In Germany, the partial legalisation of hashish has opened up a brand new telemedicine market. As a substitute of visiting a health care provider in individual, sufferers can now request prescriptions on-line, with hashish flowers despatched on to sufferers through specialist pharmacies.
Critics argue that this technique permits peculiar shoppers to acquire the plant-based medication too simply, even when it does bypass the black market and generate tax income for the state.
Equally, well being insurers aren’t burdened with masking the price of hashish for sufferers with severe sicknesses who require common remedy.
However, the GKV-Spitzenverband, the central affiliation representing Germany’s statutory well being and nursing care insurance coverage funds, has welcomed the newly proposed modifications to telemedicine guidelines.
In its assertion on the deliberate modification to the Medical Hashish Act, it supported the proposals however criticised hashish in flower kind as a product with out formal pharmaceutical approval.
‘Hashish makes you in poor health’
The well being insurers argue that hashish use has elevated, and that extended consumption, specifically, is linked to the onset of great sicknesses.
Anxiousness problems, melancholy, schizophrenia, visible and speech impairments, and tachycardia are among the many potential results on physique and thoughts, prompting concern over rising prices for the well being system.
Because the GKV-SV advised Pharmazeutische Zeitung: “The health-related follow-up prices of those potential penalties of long-term hashish use are largely borne by the statutory medical insurance system.”
They stress that even with hashish, prescriptions ought to observe the precept of ‘as a lot as essential, as little as potential.’
No reimbursement for flowers
Whereas welcoming the proposed ban on mail-order hashish and the requirement for in-person consultations with medical doctors, as a solution to curb extreme and medically unjustified use, the insurers stay sceptical about hashish flowers altogether.
In contrast to standardised extracts or ready-to-use cannabis-based medicines, dried hashish flowers aren’t accepted underneath pharmaceutical legislation. Their efficacy and security, subsequently, can’t be assured on account of an absence of formal testing.
The GKV-SV concludes there isn’t any medical necessity for hashish in dried flower kind, that means the present provide preparations and reimbursement obligations ought to be reconsidered. From its perspective, dried flowers ought to not be lined by statutory medical insurance.
Requires stricter necessities
The affiliation additionally desires tighter guidelines for all cannabis-based medicines. It helps banning ‘lay promoting’ for uncooked supplies utilized in prescriptions or extemporaneous preparations, and favours reintroducing stricter standards for authorisation.
Such modifications would make it tougher for sufferers to use frequent modifications of prescribing physician and would encourage common evaluations of remedy effectiveness.
Regardless of shifting world attitudes in direction of hashish and a rising physique of scientific analysis, the GKV-SV stays sceptical, conservative and important of cannabis-based medicines.
Extra remedies linked to hashish use
Extra proof towards hashish use was offered in July by the Kaufmännische Krankenkasse (KKH). It estimated that round 250,500 individuals in Germany acquired medical remedy for psychological and behavioural problems linked to hashish use in 2024.
Since partial legalisation, such diagnoses have reached their highest stage in a decade, and their quickest price of improve, rising by 14.5%.
Nonetheless, the KKH figures, reported by Welt, don’t account for the truth that, underneath present circumstances, most shoppers nonetheless lack entry to legally produced hashish and are subsequently seemingly utilizing untested black-market merchandise.
