Mothers are the reason Peru just expanded the laws to legalize medical cannabis

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It’s a problem around the world: governments continue to approve expensive cannabis-based pharmaceutical products for medicinal purposes, while growing the plant remains illegal for patients (and their families) to grow at home. Fortunately, Peru recently addressed this problem by passing a law in July that extends the rights of cannabis patients. Now registered patients and their legal representatives (or associations they have founded) can expand and refine their own drug supply.

But as Somos Magazine journalist Gabriela Machuca Castillo points out, the country might never have gotten to this point without groups of determined mothers.

This has been the case all over the world. Parents of critically ill children have been the driving force behind expanding access to medical marijuana in the United States, England and beyond. Maternal wisdom – especially when it comes to treatments for children with epilepsy, multiple sclerosis, and other conditions – is difficult to argue for policy makers.

And that was certainly the case in Peru. At the head of the South American country is Buscando Esperanza (which translates as “In search of hope”). In 2017, months before Peruvian politicians passed the first medical marijuana laws, police raided property owned by a member of Buscando Esperanza. They confiscated seven plants and a hydroponic system that the group of mothers used to make medicines for their children – all of whom suffered from health problems that can be treated with cannabis.

But the raid backfired. Much like the 1996 raid on the drugstore of activist Dennis Peron’s San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club that preceded the adoption of Proposition 215, images of law enforcement agencies raiding the home of a family of a sick child stirred public opinion medical cannabis. Later that year, Peruvian politicians passed the country’s first medical marijuana laws.

The legislation was far from sufficient the first time. And mom activists like Buscando Esperanza’s were not done with the fight. They took to the streets regularly and shared personal details about their family members’ needs for medicinal cannabis. Facebook posts showed that children live with serious illnesses and that parents, who spend much of their lives treating them, have helped put a human face to the urgency of access to medical cannabis.

Fortunately, cannabis reforms were passed by the Peruvian Congress in July. In addition to the approval of cultivation and extraction by patient associations, the new law also guarantees that patients will have access to cannabis regardless of their financial means. That’s huge. One lawmaker commented during the law’s approval process that the new law would benefit nearly 50,000 Peruvians.

Long gone are the days when such a proposal was considered politically risky. The law was passed with zero votes against in the country’s Congress: 100 members of Congress voted in favor and only four voted against the vote. Apparently, the country’s politicians have begun to listen to their mothers.