Veterinarians say they’ve been weeded out of Canada’s cannabis policy after assurances that they’d be included in the legalization framework.
Despite Canada allowing both medical and recreational sales of cannabis, no such legal pathway exists for animal medicine — something Dr. Sarah Silcox, founder of the Canadian Association of Veterinary Cannabinoid Medicine (CAVCM,) hopes to change.
“We’ve been at this for six years now, engaging in the best way we know how,” she told the National Post.
“We held dogs on Parliament Hill back in 2019, we made several trips to talk to MPs and Senators, we had a petition in the House of Commons that received sufficient signatures to warrant a response — but then the House rose before the petition closed, and it just vanished.”
With its use becoming both socially and legally acceptable in many societies, cannabis is seeing increasing interest among veterinarians for use in everything from anxiety to managing pain.
Recent studies exploring the effectiveness of using non-psychoactive cannabidiol (CBD) injections to manage osteoarthritis pain in dogs found good results with minimal side effects.
Results of a joint Canadian-Israeli study released in August found promising results among six dogs unresponsive to conventional treatments that showed significant drops in pain level and an increase in activity.
Other studies suggest promise in using cannabis for treating epilepsy in dogs
SOURCE: National Post