5 September 2023 11:10 pm Views - 1331
A gazette notification to legalise the cultivation of cannabis as a medicinal herb will be issued in the near future, State Minister of Indigenous Medicine Sisira Jayakody said today.
He told Parliament that President Ranil Wickremesinghe has made a budget proposal to grant approval to cultivate cannabis as a medicinal herb.
Speaking during the debate on the Ayurveda (Amendment) Bill, the Minister said India has announced that they were planning to ban the export of Ayurvedic herbs as raw materials after 2027 and that this would be a threat to the Indigenous and Ayurveda practices in Sri Lanka.
“India is planning to export medicinal herbs only as medicines. They are going to ban the export of medicinal herbs as raw material. This will put our Indigenous and Ayurveda practices in crisis as we don’t cultivate medicinal herbs as commercial crops,” State Minister Jayakody said. (Ajith Siriwardana and Yohan Perera)