Medical cannabis in Argentina

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to examine the rise of therapeutic cannabis use in Argentina. The starting point is the recently implemented cannabis law 27350; it created a new legal framework to carry out scientific research and to import cannabis products—only for epilepsy patients. It made visible new collective actors and forms of producing and circulating knowledge. Through documentary work and personal interviews, I analyze a) both the legalization and the legitimation process of medical cannabis, b) the importance of activist and of expert advocacy and knowledge production, and c) the social and intellectual interactions between experts and lay activists. Argentinian patients’ associations sought to legitimize medical cannabis by pressuring scientists, politicians, and doctors to build new research agendas, to consider new legislation, and to devise new administrative resources. The grassroots cannabis activists—like bottom-up reform groups in other areas—drew upon their own knowledge and experiences to mobilize change; such changes required marshaling different types of local and popular knowledge related to local cannabis strains, highlighting personal testimonies of suffering, drawing upon anecdotal evidence about cannabis’s clinical efficacy, and utilizing lay knowledge to associate, for example, specific local plant strains with particular therapeutic effects.