The Dutch Medical Cannabis Industry Bands Together To Counter Misinformation

A new website, launched to counter myths in the industry, is being supported by the official Dutch medical supply chain. Why can’t this happen in other places?

Click on the website of the Institut of Medicinale Cannabis and you know you have encountered a “serious” website for the industry. For one thing, its sponsors are some of the best-known cannabis names both globally and more locally, starting with Bedrocan.

The second is that it translates to English smoothly.

All jokes aside, it is clear that the coalition of companies and non-profits behind the site mean business. Namely that they want to dispel myths about what medical cannabis is – and is not. Including the assertion that GMP grade (or pharmaceutical standard) cannabis is NOT like what you are likely to encounter in coffee shops.

It is an interesting campaign, coming as it does on the heels of a federal attempt to finally regulate the coffee shop grows domestically. And certainly, given the importance of Holland as the go-to source of exported cannabis (from Israel to Germany and the UK).

The information on the site is valid and necessary (indeed it is a wonder why the German industry has not done a similar thing yet). 

Regardless, it is a site that has its work cut out for it. 

To the average consumer, including patients, the concept of GMP is an amorphous one. So is the idea of “controlled dosing” – no matter how much that conversation is now absolutely in the room, and in a big way.

Medical or Recreational ish?

The reality is in Holland that this discussion is hard to have. That starts with the fact that the average patient, who, thanks to a reform in Dutch law as of 2017, cannot get their medical cannabis reimbursed via health insurance (as theoretically is possible at least in Germany next door). 

Faced with the prospect of potential mold or contaminants, or constant pain because GMP grade meds are either too expensive or too inconvenient (or both), it is not hard to understand that the average patient will find another safer source or grow themselves.

However, Holland is just a testing ground for what is about to start happening across the rest of Europe as both Luxembourg and Switzerland embark on their own recreational experiments. And as Germany re-examines the success (and many fails) so far of its medical one.

And as a result, this is a conversation if not party that at heart, is actually just getting started.

Be sure to book your tickets for the International Cannabis Business Conference when it returns to Berlin in August, 2021!