Medical cannabis patients are being discriminated against when they are asked to give up their driving licence, a lobby group is complaining.
ReLeaf, a group of activists calling for a legislative framework regulating marijuana flagged this “discriminatory practice” imposed on patients as “negatively impinging on their rights and freedoms as equal citizens of Malta”.
The group referred to media reports that doctors have a legal obligation to inform the Police Commissioner that a patient was using medicinal cannabis and proceeded with the revocation of the driving licence.
While ReLeaf recognised that the psychoactive nature of THC-based medications could hamper the ability to drive or operate machinery, the group did not understand why these same parameters were not used with other psychotropic medications, such as sleeping pills.
It was not yet clear which consumption levels were deemed dangerous and how long a patient needed to wait following the consumption of medical cannabis to be able to drive safely.
“The revocation of the driving licence is further unexplainable when considering the effects of CBD-based products. CBD, as declared by the World Health Organisation, has no psychoactive properties and does not affect the person’s psychomotor skills.
"Therefore, it is not clear how the law intends to protect society when in reality it has not scientifically quantified the risk of using cannabis and driving.”
While recognising that the safety of the patient and other drivers was of “paramount importance”, ReLeaf felt that the current approach was not aimed at promoting road safety, but was instead another attempt at “demonising cannabis”.
Read: Doctors call for greater access to medical cannabis
This could also scare patients away from seeking medical advice and revert back to the black market for their medicine.
Meanwhile, it reinforced the “false idea that medicinal cannabis patients will use the medicine in an irresponsible manner and create havoc on the streets of Malta”.
ReLeaf called on local authorities to reconsider this “discriminatory and non-evidence based approach” and consult doctors and medicinal cannabis patients for a better understanding of how cannabis acts on the mind and body.