PATY DO ALFERES – Medical marijuana is gaining steam in Brazil thanks to lower-court rulings giving the go-ahead for large-scale cannabis plantations.

One of the largest of these plantations – a 600,000-square-meter (148-acre) area in Paty do Alferes, a municipality located two hours from Rio de Janeiro – produces cannabis-derived oils for more than 3,000 patients with illnesses that include epilepsy, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and autism.

That estate, which produces some 2,000 bottles of cannabis oil per month, is the fruit of a long, complicated effort undertaken by the Medical Cannabis Research and Patient Support Association (Apepi), an NGO that in February won a court judgment allowing it to grow cannabis.

“Our work is ‘sub judice’ (pending final judicial resolution). We’ll only have definitive legal protection once the case has been decided by the Supreme Court, and that will take time,” attorney Margarete Brito, Apepi’s co-founder, told Efe.

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