Based on the few experiments conducted abroad (notably in Colorado, Uruguay or Canada), the authors consider that the State should itself manage the cultivation and sale of the product in specialized shops and prohibited to minors.

This revolution would make it possible to meet the two objectives presented as priorities: “fight against organized crime” and “restrict access to the product for the youngest”. The installation of a new economic sector would also have the merit of creating, according to them, “between 27,000 and 80,000 jobs “, while the taxes could bring between 2 and 2.8 billion euros per year. Now great options are available for the larchmont dispensary.

A new forum

In parallel, more than 70 doctors, jurists, economists and politicians have published a forum in L’Obs, demanding to “legalize cannabis, whether used for therapeutic or recreational purposes, for consumers over 18 years old “. Among them are two heavyweights from La Republique en Marche (LREM), deputies Aurélien Taché and Pierre Person – the latter being number two in the movement and also ecologist MEP Yannick Jadot.

• Finally, these demands clash with the work of a committee of experts, charged by the National Agency for Drug Safety (ANSM) to submit, still this Thursday, June 20, a framework project of experimentation of the use of therapeutic cannabis.

Only specialist doctors practicing in referral centers (painkillers, multiple sclerosis) should be able to give the initial prescription, according to the opinion of the committee. Once validated by the ANSM in July, the experimentation project could start in early 2020. An opening that must however be distinguished from the general debate, since doctors’ advocates of therapeutic use are often reluctant to general legalization, because of proven health risks.

A divided public opinion

Still, mentalities change. “We are at a turning point in the trivialization of the phenomenon,” said Robin Reda, formerly Republican (LR). “Many countries have recently changed their legislation, France can not remain isolated in the face of changing morals,” says the co-author of the report on the lump sum fine in January 2018, integrated into the reform of justice promulgated last March . Consumers arrested can now receive a fine of € 200, instead of going to court where they incur up to one year in prison and € 3,750 fine. However, t

Will there soon be the authorization of therapeutic cannabis in France? The Minister of Health in any case does not rule out this possibility, recently revived by a nurse from Creuse.

He is a nurse anesthetist and is at the origin of a “buzz” which, since a few weeks, exceeds the borders of the discrete territory of Creuse, where he carries out his mandate as president of the agglomeration of Grand-Guéret. At the end of 2017, he proposed the possibility of cultivating cannabis in a derogatory way, for a therapeutic purpose. This proposal is for him the meeting point between his professional life and his commitment as an elected representative.