Cannabis Market in Brazil – Prospects for the year of 2020
Cannabis Market in Brazil – Prospects for the year of 2020
Significant changes are expected this year regarding Cannabis-related products in Brazil. For the first time in the country, companies will be allowed to import, manufacture and sell Cannabis medical products that do not have all clinical trials concluded yet. This new framework – Anvisa’s Ordinance 327/2019 – represents a key change in the standards adopted until now, in which health authorities required prior guaranties of effectiveness, safety, and quality before allowing registration and sale.
This framework to be implemented on March 10 2020, is expected to increase investments in the country, enhance access to patients and reduce paper-work procedures. Even without meeting with the requirements of the patients, doctors and companies (which anticipated a full-regulation of the productive chain) the new rule represents an improvement in comparison with the current Cannabis framework, which only enables individuals to import products from other countries or buy medicines with all trials results approved.
More advances towards the opening of the market are still expected. Medical and industrial Cannabis shall remain in the Brazilian agenda in 2020 as some important decisions are scheduled to be approved during the year. In March, the United Nations will discuss an update in the Controlled Substances Act, which may lead to adjustments in the labeling of Cannabis, CBD and THC in Brazil. Before the mid-term recess, the House of Representatives is also expected to approve a Bill allowing the cultivation of Cannabis for medical purposes.
The Judiciary may also contribute to this agenda as a dozen actions related both with medical and industrial Cannabis are waiting for a rule. Some of these actions are under the Superior Court jurisdiction and may lay binding guidelines for all future cases and for the Administration. In December of 2019, a company received for the first-time judicial authorization to grow and commercialize for industrial purposes Cannabis strains containing less than 0.3% of THC in Brazil.
Brazil has given the first steps to introduce itself as an important consumer market in the Cannabis industry. In order for the country to remain attractive in the global scene is essential to overturning some barriers and limitations still left. Allowing the whole production chain to take place in the country and developing the industrial use shall not be an option for the next years, but a requirement. Investors and other stakeholders, along with patients, doctors and NGO’s will be crucial in this process to engage and advocate before the decision-makers for the market openness.
Author: Bruna da Cunha Costa Cardoso