Stat of the week is … Portugal Exports 99.85% of its Medical Cannabis, Selling only 17 Kg on the Local Market
Seems a bit crazy.. but we are talking about cannabis so what else would we expect?
In 2023, Portugal exported 11 tons of medical cannabis, but only 17 kilograms were sold on the internal market. Even though medical cannabis is legal in Portugal, local patients still have limited access to it and are often forced to seek medicines on the black market.
Portugal was the first country in the world to decriminalize the recreational use of all drugs in 2001. The next step was the legalization of medical cannabis in 2018 and the introduction of regulations in 2019 that were intended to enable the use of cannabis-based products for medicinal purposes. Unfortunately, despite these advances, access to medical cannabis remains highly limited.
The current situation of the medical cannabis market
In 2023, only one product containing cannabis was available on the Portuguese market – dried flower from the Canadian company Tilray with 18% THC content. The price of one package (15 g) was 150 euros, which is much higher than the black market prices. Moreover, the flowers can only be prescribed to patients suffering from one of seven specific diseases for which all other “pharmacological” options have failed. Unfortunately, the largest domestic pharmaceutical companies do not stock this product, and in 2023 only a little over a thousand packages were sold, which equals 17 kilograms.
Meanwhile, in the first half of 2023, the country has already exported over 5.4 tons of this product, and the main recipients are Germany, Poland and Australia. Despite impressive export numbers, the local market is still in its infancy in terms of cannabis sales in pharmacies.
In just a few months of 2023, Portugal delivered 1,678 kg to Germany, 1,589 kg to Poland, and 955 kg to Australia of medical cannabis- indicates the latest report published by the Portuguese Pharmaceutical Institute Infarmed. The latest data covers the first half of 2023.
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Portugal Exports 99.85% of its Medical Cannabis, Selling only 17 Kg on the Local Market
