Cannabis-based medicines continues to be in short supply in Italy. People who seek such treatment, either because of chronic pain or a serious disease, have extreme difficulty finding natural medicine, even though they hold a doctor's prescription for it.

As the medicinal value of cannabis-based treatments is well established, they should be available in all neighborhood and hospital pharmacies.

Back to square one

Liberties member the Italian Coalition for Civil Liberties and Rights (CILD), which includes more than 30 organizations, is determined to launch initiatives to protect people who are currently denied access to such medicines.

Federfarma, the national federation that represents over 16,000 private pharmacies affiliated with the National Health Service, has said that it considers the situation critical.

Gennaro Santoro, a lawyer with CILD, agrees, saying that the situation slightly improved when some supplies of cannabis-based medicines arrived from the Netherlands, but that those supplies quickly ran out. As a consequence, Italy is back at square one.

With the availability of cannabis-based medicines continuing to be insufficient across Italy, CILD has decided to initiate new legal actions to safeguard the rights of thousands of patients.

Bad news from La Spezia

Reports from La Spezia, a port city in northern Italy, show that the stocks there of medical cannabis are depleted, and it is not likely that new supplies will arrive soon. This is bad news for the over 100 patients in the city that use medical cannabis to control chronic pain or the side effects of chemotherapy.

The pharmacy of the Local Health Authority is rationing the remaining supply, but can not provide certainty about future availability. Meanwhile, many patients are distressed to know that they might suffer again.

Swiss Lidl stores start selling legal marijuana

The German supermarket chain Lidl has given the green light to the sale of soft legal marijuana in its Swiss stores. Lidl explains that the plants are grown in semi-automated greenhouses and ad hoc internal structures.

Swiss law provides that the active substance in cannabis-based products can amount to up to 1 percent. In Italy, the limit is 0.6 percent.

However, Arianna Capri, the vice-president of Federfarma Verona, point out that the products that are available in the stores have no proven therapeutic effect.

"It is our duty to provide clarity about cannabis-based formulations with therapeutic effects and their distribution. Our aim is to avoid creating unrealistic expectations or give rise to doubts for the patients that really need medical care and their families," Capri said.

Federfarma: 'The new stores don't sell medicine'

Capri deems it necessary to make a point on the concentration of active substances in cannabis, THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) and CBD (cannabidiol). The concentration of these substances has a therapeutic effect only in the medicinal products that are specifically prepared for each patient.

But the THC concentration of the cannabis-based products that are available in stores in Italy - stores that cannot sell any medicinal products - must be lower than 0.6 percent, as provided for by law. This differs from the cannabis-based medicinal products that are prepared in pharmacies, which have a THC concentration of between 7 and 22 percent and a cannabidiol concentration up to 10 percent.

Moreover, the relationship between THC and CBD can vary depending on the medicinal product. This allows doctors to instruct the pharmacists who prepare the medicines to tailor them according to the needs of individual patients.