Medical Marijuana Hits the Shelves in Dutch Pharmacies!

Medical Marijuana Hits the Shelves in Dutch Pharmacies

As of Monday March 17, 2003, medical marijuana in the Netherlands began moving from the coffee shop to the pharmacist's shelves, as a new law allowing druggists to fill medical marijuana prescriptions and patients to have the cost covered by insurance went into effect.

"The health minister said, look, doctors are prescribing marijuana to their patients anyway, and there are many medicinal users, so we may as well regulate it," Bas Kuik, a spokesman for the Dutch Ministry of Health, told the Associated Press. Kuik added that the Dutch government will license several official growers later this year, but meanwhile, pharmacies will have to act on their own to get marijuana.

That does not present a large problem, however, since, there already exists at least one company, Maripharm (http://www.maripharm.nl), that reports supplying at least 600 Dutch pharmacies with "Medical Grade Marijuana." According to Maripharm, its product comes "standardized, vacuum-packed and bearing patient information and dose advice." Maripharm mediweed goes for about $225 an ounce at the Dam Pharmacy in central Amsterdam, the AP reported.

Although Maripharm has not received a waiver from the Dutch government to grow its medical marijuana, the Dutch authorities have, in their inimitable fashion, turned a blind eye to the company's activities, much as they allow the technically illegal sale of cannabis in the country's famous coffee shops.

The law bringing medical marijuana into the drug stores was actually passed by the Dutch parliament in 2001, but didn't go into effect until this week. While the Netherlands follows Canada in formally sanctioning medical marijuana, it is the first nation to incorporate the herb into its standard prescription drug regulation system.

Meanwhile, in the US, Attorney General Ashcroft sends armed paramilitary SWAT teams after sick and dying patients and their providers trumping local and state laws that reflect the will of the voters and trumping the medical profession and its research world-wide.

*Industrial-Hemp has no psychoactive properties following definition of the European Economic Community (EEC); THC content is less than 0.3%. In general, low THC-seed varieties without psychoactive properties are those that have a THC content of less than 1%. (See also No-THC Hemp-seed.) THC= Delta-9 TetraHydroCannabinol.