ADVOCATES of marijuana or medical cannabis’ use should never lose hope as its legalization will happen soon.
It has been 10 years since advocates and supporters of turning the plant into medicine, have been pushing at the Senate and House of Representatives the legalization of its use. Now, the bills filed are with the technical working group “for refinements.”.
Dr. Donnabelle T. Cunanan, a pioneer of Cannahopefuls, Inc., an advocacy group, told the Media Health Forum of Bauertek Corporation last Monday, that she is hoping that one day soon, Filipinos in general will realize the benefits of medical cannabis and users will no longer be treated as drug addicts, as they are today.
Cunanan herself, has a daughter with special needs believes that allowing the use of medical cannabis as medicine, can cure the girl.
Forum guest, former child actor BJ “Tolits” Forbes, also has a daughter, who often suffers from seizures and the reason, for his joining the advocacy group of Cunanan.
Bauertek Corporation is the country’s premier international standard toll manufacturing company. More than 60 countries allow the use of medical cannabis while the Philippines stands to earn P40-billion in yearly taxes when the use of the plant is legalized.
Based on latest survey of Bauertek Corporation, 63 percent of Filipinos support the legalization of medical cannabis.
The company’s general manager, a scientist and an inventor, Dr. Richard Nixon Gomez, said that legalization of medical cannabis may no longer take long. “Ilang hakbang na lang po at matitikman na natin ang medical cannabis (as medicine) in the Philippines po,” Gomez announced in the forum.
He said a more intense media campaign is necessary. “Nasa last leg na po tayo ng pakikipaglaban,”Gomez added.
Meanwhile, Forbes said his reason for joining the advocacy group is his 3-year-old daughter who is suffering from stroke and cerebral palsy seizures, since she was one-year-old. He claimed to have used “synthetic medicine but the seizure was still there.”
Forbes recalled that his daughter fell into a coma for a day in January this year and since then, seizures have been frequent. He lamented that medical cannabis has been proven to cure various illnesses including seizures yet the Philippines seems to ignore this reality while other countries are already into it.
Despite the claim of other groups that the Philippines has no capability of producing medicines from medical cannabis, Gomez declared the opposite. The country is more than ready and Bauertek has cultivation plant in partnership with the government, he explained.
Cunanan on the other hand, was grateful to Gomez for spearheading the information campaign on the benefits of medical cannabis and more people are now enlightened. Cannahopefuls is optimistic that in the future, Filipinos will be living in a happy community, and open to use medical cannabis as medicine without fear of being arrested or treated as addict.
Broadcaster Edwin Jose Eusebio is the weekly forum’s moderator.
