First official medical cannabis prescription filled in Ukraine. Finally.
It took eight years of activism, endless political drama, and mountains of bureaucracy, but patients in Vinnytsia just bought legal cannabis from an actual pharmacy.
A patient with multiple sclerosis, Ludmyla Monastyrska, and a veteran, Yaroslav Yurchuk, who lost his leg on the Pokrovsk front and suffers from brutal phantom pain, just walked into a local clinic and got their electronic prescriptions. This is the first time in the country's history this has happened legally.
But don't pop the champagne just yet. While this is a massive win, our state machine made sure the process is as painful as possible. According to Gennadiy Shabas, head of the UAMC, it is currently much easier to get heavy prescription opioids in Ukraine than medical weed.
The government treats the distribution of these medicines like they are handling enriched uranium. For a pharmacy to legally dispense it, the shop must be at least 120 square meters and own a specialized chromatograph machine that costs upwards of €40,000. Because of these absurd requirements, there are only about 50 qualifying pharmacies in the entire country. If a patient lives in a small town, they are out of luck.
On the bright side, the medicine itself is mixed individually for each patient right on the spot, taking about 15 minutes. The cost is surprisingly reasonable, sitting at around 1,000 UAH ($25) for a starting 10-day supply. Over six million Ukrainians, including veterans with PTSD, are currently waiting for this treatment to become actually accessible.
Just remember that recreational use remains strictly illegal, so nobody should expect to see coffee shops opening up on Khreshchatyk anytime soon.
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