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IACM-Bulletin of April 19, 2016

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Crowdfunding for medical cannabis — The charity “Medical Cannabis Declaration (MCD)” kicks off crowdfunding for a world wide information campaign

What if you had a serious disease that prevented you from living a normal life? Conventional medicines may not always work. What if there was an affordable natural medicine that could help, but there was no reliable source of information about this medicine or national laws would not allow you to use it?

This is the situation faced by millions of people around the world, who suffer from severe medical conditions, such as Multiple Sclerosis, epilepsy, chronic pain, severe depression and posttraumatic stress disorder or chronic inflammatory diseases. Only around 10 out of 200 countries in the world have legislation that grants their citizens access to the medical use of cannabis and cannabinoids, active compounds found in the cannabis plants, which can help improve patients’ quality of life considerably. About 20 other countries allow limited access to cannabis-based medicines in certain specific cases. Most recently, in early 2016, the Australian Parliament legalized medical cannabis after a long campaign. However, in well over 150 countries there is still no legal access to cannabis-based medicines.

When it comes to health issues, information is key. Under the motto ‘Say yes to cannabis as medicine’, the charity MCD (www.medical-cannabis-declaration.org) aims to increase awareness of the benefits of medical cannabis by making decades of research freely available. MCD will share the information in the most spoken languages in the world, support networking between patients and doctors, and finally promoting legal access to cannabis as medicine in all countries in the world.

Multi-lingual information campaign “Say yes to cannabis as medicine”!

With the public’s help, MCD will launch a multi-lingual global information campaign on medical cannabis in multiple languages targeted at medical professionals, policy makers and patients, alike. The campaign is supported by leading international medical professionals.

With the budget raised through crowdfunding MCD will create and expand a database on all aspects of cannabis as medicine for patients and medical professionals as well as policy makers and the general public. The database and regular newsletter will be freely made available in several languages. The raised funds will also support the close cooperation with existing platforms on cannabis as medicine as well as link and expand existing medical and patient networks – especially with the International Association for Cannabinoid Medicines (IACM).

The project hopes to create a community of people who can help at the local, national and international levels by providing information on cannabis as medicine. The project will also support existing organisations, who fight for an improvement of legal access to medical cannabis in their countries. MCD will spread the “Medical Cannabis Declaration” and will help interested parties getting in contact with one another and allow them to learn from each other’s work.

MCD hopes other associations and organisations, groups and individuals decide to join this growing campaign to empower patients who stand to benefit from medical cannabis and make medical cannabis world wide legally available.

The “Yes to cannabis as medicine” campaign kicks off on the 19th of April, running until the 18th of June, and can be found at Indiegogo.

Further information including leaflets, video and PowerPoint slides are available at the MCD website.

The campaign will post about its progress on Twitter using the Hashtag #YesToMedicalCannabis

Contact:

Luis Sarmento

“Yes to cannabis as medicine” Campaign coordinator

crowdfunding@medical-cannabis-declaration.org

Social Media:

FaceBook: http://www.facebook.com/medcanndeclaration

Twitter: www.twitter.com/MediCannDecla; MCD will keep you up-to-date using the Hashtag #YesToMedicalCannabis

LinkedIn: www.linkedin.com/company/medical-cannabis-declaration

Video: https://youtu.be/_pSPPGBz1Js

Medical Cannabis Declaration: http://www.medical-cannabis-declaration.org/

Crowdfunding page: www.medical-cannabis-declaration.org/crowdfunding

You can download a map showing legal access to medical cannabis around the world as well as campaign logos in high resolution at http://medical-cannabis-declaration.org/supporting-materials-for-the-campaign-2/

Who is the: The Medical Cannabis Declaration charity

A group of medical professionals and medical cannabis patients decided to push forward in the recognition of medical cannabis as a medical right, by launching the “The Medical Cannabis Declaration (MCD)” charity.

The MCD charity is an online platform founded on 16 February 2013 in Ruethen, Germany, that aims at promoting safe and regular prescription and use of medical cannabis, globally, based on two main pillars:

1. Every patient has the right to access cannabis and cannabinoids for medical treatment supervised by a medical doctor.

2. Every medical doctor has the right to treat his or her patients with cannabinoids and cannabis products.

This declaration is based on the Universal Declaration of Human Rights adopted by the United Nations in 1948, which says that "Everyone has the right to life, liberty and security of person" (Article 3).

MCD believes that patients stand to gain greatly from access to cannabis as a medicinal treatment.

More information: www.medical-cannabis-declaration.org

Background information:

Most important diseases for treatment with medical cannabis

These are mainly five domains:

1) Chronic pain of different types, from neuropathic pain to migraine;

2) Chronic inflammatory diseases, such as Crohn's disease and rheumatism;

3) Psychiatric conditions, such as severe depression and posttraumatic stress disorder;

4) Neurological diseases such as multiple sclerosis, epilepsy and Tourette syndrome;

5) Appetite loss and nausea from different origins;

but also a number of other medical conditions, including asthma and glaucoma.

Hundreds of scientific studies on the medical use of cannabis and cannabinoids are published and more will follow in the next years. The International Association for Cannabinoid Medicines (IACM) allows easy access to these studies via a database and newsletter – MCD and the campaign “Yes to cannabis as medicine” will strongly cooperate with IACM to join forces. IACM welcomes and will support the campaign.