CBCP backs 'compassionate' use of marijuana for terminally-ill

While stressing the "grave damage" it can cause when used haplessly, the Catholic Bishops Conference of the Philippines (CBCP) backed the "compassionate" use of narcotics to help the terminally ill.

 

"The highest teaching authority of the Church allows for the palliative and compassionate use of narcotics, particularly in the case of the terminally ill, " CBCP president and Lingayen-Dagupan Archbishop Socrates Villegas wrote in a Pastoral Guidance piece released online on Monday. 

 

However, he insisted that the use of such would still be "morally irresponsible" on medical cases where an alternative treatment or intervention may be used.

 

The CBCP statement called on health care workers, physicians in particular, to exercise the "principle of proportionality and to determine carefully whether there is due proportion between the risks involved in the use of narcotic and psychotropic substances and the benefits anticipated."

 

A bill for the use of marijuana for medical purposes is currently at the committee level in the House of Representatives.

 

House Bill 4477, otherwise known as the proposed Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Act, seeks to legalize and regulate the medical use of cannabis, more commonly known as marijuana, to aid the treatment of patients with debilitating medical conditions.

 

In an effort to drum up support for this, the bill's primary author, Isabela Rep. Rodolfo Albano III, even went out of his way to admit using marijuana in his younger years, while insisting that the legislation does not espouse the use of this for recreation, "even to the youth." —Rose Ann Dioquino/ALG, GMA News