On 2 December 2020 the UN Commission on Narcotic Drugs (CND)
voted to recognize, for the first time in history, the medical
value of cannabis.
The long-awaited decision comes nearly 60 years after cannabis
was first included in the strictest category of the 1961 United
Nations Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs (hereinafter also
referred to as “Convention”).
Through this historical vote the drugs in Schedule IV of the
Convention concerning dangerous substances with high potential
toxicity and low, or even no therapeutic power – a subset of
those already in Schedule I – no longer include cannabis.
It is worth to briefly clarify that Article 1 (j) of the
aforementioned Convention provides that the
term psychotropic drug means any of the
substances included in Schedules I and II, whether natural or
synthetic.
