Official : Cannabis Can Be Good For You

I guess the UK is too high on footy at the moment to have noticed this significant bit of news, as reported in the Independent:-

Medical cannabis: Doctors 'should be able to prescribe drug', says UK's chief adviser

Medicinal cannabis has proven therapeutic benefits and doctors should be able to prescribe it, the government’s chief medical adviser has said.

In the first part of an evidence review ordered by the home secretary, Sajid Javid, Professor Dame Sally Davies recommended medicinal cannabis should be moved out of schedule one – a group of drugs considered to have no medical purposes that cannot be legally possessed or prescribed.

Dame Sally’s comments, published on Tuesday, are the first time the government has formally acknowledged that cannabis can have health benefits. “There is now … conclusive evidence of the therapeutic benefit of cannabis-based medicinal products for certain medical conditions and reasonable evidence of therapeutic benefit in several other medical conditions,” Dame Sally said.

“I therefore recommend that the whole class of cannabis-based medicinal products be moved out of schedule one.” The change would allow the drugs to “be prescribed under controlled conditions by registered practitioners for medical benefit”, she continued. It would also help improve the evidence base for research into the drugs, she said, “maximising benefits to patients”.

Cannabis can currently be used for research purposes in the UK, but a licence is needed. Dame Sally later said in a statement it was “now clear that from a scientific point of view keeping cannabis-based medicinal products in schedule one is very difficult to defend”.

She added: “Let me be emphatic – this report does not look at recreational cannabis use and does not endorse or condone recreational use. “There is well-established evidence on the potential harm of recreational cannabis use. This is about helping patients, in exceptional circumstances, get access to treatment which could work.”

The home secretary said he would wait for a second part of the review to be completed before considering taking action. Commissioned on Tuesday, the second part of the review will be completed by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD). Mr Javid ordered the review into the scheduling of medicinal cannabis after the issue was thrust to the forefront by the cases of severely epileptic children Alfie Dingley and Billy Caldwell.

Six-year-old Alfie has a genetic condition that causes clusters of seizures of up to 30 a day that has proved unresponsive to almost all medications – but when his mother Hannah Deacon took him to Holland, she discovered three drops of cannabis oil a day dramatically reduced the frequency of his fits. After a months of campaigning by the family, they were granted a licence to treat Alfie with the drug.

Cannabis oil also appeared the only treatment for 12-year-old Billy’s epilepsy, but his mother had the drug confiscated from her at Heathrow. Billy was granted a 20-day emergency licence in June that allowed him to possess the drug, but not before he suffered multiple seizures and was admitted to hospital in a critical condition. Alfie and Billy are among around 20,000 children living with epilepsy who do not respond to medication currently available on the NHS.

The home secretary said: 

“Recent cases involving sick children made it clear to me that we needed to take a fresh look at the scheduling of cannabis-related medicinal products. I would like to thank the chief medical advisor for her initial review and have now asked my independent advisory committee to commence the second stage of this process. When I have received its advice I will consider what next steps need to be taken.”

The home secretary stressed that the government has no plans to legalise cannabis. Recreational use of cannabis will remain illegal and the penalties for unauthorised supply and possession will remain unchanged, the government said.

A number of medical experts welcomed Dame Sally’s findings. Prof David Nutt, the Edmond J Safra chair and head of the Centre for Neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, and founder of DrugScience, responded by saying: “At last!”

Dr Adrian James, a registrar at the Royal College of Psychiatrists, said: 

“We fully support a review that may lead to improved treatment for patients. Cannabis products for medicinal use that have been properly reviewed, and approved by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, can have significant health benefits. While it is for the government and voters to decide if recreational cannabis should be legal, as mental health doctors we can say with absolute certainty that its use carries severe risks for some, including psychosis, depression and anxiety.”

The prime minister’s official spokesman said: 

“Prof Dame Sally Davies examined existing research into therapeutic and medicinal benefits of cannabis-related products. This has led today to the commissioning of the second part of the review that will be completed by the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs. The ACMD will be advising on whether cannabis-related medicinal products should be rescheduled within the next three weeks.”

Genevieve Edwards, from the MS Society, said: 

“This is significant news. We’re delighted that the chief medical officer recognises the evidence that cannabis can effectively manage MS symptoms. Critically, she also rightly acknowledges the dangers of uncontrolled street cannabis. We’re hopeful the government will act on the evidence and growing consensus that the UK must provide safe and legal access to people who could benefit. This could transform the lives of as many as 10,000 people with MS who haven’t been able to find any other treatment for their pain and muscle spasms.”

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Of course other countries have been rather quicker on the uptake as reported last month in the Guardian:- 

All eyes on Canada as first G7 nation prepares to make marijuana legal

From crime to health to business, Canada’s decision to legalize marijuana is a grand progressive experiment that promises to answer a host of questions

When Canopy Growth opened its first cannabis factory in an old chocolate plant near Ottawa four years ago, it did so predicting a bright future. Canada had already legalized medical marijuana, and Canopy predicted full legalization for recreational use to be next.

What the company hadn’t predicted, however, was the sudden flood of foreign visitors. Politicians and police authorities from Jamaica, Germany, Denmark, the Netherlands, Greece and Australia have all come knocking, as well as doctors from New Zealand, Brazil and Chile, along with groups of corporate investors and bankers – so many that Canopy now sometimes splits up the groups according to their birthdays.

“We knew we’d have to give a lot of tours, so we just cut a window into the wall,” said the company spokesman, Jordan Sinclair. “We put windows in all of the doors.”

Canada will be thrust even more directly under the international microscope on Thursday, when a vote in the Senate is expected to ratify Bill C-45, effectively making Canada the first G20 nation to legalize recreational marijuana.

“It’s going to be a bit of a science fiction experience for a while,” said Benedikt Fischer, an expert on substance use at Toronto’s biggest psychiatric hospital. “It’s unique in the world, because it’s happening for the first time in a wealthy country. It’s not like in the US, where there are these state experiments. Most people kind of ignore Uruguay. And so the world is really looking at this.”

Governments, researchers and business leaders around the world all have their own reasons for keeping tabs. Legalization could affect Canada’s crime patterns, health and countless other factors – but exactly how, no one yet knows. Each Canadian province plans to roll out its newly legalized market in a slightly different way, creating about a dozen mini-laboratories within one massive test case.

Even places that have already taken the legalization plunge are hoping Canada will solve some mysteries. After Colorado legalized marijuana five years ago, for example, organized crime reacted by ramping up supplies of “black tar heroin, opiates and harder drugs”, said Dr Larry Wolk, the state’s top public health official.

But Wolk says he is interested to watch that process unfold on a bigger scale in Canada, where the new law is expected to deal a much more significant blow to the black market. Any new mix of illicit drugs in the country could have new effects on public health.

“What’s the impact of marijuana legalization on the opioid crisis?” he asked as an example. “Does it actually act as a substitute so that people can get off opiates for chronic pain? Is there a positive impact? Or is it a negative impact, because as a result there’s more opiates in the black market? Is [pot] a gateway? We don’t really have an answer.”

One delicate balance for Canadian authorities has been guessing at what kind of pricing will be low enough to eradicate illicit sales – yet not so low as to entice new users. Canada’s finance minister, Bill Morneau, recently said the goal is “keeping cannabis out of the hands of kids and out of the black market. That means keeping the taxes low so we can actually get rid of the criminals in the system”.

One sign of success will be if Canada not only discourages underground sales, but converts illicit sellers to the new system, said Tim Boekhout van Solinge, a Dutch criminologist. “What I am mainly following … is who will be the new legal growers, and whether authorities manage to get some of the illegal growers to become legal growers,” he said.

Each country around the world that has debated whether to relax cannabis laws has had its own priority in mind: from generating revenue to discouraging drug cartels. In Canada, the emphasis has been largely on public health. Cannabis will be sold in fairly plain packaging, and usually through government-run boards that already control liquor sales.

“It won’t be like buying Budweiser or branded alcoholic products,” said Steve Rolles of Transform, a UK drug policy thinktank. “It’s going to be more like buying pharmaceuticals from a chemist.” Still, it’s hard to know whether Canada, or any similar western country, will be able to stick to that public-health focus, he said.

“We have concerns … that the lessons from alcohol and tobacco wouldn’t be learned, and we might see overcommercialized markets in which profit-making entities would seek to encourage more use and could encourage risky consumption behaviours,” he said.

So far, Canada has allowed a few major players to dominate the industry, and their influence remains to be seen, said US marijuana industry expert Mark Kleiman. “You don’t want to build up big vested interests that then resist any change,” he said. “If you have commercial industry in cannabis, they’re going to end up writing the laws.”

For epidemiologists, Canada will provide the best-ever data sets on cannabis use. Colorado’s health results have been encouraging, said Wolk. But overall, researchers lack solid data about cannabis use. Some key questions include addiction levels, how cannabis affects mental health, and effects on young people, said Israeli scientist Raphael Mechoulam, often called the “grandfather” of cannabis research.

“About 10% of the users may be addicted – less than alcohol or tobacco,” he said. “Some users, who are already prone to schizophrenia, may get the disease earlier.” He said he is also keeping an eye on whether heavy use by young people may affect their central nervous system.

Another current Canadian health debate is how many people will be light, casual cannabis users, and how many will be heavy users. The government still must decide how to approach products that are “very potent” in THC, the psychoactive compound in cannabis, said Mark Ware, a drug researcher and pain specialist who helped lead Canada’s federal taskforce advising the new legislation. Black-market sellers have produced increasingly strong concentrates, he said.

“Those have not been the subject of studies up until recently, so the question of whether to regulate those, allow them in whatever context, and then be able to study their impacts on health, that would be very important,” he said. But “once they’re out there, it’s very hard to put them back in the box again”.

Canadian police, meanwhile, will grapple with how to crack down on cannabis-impaired driving. That’s already a struggle around the world, regardless of marijuana’s legality, said Rolles. But it’s much more difficult to measure impairment from cannabis than from alcohol, and enforcing a legal limit will prove tricky.

Meanwhile, many investors have already made huge profits from cannabis stocks, and a big question for them is whether the bubble bursts – or the value keeps rising. “They’re waiting to see if the sky’s going to fall,” said Sinclair of Canopy. One of about 100 Canadian legal producers of medical cannabis, the company owns a third of the medical market, began trading on the Toronto stock exchange in 2016 and last month became the only cannabis producer on the New York stock exchange. “[Investors] are waiting to see if all the stigma and all the demonization of this product that’s built up in 90 years of prohibition is true,” Sinclair said. “It’s on us to demonstrate that it’s not.”