the recreational use of marijuana is not legal, but that there are laws that allow the health system to use this plant for therapies such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease, among others.
He indicated that the legislators of the National Congress still do not understand that marijuana can be put to a more appropriate use and that it could help people.
“It is not about legalizing it so that everyone can smoke marijuana in a corner, no, it is about generating legal mechanisms as other countries have done,” de la Rosa clarified.
He indicated that today through the commercialization of this substance for medicinal purposes, an industry is generated, jobs and taxes would be paid, “it is a loss of the sense that we have here that we continue to think of marijuana as a harmful drug.”
Law 50-88 clearly prohibits the use of this substance and its article 9 establishes that: “Among all drugs, the most dangerous are: opium in all its forms and derivatives; the heroine; coke; cocaine, its derivatives or synthetic substances; LSD or any other hallucinogenic substance. All seeds and plants of the Cannabinaceae family, products derived from them that contain narcotic or stimulant properties (such as Cannabis Indica Cannabis Sativa, Marijuana and other herbs that have similar).
Article 21 of the law prohibits throughout the national territory: “The sowing, cultivation, production, collection, harvesting and exploitation of plants from which these drugs are extracted, specifically pointing out “hemp (Cannabis sativa L.) and its varieties “indica”, “movacae”, “marijuana” and other plants and parts of plants that have principles considered as narcotic drugs and controlled substances.