Health Minister Rajitha Senaratne said cannabis (ganja) cultivation would be allowed only for medicinal purposes.He said cannabis will also be allowed for Ayurvedic medicine exports.
The Health Minister said the foreign market has a major demand for ganja since it is used as an ingredient for medicine production.
“We are to carry out the cultivation under strict control of the Sri Lanka Army, and provide ganja for foreign and local medicine production market,” the minister said.
He said ganja is not harmful if it is used following correct methods.
Minister Senaratne was addressing the official Ayurveda product launch 2017 of Sethsuwa Pranajeewa at the BMICH yesterday.
The Health Minister said global trend of medicinal products is going back to indigenous and alternative medicinal treatments and that the global market of herbal extracts is worth over $54 billion.
“WHO has granted Sri Lanka 50,000 US dollars to hold an international conference on complementary and alternative medicine in Sri Lanka in November,” the minister said.
The Ayurveda Medical Council will be named the Sri Lanka Medical Council, the minister said.
“We have taken steps to translate Ayurveda and indigenous medicinal recipes on Ola leaves into Sinhala for the younger generation to study them,” the minister said.
