DOH to form panel to review legal marijuana

MANILA, Philippines — The Department of Health (DOH) will create a committee to study the implications of legalizing medical marijuana, officials said yesterday.

DOH Undersecretary for Health Regulation Mario Villaverde said the technical evaluation committee (TEC) would be created to look into the implications of legalizing marijuana for medical use following the proposals in Congress.

“We will further review the implications of the (proposal) because cannabis, in its raw form, is the one that is questionable,” he said.

The TEC would be composed of the Food and Drug Administration, Philippine Institute for Traditional and Alternative Health Care and the DOH’s Health Facilities and Services Regulatory Bureau.

The DOH is also looking to tap the University of the Philippines-Manila that issued a position paper opposing the legalization of medical marijuana. 

Health Secretary Francisco Duque III earlier expressed support for proposals legalizing medical marijuana.

He said cannabis should only be used for research purposes and limited to patients who are unresponsive to traditional treatment.

Duque said the DOH does not support the use of marijuana in its raw form and derivatives. 

The synthetic form of cannabis, on other hand, is not really therapeutic but only serves as pain reliever.

“Early on I emphasized that it seems that the potential risks outweigh the potential benefits because we all know the active ingredients of marijuana,” Duque said.

He said some “psycho-active ingredients” in marijuana could impair the psychomotor and cognitive functions of a person.

“And therefore will increase the risk of differentiated or abnormal perception, for example, and may lead to motor vehicular accidents and so on,” Duque said.

Representatives from various medical institutions opposed the proposed legalization of medical marijuana.

They argued the number of Filipinos hooked on illegal drugs could increase to more than six million.

In a forum in Quezon City, representatives from the medical community expressed concerns on House bills 6517, 180 and 4477 seeking to legalize marijuana.

Dr. Leonor Cabral-Lim, chair of the department of neurosciences of the University of the Philippines-Philippine General Hospital, said the current figure of four million drug users being mentioned by the government could reach six million if the bills are passed into law.

“That is the figure if we multiply it by 1.5,” Cabral said in the forum.

Among those who opposed the bill are the Community Pediatric Society of the Philippines, Child Neurology Society of the Philippines, Philippine Neurological Association and Philippine Psychiatric Association. – With Emmanuel Tupas