The four year-trial was authorized on 18 December by the parliament in Copenhagen, in a move which also licensed some companies to grow and produce the drug in the Scandinavian country.

In the EU, only Austria, the Czech Republic, Finland, Germany, Italy, Portugal, Poland and Spain currently authorize marijuana’s use as a medicine – while a few other states are planning legislation on the issue.

According to Vincenzo Costigliola, president of the European Medical Association, which represents doctors, there is a “growing focus” on fighting pain, despite the cloudy legal status of cannabis.

The issues around medical cannabis often get lumped together with the debate around the drug’s recreational use, which is illegal in all member states – although small amounts for personal use are decriminalized in member states such as the Netherlands, Austria, Italy, and Luxembourg.

Currently in the EU, a number of legal, socially-accepted medicines – especially pain relief drugs – are actually chemically-related to illegal substances like opium or cocaine.

This status is pointed out by the EU’s European Medicines Agency (EMA), which states that since cannabis produces “psychoactive activity”, its use as medicine should observe member states’ legal provisions, including the “control of the use of narcotic and psychotropic substances”.

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