As of the beginning of this month, all general practitioners in Czechia are now authorized to prescribe medical cannabis.

The Czech Republic, also known as Czechia, is a country in Central Europe bordered by Austria to the south, Germany to the west, Poland to the northeast, and Slovakia to the southeast. It has a population of approximately 10.8 million.

The nation’s parliament approved medical cannabis use in 2013, with the first patients gaining access the following year. Czech health insurance providers have covered 90% of the cost of prescribed cannabis since 2020, with a maximum reimbursement of 30 grams of plant material per month.

But up until the beginning of April this year, only around 250 specialist doctors have been authorized to prescribe medical cannabis. According to Statista, there were around 447 medical cannabis patients in Czechia in 2018, which was projected to grow to approximately 8,700 by the end of last year. However, surveys suggest much higher illicit medical use among the country’s citizens – with one attributed to the National Drug Monitoring Center putting the number at around 600,000. How much the lack of authorised prescribers has played in this isn’t clear.

But with this change, the potential pool of prescribers exceeds ~7,800 health professionals.

As well as the expansion of authorised prescribers, another change is patients will be able to issued a three-month supply on a single prescription instead of a single month. Additionally, medical cannabis is now available to palliative patients under 18 and children diagnosed with oncological or hemato-oncological (cancers and disorders of the blood and lymphatic system) conditions.

According to CzechTrade – a government trade promotion agency of Republic – another significant change is doctors are no longer required to report detailed information about every medical cannabis patient to the State Institute for Drug Control (SÚKL) annually.

These changes follow other reforms approved last year allowing individuals to legally cultivate up to three cannabis plants with a THC content exceeding 1% (the THC threshold where hemp is legally considered marijuana), and to possess up to 50 grams of cannabis in public, or 25 grams at home.