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 by way of specialist pharmacies.
Critics argue that this technique permits extraordinary shoppers to acquire the plant-based drugs too simply, even when it does bypass the black market and generate tax income for the state.
Equally, well being insurers should not burdened with overlaying the price of hashish for sufferers with severe diseases who require common therapy.
Nonetheless, the GKV-Spitzenverband, the central affiliation representing Germany’s statutory well being and nursing care insurance coverage funds, has welcomed the newly proposed adjustments to telemedicine guidelines.
In its assertion on the deliberate modification to the Medical Hashish Act, it supported the proposals however criticised hashish in flower type as a product with out formal pharmaceutical approval.
‘Hashish makes you unwell’
The well being insurers argue that hashish use has elevated, and that extended consumption, particularly, is linked to the onset of significant diseases.
Anxiousness issues, despair, schizophrenia, visible and speech impairments, and tachycardia are among the many attainable results on physique and thoughts, prompting concern over rising prices for the well being system.
Because the GKV-SV instructed Pharmazeutische Zeitung: “The health-related follow-up prices of those attainable penalties of long-term hashish use are largely borne by the statutory medical health insurance system.”
They stress that even with hashish, prescriptions ought to observe the precept of ‘as a lot as obligatory, as little as attainable.’
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 strategy 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 should not authorised beneath pharmaceutical legislation. Their efficacy and security, subsequently, can’t be assured resulting from a scarcity of formal testing.
The GKV-SV concludes there is no such thing as a medical necessity for hashish in dried flower type, that means the present provide preparations and reimbursement obligations must be reconsidered. From its perspective, dried flowers ought to not be coated by statutory medical health 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 adjustments would make it tougher for sufferers to take advantage of frequent adjustments of prescribing physician and would encourage common evaluations of therapy effectiveness.
Regardless of shifting world attitudes in the direction of hashish and a rising physique of scientific analysis, the GKV-SV stays sceptical, conservative and demanding of cannabis-based medicines.
Extra remedies linked to hashish use
Extra proof in opposition to hashish use was offered in July by the Kaufmännische Krankenkasse (KKH). It estimated that round 250,500 individuals in Germany acquired medical therapy for psychological and behavioural issues linked to hashish use in 2024.
Since partial legalisation, such diagnoses have reached their highest degree 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, beneath present situations, most shoppers nonetheless lack entry to legally produced hashish and are subsequently probably utilizing untested black-market merchandise.
