Romania requires prescriptions and licences for cannabis medicines

Romania’s controlled-substances law took effect in July 2006 with cannabis, resin, extracts and tinctures listed among substances recognised as having medical interest.^[1][2] Patients could receive controlled substances through prescribed pharmaceutical preparations, while growers and businesses needed authorisation.^[1][2]

Medicine within strict controls

The law separated substances barred for lack of recognised medical interest from those permitted under strict supervision.^[1] Cannabis and its preparations appeared in the second group.^[1] That classification placed their medical handling within a system of licences, prescriptions and official controls.^[1]

The prescription rule was specific about what a patient could receive.^[1] Doctors could prescribe the listed plants and substances only as pharmaceutical preparations made industrially or in a pharmacy.^[1] Patients receiving medicines from the stricter medical schedule could hold the prescribed quantity on the basis of their prescription.^[1]

That gave pharmacies and medical prescribers defined roles.^[1] Supplying the controlled medicines without a prescription was prohibited except for preparations covered by the law’s exemptions and implementing rules.^[1]

Growing required permission

The same law covered the supply chain.^[1] Growing controlled plants without permission was forbidden.^[1] Authorised cultivation could serve technical, medical or scientific purposes, with the agriculture authorities responsible for cultivation permissions.^[1] Commercial acquisition, distribution and use also came under authorisation and health-ministry supervision.^[1]

For patients, medical recognition therefore depended on a regulated medicine reaching a lawful prescriber and pharmacy.^[1] The statute addressed the product, its source and its dispensing, as well as the patient’s right to hold a prescribed quantity.^[1]

The rules took effect in July 2006

Parliament adopted the law in November 2005, and it was published on 5 December.^[1][2] Its main rules took effect seven months after publication; a separate clause gave the health ministry time to prepare implementing rules.^[1][2]

Patients also had obligations after receiving their medicine.^[1] Unused controlled medicines were subject to destruction procedures, and possession outside the law’s authorisation remained prohibited.^[1] A prescription covered the prescribed quantity; it linked lawful possession to a defined course of treatment.^[1]

Patients remain part of the reform debate

A three-gram proposal introduced in 2023 later sought an explicit exemption from personal-use penalties for medically prescribed cannabis possession.^[3] It also called for a special law on medical cannabis.^[3]

The older prescription controls and the later campaign for access belong to the same story in Romania: medical use was tied to authorised production, pharmaceutical preparation and a prescription.^[1]