A principal author of the bill seeking to legalize the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes in the recently concluded 19th Congress yesterday urged the 20th Congress to finally pass the measure to alleviate the suffering of patients with debilitating conditions like cancer.
Former Camarines Sur representative and now Gov. Luis Raymund Villafuerte said his pet bill, which the House of Representatives had approved in the previous Congress and refiled by Sen. Robin Padilla, “has a fighting chance of finally becoming a law in the 20th Congress.”
“With Sen. Robin (Padilla) refiling his version of this measure, I have high hopes that the medical cannabis bill has a shot this time around at getting finally ratified by the 20th Congress and then signed into law by President Ferdinand Marcos Jr.,” he said.
The House passed Villafuerte’s House Bill (HB) No. 10439 in 2024 but its Senate counterpart, Committee Report No. 210 on Senate Bill (SB) No. 2573, signed by Padilla and a dozen other senators, died in the plenary after it was not acted upon until the 19th Congress adjourned sine die.
The bill was also a pet measure of the late opposition leader, former Albay Rep. Edcel Lagman, and former president and now Pampanga Rep. Gloria Arroyo.
HB No. 10439, which the House approved by a vote of 177-9 with nine abstentions, seeks to create a Medical Cannabis Office (MDO) to regulate the supply, importation, production and sale of CBD, along with its alternative use as a painkiller or relaxant for qualified patients with debilitating and non-debilitating medical conditions as classified by the Department of Health (DOH).
The proposed “Access to Medical Cannabis Act,” seeks to delist cannabidiol (CBD), the non-addictive strain of cannabis sativa or the marijuana plant, from the list of prohibited dangerous drugs under Republic Act (RA) No. 9165 or the “Comprehensive Dangerous Drugs Act of 2002.”
Villafuerte, the president of National Unity Party (NUP), said the enactment of a law legalizing the use of CBD or cannabidiol (cannabis oil) exclusively for medical or therapeutic purposes “will allow Filipinos suffering from cancer and other severe ailments to use the non-addictive strain of the marijuana plant as a legal alternative and a relatively more affordable pain reliever for Filipinos hurting from debilitating medical conditions as listed by the DOH.”
He said such Debilitating medical conditions include cancer, multiple sclerosis, damage to the nervous system, glaucoma, positive status for human immunodeficiency virus (HIV), acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS), post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), rheumatoid arthritis and other ailments identified by the DOH.
The former lawmaker said among the therapeutic benefits cited in the top medical journals “are the efficacy of medical cannabis in decreasing chemotherapy-related nausea and vomiting, improving appetite, and reducing patient-reported multiple sclerosis spasticity symptoms.”
Villafuerte expressed the hope that last year’s recognition by a United Nations (UN) commission of the medicinal value of CBD will finally prompt the Senate to approve Padilla’s bill.
He also urged senators to “give weight to the fact that medical cannabis has been legalized already in 60 countries, and that its medicinal value has been affirmed in medical journals of various prominent global institutions.”
Villafuerte explained that he had pushed CBD legalization since the 17th Congress because this oil is non-addictive and is different from tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), another active ingredient of cannabis sativa with “intoxicating or psychoactive qualities that produce the ‘high’ or buzz for those who smoke or eat it.”
“Because CBD has been proven to be non-addictive, it is safe for use by qualified patients as a painkiller or relaxant to alleviate their agonizing conditions like migraines, epilepsy, auto-immune diseases, multiple sclerosis and end-stage cancer,” he said.
Villafuerte’s earlier legislative proposals on CBD oil legalization for medical purposes were passed on third and final reading by the House in the 17th Congress, and approved at the House committee’s technical working group (TWG) level in the 18th Congress.
Congressmen had also approved on third and final reading House Bill (HB) No. 6517 or the Philippine Compassionate Medical Cannabis Act in the 17th Congress, but it did not pass the Senate in both the 17th and 18th Congresses in the absence of counterpart bills.
