Resumen

Cannabis is the psychoactive substance under international control used in the world. In 2013, about 181.8 million of people from 15 to 64 years worldwide have used cannabis without medical purpose (estimate of uncertainty of 128.5 to 232.1 million) (UNODC, 2015). There is a growing demand and concern for the treatment of cannabis use disorders and associated health conditions in high-and middle-income countries; Moreover, in international political dialogues, there was increased attention to public health impacts of the use of cannabis and related disorders. The combination of all these circumstances led to the decision to publish this update report on the effects on health and social of the medicinal use of cannabis. In 1995, the World Health Organization (who) convened a meeting of experts in cannabis, which resulted in the preparation of a report on the use of cannabis for health (who, 1997). Since then, significant research has been conducted on the health effects of cannabis use. Who (through your Department of Mental Health and substance abuse) organized a meeting of experts, from 21 to 23 April 2015, to examine and summarize the available knowledge about the effects of the medicinal use of cannabis in health and psychosocial functioning. The meeting was organized by the Ministry of health and Social Affairs of Sweden. The purpose was to examine the latest evidence on the impact of the medicinal use of cannabis on health--defined by the who as a State of complete physical, mental and social well-being, and not merely the absence of disease or enfermidade1. The meeting also dealt with the answers from the disorders health systems by use of cannabis and other conditions caused by the medicinal use of cannabis or associated with such use. The Group has identified priorities for international research in these areas. The medicinal use of cannabis and canabinoides was not discussed at the meeting. This publication is based on contributions from a broad group of experts and researchers from different parts of the world. The goal is to present the current knowledge on the impact on health of the medicinal use of cannabis. In the process of finalization of the current report, took into account the update on cannabis and cannabis resin (Madras, 2015) commissioned by the Secretariat of the Technical Committee of chemical dependency and who presented at the thirty-seventh meeting of this Committee Technician in November 2015 (who, 2015).

Official Portuguese version of original work in English: The health and social effects of cannabis nonmedical use © World Health Organization, 2016. ISBN: 978 92 4 151024 0 some rights reserved. This work is released under Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 3.0 IGO (CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 IGO; https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/3.0/igo/).