Medicinal cannabis legal in India
The use of cannabis is not completely banned in the country as its medical and scientific use is allowed under the law, the Centre has told the Delhi High Court which, refused to advance the date of hearing of the plea seeking to legalise its use on various grounds including medicinal purposes.
Let's start with a definition of therapeutic cannabis.
Marijuana for medical purposes refers to the use of marijuana to treat certain medical ailments.
Several pharmaceutical medicines based on cannabis have been made accessible for medical use in a pure and standardised form.
However, the use of herbal cannabis in medicine is still controversial, partly due to a lack of product standardisation to assure safe and uniform dose and partly due to legalisation disagreements.
Medical marijuana's advantages
There's a lot of evidence that marijuana or its components can help with chronic pain, chemotherapy-induced nausea, and multiple sclerosis symptoms.
Some prescription medications contain cannabis compounds or synthetic analogues, which are used to treat epilepsy, weight loss, and nausea in AIDS and cancer patients. According to some research, marijuana's soothing effects may aid in the treatment of sleep disorders such as insomnia. Additionally, when pain is lessened as a result of marijuana use, better sleep may follow.
Mainly cannabis has two categories Sativa and cannabis Indica. It affects the whole body and it gives deep relation.
What’s hindering the legalisation for India?
Small-scale farmers, for whom cannabis growing has been a way of life for generations, would also benefit from reasonable prices and the lack of risk associated with black-market transactions. Needless to say, all of the money that is currently going into the illegal market may be transformed into taxable revenue without the need to raise taxes on the general public.
Finally, legalising the crop would attract major pharmas and firms, putting small farmers' livelihoods at risk, as medicinal cannabis cultivation would necessitate stricter methods - it isn't entirely produced in the wild as one might think. These corporations will have substantial resources to ensure uniform cultivation and testing, which small-scale farmers cannot afford.
To summarise, there is still a long way to go before medicinal cannabis legalisation in India can or will be implemented in practice. State governments must be courageous in recognising the medical potential of this traditional herb and paving the road for its legal production.