Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky on Wednesday called on lawmakers to legalize medical cannabis, saying the treatment could provide relief to those in the country suffering from the “trauma of war.” 

Zelensky made the comments in an address before his country’s parliament. 

“We must finally fairly legalize cannabis-based medicines for all those who need them, with appropriate scientific research and controlled Ukrainian production,” Zelensky said, as quoted by UPI.

“All the world’s best practices, all the most effective policies, all the solutions, no matter how difficult or unusual they may seem to us, must be applied to Ukraine so that Ukrainians, all our citizens, do not have to endure the pain, stress and trauma of war,” he added, according to the news organization. 

Russia invaded and subsequently occupied parts of Ukraine last year, marking a bloody and costly escalation of the hostilities between the two countries. In April, Reuters, citing a “trove of purported U.S. intelligence documents” that had been published online, estimated that as many as “354,000 Russian and Ukrainian soldiers have been killed or injured in the Ukraine war.”

As UPI noted, “Zelensky’s support for medical cannabis legalization also remains consistent as evidenced in 2019, during his presidential campaign, when he said it would be ‘normal’ to allow people to access cannabis ‘droplets.’”

Zelensky’s comments on Wednesday also echo what his cabinet has said recently. 

Earlier this month, Ukraine’s Health Minister Viktor Liashko said in a Facebook post that the government had put forward legislation to legalize medical cannabis treatment. In the post, Liashko invoked the ongoing war with Russia as a reason to make the treatment available.

“We understand the negative consequences of the war on the mental health camp,” Liashko wrote in the Facebook post. “We understand the number of people who will require medical treatment in the last breath.”

“Cannabis drugs are not ‘competitors’ to drugs, and measures to regulate their circulation are completely different. Medical cannabis contains cannabidiol, which has no pronounced psychoactive effect, so it’s not suitable for recreational use,“ Liashko continued. “To that, at the same time, we were prepared by the legislator for the preparation of a new cycle of production of preparations based on cannabis in Ukraine: from the development of that processing to full production.”

In the first month of Russia’s invasion last year, a number of cannabis companies in the United States stepped up to provide financial support to Ukraine. 

MediThrive CEO Misha Breyburg donated proceeds from weed sales to a charity providing aid to Ukrainians. Breyburg also had the MediThrive dispensary in San Francisco’s Mission District painted in the blue and yellow colors of the Ukrainian flag.

“The Russian invasion of Ukraine hits home for the founders of MediThrive. CEO Misha Breyburg and his colleagues are Ukrainian Jewish refugees who immigrated from Odessa, Ukraine to the United States as children in the 1970s,” the company said in a statement at the time. “MediThrive believes that everyone should have access to medicine and quality health care. The Medi in our name tells of our humble beginning as a medical cannabis dispensary that filled the cannabis prescriptions of cancer and AIDS patients. In the 1990s, the dispensary opened its doors to patients under the United State’s Compassionate Care Act. We are the oldest cannabis dispensary and delivery service location in San Francisco. Today, we are more than just a medical and recreational cannabis provider; our roots run deep in our community.”

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The Australian Greens say that parliament has the power to legalize recreational pot in the country as the party prepares its bid for cannabis reform.

According to The Guardian, the Greens––currently the minor party in Australia––have received advice from constitutional lawyer Patrick Keyzer, who contends that parliament could override state laws on the matter.

“The advice suggests that there are three commonwealth heads of power that would enable it to legalise and regulate cannabis use, with the clearest pathway via a part of section 51, which relates to copyrights, patents of inventions and designs, and trademarks,” The Guardian reported.

Under the aforementioned section 51, parliament has the power to “to make laws for the peace, order, and good government of the Commonwealth with respect to: trade and commerce with other countries, and among the States; taxation; but so as not to discriminate between States or parts of States; bounties on the production or export of goods, but so that such bounties shall be uniform throughout the Commonwealth; borrowing money on the public credit of the Commonwealth; postal, telegraphic, telephonic, and other like services; the naval and military defence of the Commonwealth and of the several States, and the control of the forces to execute and maintain the laws of the Commonwealth; lighthouses, lightships, beacons and buoys; astronomical and meteorological observations; quarantine; fisheries in Australian waters beyond territorial limits; census and statistics; currency, coinage, and legal tender; banking, other than State banking; also State banking extending beyond the limits of the State concerned, the incorporation of banks, and the issue of paper money; insurance, other than State insurance; also State insurance extending beyond the limits of the State concerned; weights and measures; bills of exchange and promissory notes; bankruptcy and insolvency” among a litany of other areas.

The Guardian reports that Keyzer’s advice centers around the part of the section pertaining to “copyrights, patents of inventions and designs, and trade marks,” saying that it empowers the commonwealth to “regulate cannabis strains as plant varieties and cause them to be listed in a schedule in respect of which the commonwealth has exclusive regulatory control.”

“We’ve been told to wait for cannabis law reform for too long, even when it’s obvious that the majority of harm caused is by policing and the war on drugs, not the plant,” David Shoebridge, a spokesperson for the Greens, said in a statement on Monday, as quoted by The Guardian.

“Recreational cannabis is enjoyed by millions in Australia and around the world, and pretending otherwise is increasingly ridiculous,” Shoebridge added. “At least 40% of Australians have used cannabis and any law that makes almost half of us criminals needs to go.”

A poll earlier this year found that Australians were split when it comes to the matter of changing the country’s marijuana laws, with 50% saying they are in favor of full cannabis reform.

The pollster, Essential Research, noted that represented a huge increase from 2013, when only about 25% said they favored full reform.

Meanwhile, a study released this summer by the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare found that a higher percentage of people in the country favored smoking weed than using tobacco.

The Greens aren’t the only party pushing for cannabis reform. Earlier this year, Australia’s single-issue Legalize Cannabis Party exceeded expectations in the country’s senate races and came close to gaining a seat.

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Ukraine’s Health Minister Viktor Liashko announced on June 7 in a Facebook post that the government advanced a medical cannabis bill for approval, even as the country is in the thick of war. A draft bill was approved by the Cabinet of Ministers and heads to the Ukraine Parliament for approval.

“We understand the negative consequences of the war on the mental health camp,” Liashko wrote. “We understand the number of people who will require medical treatment in the last breath.”

Kyiv Post reports that a 2021 draft bill was reworked and the government intends to move forward and legalize medical cannabis. “And we understand that there is no time for a check,” he added.

“Cannabis drugs are not ‘competitors’ to drugs, and measures to regulate their circulation are completely different. Medical cannabis contains cannabidiol, which has no pronounced psychoactive effect, so it’s not suitable for recreational use,“ said Liashko.

A bill would strictly control the cultivation, production, and sale of medical cannabis products, as well as authorizations and licenses for the cultivation and scientific research. It would also provide a medical cannabis tracking system in order to provide information for all the stages of products’ circulation.

“To that, at the same time, we were prepared by the legislator for the preparation of a new cycle of production of preparations based on cannabis in Ukraine: from the development of that processing to full production,” Liashko added.

Meanwhile, cannabis companies right here in the U.S. are activating to help Ukraine amid war. Helmand Valley Growers Company (HVGC) was founded by United States Special Operations Veterans (Marine Raiders), and adopts a huge focus on veterans (and civilians) battling PTSD. They provide flower, cartridges, and 100% live resin.

Last April, HVGC launched a Chillum program with proceeds going to World Central Kitchen to help Ukraine, as well as Battle Brothers, a 501c3 charitable organization that empowers veterans, to study how cannabis can help military veterans living with PTSD. That project is wrapping up with a new Ukraine-focused effort to do what they can.

“During this summer, we’re planning to develop Chillums and help benefit an organization called The Mozart Group,” HVGC President and CEO Bryan Buckley tells High Times. “They are in Kyiv right now. It’s my former regimental commander while I was a former Marine Raider. His name is Andrew Millburn. It’s about 100 former special operators from America, UK, and Australia, and they’re training Ukrainians on medical and military tactics.

“This thing is going to rage for a long time,” Buckley adds. “Talking to Colonel Milburn, who is retired, he said that the Russians are ‘worse than ISIS’.”

With PTSD affecting Ukrainians of all types, the time is now to enact medical cannabis legislation.

On June 7, Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers approved a draft bill “on regulating the circulation of cannabis plants for medical, industrial purposes, scientific and scientific-technical activities to create the conditions for expanding the access of patients to the necessary treatment of cancer and post-traumatic stress disorder resulting from war.”

The bill would expand medical services to include medical cannabis and promote research on the plant. It would expand patient access to cannabis with over 50 qualifying conditions, including post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), HIV, cancer, neurological diseases, and neuropathic pain. Epilepsy, glaucoma, psoriasis, Parkinson’s disease, and multiple sclerosis are also on the list.

Medical cannabis will be available via prescriptions or electronic prescriptions, but the Health Minister acknowledged how cannabis can’t be regulated the exact same way as pills. He also dismissed some of the myths about CBD.

Liashko seemed to compare people who dismiss medical cannabis as the same as people who dismiss the benefits of yoga that are now widely accepted as proven by science. He kind of has a point.

“Communication campaigns against drug abuse in cannabis have been shown to reject the faces on the basis of yoga and cannabis, which are in illegal practice, with the method of ignoring the value of yoga as a medical science and discrediting the very idea of ​​yoga medicine.”

Under the bill, a central executive body would determine the percentage of THC in cannabis through laboratory tests conducted by enterprises, institutions, and other organizations.

Ukraine Congress member Kira Rudik tweeted that the medical cannabis movement in the country was originally spearheaded by the Holos Party in 2019.

The bill now needs to be approved in the Ukrainian Parliament by at least 226 votes. A medical cannabis draft bill—bill No. 5596—failed to be approved by the Ukrainian Parliament on July 13, 2021, and was sent back for revisions.

Activists of the Patients of Ukraine organization and other organizations rallied outside the Ukrainian Parliament demanding the approval of bill No. 5596 regulating use of medical cannabis in Ukraine in Kyiv on July 13, 2021. The bill was considered in Parliament on that day, but it failed to get the necessary approval from MPs.

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An unknown protester sowed cannabis seeds throughout the rose gardens of New Zealand’s Parliament in Wellington, most likely as an act of defiance. The guerilla grower may have splintered off a violent anti-vaxxer occupation that took place weeks earlier.

New Zealand Herald reports that half a dozen of the weed plants were promptly destroyed by Parliament grounds staff as they continue to sift through the rubble of the occupation.

According to New Zealand’s 1 News, an unnamed protester returned to Parliament grounds on Thursday claiming the seeds had been sown during the chaos, alongside a range of other plants that are always there, such as coriander, brassica and marigolds.

Many of the cannabis seeds had been scattered throughout Parliament rose gardens, the protester told 1 News in anonymity, and “many more will likely germinate for years to come.” It is not immediately clear if the protester was involved in or liable for any of the violence that took place weeks prior. 

With a few weeks’ head start, nature takes over and it can spread like a weed. A Parliament groundskeeper agreed that more seeds will inevitably sprout. “There were a few cannabis seedlings,” the groundskeeper said. “A lot of seeds had been scattered around, amongst other things left from the protesters.”

Parliament grounds Speaker Trevor Mallard told 1 News, “I’ve asked for the weed to be weeded.”

This comes after a 23-day occupation of New Zealand’s Parliament grounds and surrounding streets by protesters against the country’s vaccine mandate—eerily similar to the insurrection at the United States Capitol building in Washington, D.C. The copycat insurrectionists torched areas, threw flammable objects, and in some cases, tried to ram into law enforcement with cars.

The occupation began as a “convoy” that kicked off in Wellington on February 8, and was very similar to the Canadian convoy that took place in Ottawa in Canada. The convoy first camped in front of the Parliament building before things went South and they began to blockade most streets.

According to John Pratt from Victoria University of Wellington, the police did nothing to prevent the occupation from taking place, nor did they enforce a complaint from nearby Victoria University against the protestors. So by the stretches of imagination, the weed scattered throughout Parliament grounds could have been prevented as well if they had chosen to do so. Protesters attempted to burn the Law School building at the university.

Opposition National Party leader Christopher Luxon repeatedly extends sympathy for the protesters. Amid the vaccine mandate protesters, other issues are also at play.

Is it Connected to Random Roadside Drug Testing?

Random roadside drug testing will kick off in New Zealand in 2023 as part of an effort to deter drug-impaired driving, after the Land Transport (Drug Driving) Amendment legislation on March 29. The Māori Party is the only party to have voted against the bill.

“In July 2020 the Government introduced legislation that would introduce a compulsory random roadside drug testing scheme in New Zealand,” the Ministry of Transport wrote in an announcement. “Under the proposed drug driving regime, oral fluid tests will detect the most prevalent impairing illicit and prescription drugs at the roadside. The proposed change allows police to test drivers for the presence of drugs anywhere, any time, just as they can for alcohol.”

There are blood limits for 25 different street drugs, including THC. The problem with that is the fact that THC lingers in the bloodstream for much longer than most street drugs.

Drivers who test positive for drugs will be fined and stopped from driving for a minimum of 12 hours. On a positive note, drivers will not be criminally charged if they are simply high and not in possession of controlled substances.

A flurry of medical organizations in New Zealand slammed the roadside drug testing plan. The framework for oral fluid and blood tests is “not supported by reliable scientific evidence”, the Royal NZ College of General Practitioners said. The Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists said “the presence of drugs … does not directly relate to impairment.” The NZ Medical Association also said that the science is “not quite sufficiently adequate.”

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Even the most die-hard “medical only” German voices within the cannabis industry have been posting the news all over their social media including LinkedIn for the past week, even before the news was official. But as of Wednesday, that has changed, officially. The new so-called “Traffic Light Coalition” will indeed be legalizing recreational use cannabis with a bill to do so introduced in the German Bundestag next year.

For those who have fought for the same, in the trenches, for years if not decades, it is an exciting moment. It is also electrifying the industry, which now has over 100 medical cannabis specialty distribution licenses, a growing patient base (estimated 100,000 at this point), and a topic that just will not quit. Particularly as the Swiss (in part, a German language country) are doing the same thing. This is particularly momentous given the timing. Germany might even beat Luxembourg into the recreational discussion within the European Union.

That said, no matter how exciting, the devil, as always, is in the details. How much, what exactly, and how it will be implemented is all still up in the air. Cannabis is still not actually decriminalized, and there are all sorts of strange pieces of case law and to be changed statutes still very much in the room.

What Is Known So Far

The reason this is such a big deal is that the announcement comes as the three parties who won the most votes in the federal election in September have sealed the deal to work together with a common plank that includes cannabis reform (along with phasing out coal by 2030 while also having at least 15 million electric cars on the road). After that, it is just a matter of crafting the legislation and introducing it into the German parliament. Unlike the U.S., where there have been multiple, unsuccessful attempts to pass a federal legalization bill, this one is almost guaranteed to pass. The Germans are funny like that.

Here is what is actually official. In a statement released by the SDP, Greens and FDP, this is what the coalition plans to do. “We are introducing the controlled supply of cannabis to adults for consumption in licensed stores. This controls the quality [of marijuana], prevents the transfer of contaminated substances and guarantees the protection of minors.”

The government will review the experiment in four years to determine the impact (including economically and socially). That said, there is little chance such a forward step would be rolled back.

Issues And Problems Along the Way

It is not like this is going to be smooth sailing. There are a few major issues to address. Chief among those is how to amend the country’s federal narcotics law. Cannabis, including CBD, is considered a narcotic. This is already out of step with EU policy on the same (with a pending lawsuit to change that). Regardless, add THC to the mix, and there is going to be some fancy footwork and legal eagling to make the change happen not only in the new legislation, but that which governs and regulates the medical variety.

German Impact

There is little doubt that Germany’s move to recreational cannabis will forward the debate across Europe—and potentially in the same timeframe as it has impacted the medical conversation. Just four years ago, the concept of using medical cannabis even for pain relief was a very strange, often socially unacceptable topic. Today, there are about 100,000 German patients.

The Germans may not have arrived yet, but they are certainly on the way.

This is absolutely a Colorado if not Canadian tipping point. However, it may also be one that is not just about Germany, or even Europe, but an international and global one.

Coming as it is on the international news of Mexico implementing recreational reform by year’s end and Italians potentially having the ability to vote on legalizing personal possession and home grow as of next spring, not to mention both Luxembourg and Switzerland definitely moving ahead with their own recreational markets, it is clear that full and final cannabis reform is now a mainstream topic and goal on a federal level of many countries.

This will also, undoubtedly spur on the debate in the U.S. If Germany can do this, less than four years after federal legalization of its medical market, what is the U.S. waiting for? Or for that matter China? In the latter case, with a corporate real estate market melting down, perhaps finally, and on a global scale, cannabis will be considered a great if not green and global investment.

In the meantime, the last days of Prohibition have clearly arrived and on a global level.

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