PRESS RELEASE - 24th FEBRUARY, 2004

Edition 30.

Cannabis News Items From Around the World

HOWARD AND WATTERS PROCLAIM "ZERO TOLERANCE"

TRANSCRIPT OF THE PRIME MINISTER
THE HON JOHN HOWARD MP
TOUGH ON DRUGS ANNOUNCEMENT,
CARLISLE, PERTH

"Well thank you very much Major Watters, Mr Mayor, Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police Mick Keelty, my two ministerial colleagues Julie Bishop and Chris Ellison, both of whom have a very direct responsibility in this area, other distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen.

This is not the first occasion over the last few years that Brian Watters and I have done this double act. He is chairman of my drug committee and a very wonderful and effective chairman at that. And it won’t be the last time that we will do it because both of us have a very strong personal commitment to the philosophy behind the Tough on Drugs strategy that was introduced by the Government some years ago and has already involved the expenditure of an additional $1 billion or more of Federal Government money in fighting the scourge of drugs in our community. And I’m very happy to welcome here today as well as the Commissioner of the Australian Federal Police and his regional commander in Western Australia, I’m very pleased to welcome officers of the Western Australian police because this is a co-operative effort and there is, I’m pleased to say, at most levels, not all levels and not on all issues, but there is at most levels very close co-operation between the state and federal authorities in fighting the scourge of drugs and the Australian community demands no less of their political leaders and that they co-operate to the maximum extent possible.

Today I’m announcing about $6.6 million to 89 community organisations across Australia as part of the community partnership initiative which is an element of the Tough of the Drugs strategy. The Tough on Drugs strategy is really built on three pillars, law enforcement, rehabilitation, and education. We have an uncompromising approach to people who are involved in drug trafficking, we seek, when people need assistance, and especially when they seek in out, we seek to improve the rehabilitation services that are available and finally and very importantly we seek to educate people against starting drug use in the first place. And in the number of years that I’ve now been Prime Minister and involved in campaigning around Australia in favour of the Tough on Drugs strategy it has never ceased to amaze me how people can question the doctrine of zero tolerance towards commencement of drug taking in the first place or indeed dealing with the problem. There are so many things that we take for granted that you must do, I mean we don’t argue with the proposition and it’s certainly not being argued with here in Western Australia right at the moment because it’s in the news that children should go to school. We don’t sort of have a harm minimisation approach to school attendance, we have a zero tolerance approach to school attendance because we know that it is good for the child in the long run that that child go to school. Well for the life of me I can’t see why we shouldn’t have a completely zero tolerance, uncompromising approach to illicit drug taking. There is no safe level of marijuana use, there is no safe level of the use of any kind of illicit drugs and the clearer that message can be communicated the better and that is why of course the Government, amongst other things, has an uncompromising approach at a federal level towards any resort to heroin injecting rooms, and I’m not suggesting all of the states are considering doing that, some may be, some may be not, but at a Federal Government level we will do everything in our power to prevent states from doing that because we don’t think in the long run it is in the best interests of the community.

Now we are making progress, I’m not declaring victory, it would be insane of anybody to declare victory, but we are making progress. We have seen a significant decline in the number of heroin related deaths. Now whenever I say this in public my critics always seek to explain it away, they say oh they’re not growing their poppies, they’re not doing this, they’re not doing that, it’s all something else, it’s got to do with some other thing and when that all stops it’s going to start again. Well I hope they’re wrong, I can’t prove that they are wrong, what I can point to though is that since 1999 there has been a 67 per cent reduction in heroin related deaths for people aged between 15 and 55 years and you can’t argue with that, it’s got to mean something and even if not all of it is due to our initiatives some of it is due to what we’ve done and I therefore think that alone has been worth the billion dollars to mean, as Brian says, that those people are now spending their Christmas dinners with their parents or their children or their friends is reward enough for the contribution that’s been made.

I think the law enforcement effort in this country has been magnificent and I want to congratulate of course the Australian Federal Police, but also their state counterparts, here in Western Australia and all around the country, and also of course Customs officers and Immigration and Chris Ellison as the Minister responsible for both the Federal Police and the Australian Customs Service, is here today. And the evaluations that we have carried out indicate that three out of five parents in our education campaign thought that that literature that was derided at the time by our critics that we distributed encouraged parents to talk to their children more about drugs and actually gave them in many respects the lead in and the confidence to do so. And we all know as parents that sometimes it’s difficult to broach a subject and you’ve got to creep up on it or surprise them or whatever, but eventually when you directly engage your children on an issue there’s a great sense of relief when you get a response and you think at long last you have made a contact. Now we all go through as parents the challenges of raising our children through the more difficult years, and I can only say that I share all of the sense of concern and compassion that Brian feels and I encounter and we all do, people who through no fault of their own make that awful discovery that one of their children has a drug problem and it has to be most alarming experience I guess that any parent can have.

So this (Tough On Drugs) is a great programme, we are working with the states, we are very importantly, and that is the significance of today’s announcement, we are very importantly working with local organisations and the whole purpose of the community partnerships programme is to fund small organisations to work with people and the local communities in different ways in tackling the problem, by providing young people with support, with information, with alternative strategies to prevent illicit drug use in their communities. Of course a lot of our resources are going into the diversion initiatives that we operate in conjunction with the states, where in effect we say to somebody who’s got a drug problem and for the first time has come into touch with the criminal justice system, we say to this person righto you’ve got a choice, you can either ignore the opportunity of going into a rehabilitation scheme and then run the risk of getting caught up with the criminal justice system and inevitably ending up in jail and your life being ruined, or alternatively you can go into a rehabilitation programme and if that works out okay let’s forget about you having any kind of record or being regarded as in any way caught up with the law and you really (inaudible) it works in different ways and perhaps a bit unevenly about the country (inaudible) success, we have provided a lot more money, the states have provided obviously the infrastructure of the police and the courts and so forth and it’s a good example and when Commonwealth and State Governments have worked together.

So I’m, in announcing these initiatives, I particularly draw attention to three of these projects, one of them is the Kurrawa Community project in Perth, the Young Men’s Christian association in Perth, and the Wesley Mission in Perth, all of which provide programmes under the community partnerships and they’re but a few of the 89 organisations that are going to receive funding.

So ladies and gentlemen, I again want to thank everybody who’s been involved in this effort, I want to thank Brian and his committee, I want to thank the health professionals who've supported so very strongly, I want to thank the police at both at a national level and a state level and all of the Customs services, but very importantly I want to thank people who volunteer at a community level to tackle this problem, I think it is one of Australia's greater challenges and I believe when it comes to great challenges you've got to send strong, sharp, unambiguous messages. There is no such thing as an accepted level of illicit drug use in my view and unless that is communicated very, very strongly to the Australian community, especially to younger people, I don't think we're going to tackle the problem. The approach of zero tolerance might be derided but in the long run it does send a very strong message, and I think the results are there and if we persist with it we'll get further results. We'll never totally eliminate the problem, you can never totally declare victory on something like this. But you can record a very significant improvement and we've had some improvements to date and I think if we continue to persist we can, as the years go by, we can record an even greater improvement and it will be one of the more important legacies that can be given to any community that a particular group of people having responsibility at a certain time were willing to persist with a strategy to tackle the scourge and producing very effective results.

So can I thank you again Mr Mayor for having us (inaudible) senior citizens centre here, thank you for your hospitality and I have great pleasure in launching these programmes and again to thank my friend and colleague Brian Watters for his counsel and advice on this very challenging and social issue."

MARIJUANA EASES HIV-RELATED NERVE PAIN

Pubdate: Thu, 12 Feb 2004
Source: Reuters (Wire)
Copyright: 2004 Reuters Limited

MARIJUANA EASES HIV-RELATED NERVE PAIN

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters Health) - For people with nerve damage that can result from HIV infection, smoking marijuana seems to relieve the pain they experience, according to the results of a small pilot study.

Diffuse nerve pain, or polyneuropathy, is a significant problem for many people with HIV infection. Pre-clinical research findings suggest that cannabis-like compounds may be effective for treating neuropathic pain, Dr. Cheryl Jay of the University of California, San Francisco and colleagues noted this week at the 11th Annual Retrovirus Conference.

In a trial, 16 HIV-infected subjects with neuropathy were given three marijuana cigarettes each day for seven days. The cigarettes were dispensed by the pharmacy at San Francisco General Hospital. All of the patients reported previous experience smoking marijuana but had not done so for 30 days prior to the trial.

Fourteen of the participants were men, and their average age was 43 years. They had had neuropathy for an average of 6 years.

Reductions in pain were assessed using a 0-to-100 visual scale. The aim was to achieve a 30 percent reduction in average daily pain, "which is a pretty typical standard used in pain studies, and is considered a clinically meaningful amount of pain relief," Jay told Reuters Health.

Average pain scores dropped from 47 at the start of the study to 20 at the end of the seven-day period. Twelve of the 16 participants reached the 30-percent goal in reduction of pain, Jay said.

A trial with participants randomized to receive marijuana or an inactive placebo has now been started, she added, and 20 out of 50 participants have been enrolled so far.

Psychedelics researcher, Humphry Osmond, passes away.

Humphry Osmond, M.D., the man who invented the word "psychedelic," has passed away. He died at home, peacefully, on Friday February 6th, 2004 at the age of 86.

Along with his colleague, John Smythies, Osmond shocked the medical community in 1952 by drawing attention to the structural similarity between the mescaline and adrenaline molecules. They theorized that schizophrenia might result when the brain releases an endogamous hallucinogen, possibly derived from adrenaline.

Osmond observed that using mescaline seemed to allow a healthy person to see the world through the eyes of a schizophrenic person. He suggested that the drug be used as a tool to help doctors and nurses understand their patients better. Working with Abram Hoffer and their team in Weyburn, Saskatchewan, from 1952 until 1961, Humphry Osmond became one of the world's leading experts on the therapeutic use of psychedelic drugs.

His research attracted widespread attention within scientific circles. When Aldous Huxley-- the eminent British novelist who wrote Brave New World--learned of Osmond's work with mescaline and LSD, he wrote to Osmond to offer himself up as a test subject.

Osmond was apprehensive about the experiment. "I did not really want to be known as the man who had driven Aldous mad," he said later. His worries proved to be unfounded, and their experience gave Huxley the inspiration for his famous essay, The Doors of Perception. Their friendship lasted until Huxley's death in 1963.

In correspondence with Huxley in 1956, Osmond coined the word "psychedelic." The two men were looking for a word to describe this new class of drugs, and they were doing so in rhyme. Huxley wrote:

"To make this trivial world sublime,
Take half a Gramme of phanerothyme."

To which Osmond responded:

"To fathom hell or soar angelic
Just take a pinch of psychedelic."

In addition to his clinical practice, Dr. Osmond also taught psychiatry for several years at Princeton University. Later, he and his wife moved to Tuscaloosa, Alabama, where he worked at the Bryce Hospital until his retirement in 1990.

He contributed articles to many journals and authored several books; among them: How to Cope With Illness (1979); How to Live With Schizophrenia (1974; Models of madness, models of medicine (1974); Understanding Understanding (1973); Psychedelics: The Uses and Implications of Hallucinogenic Drugs (editor, 1971); and The Hallucinogens (1967).

Dr. Osmond is survived by his wife Jane, his children Helen, Fee and Julian and his sister Dorothy

Causal association between cannabis and psychosis: examination of the evidence.

http://www.ukcia.org/research/CausalAssociationBetweenCannabisAndPsychosis.pdf

Abstract:
BACKGROUND: Controversy remains as to whether cannabis acts as a causal risk factor for schizophrenia or other functional psychotic illnesses.
AIMS:
To examine critically the evidence that cannabis causes psychosis using established criteria of causality.
METHOD: We identified five studies that included a well-defined sample drawn from population-based registers or cohorts and used prospective measures of cannabis use and adult psychosis.
RESULTS: On an individual level, cannabis use confers an overall twofold increase in the relative risk for later schizophrenia. At the population level, elimination of cannabis use would reduce the incidence of schizophrenia by approximately 8%, assuming a causal relationship. Cannabis
use appears to be neither a sufficient nor a necessary cause for psychosis. It is a component cause, part of a complex constellation of factors leading to psychosis.
CONCLUSIONS: Cases of psychotic disorder could be prevented by discouraging cannabis use among vulnerable youths. Research is needed to understand the mechanisms by which cannabis causes psychosis.

and have recently added (I may have already mentioned this one):

Testing hypotheses about the relationship between cannabis use and
psychosis.
Drug Alcohol Depend. 2003 Jul 20;71(1):37-48.
at http://www.ukcia.org/research/TestingHypotheses.pdf

Abstract:
AIM: To model the impact of rising rates of cannabis use on the incidence and prevalence of psychosis under four hypotheses about the relationship between cannabis use and psychosis. METHODS: The study modelled the effects on the prevalence of schizophrenia over the lifespan of cannabis in eight birth cohorts: 1940-1944, 1945-1949, 1950-1954, 1955-1959, 1960-1964,
1965-1969, 1970-1974, 1975-1979. It derived predictions as to the number of cases of schizophrenia that would be observed in these birth cohorts, given the following four hypotheses: (1) that there is a causal relationship between cannabis use and schizophrenia; (2) that cannabis use precipitates schizophrenia in vulnerable persons; (3) that cannabis use exacerbates
schizophrenia; and (4) that persons with schizophrenia are more liable to become regular cannabis users.
RESULTS: There was a steep rise in the prevalence of cannabis use in Australia over the past 30 years and a corresponding decrease in the age of initiation of cannabis use. There was no evidence of a significant increase in the incidence of schizophrenia over the past 30 years. Data on trends the age of onset of schizophrenia did not show a clear pattern. Cannabis use among persons with
schizophrenia has consistently been found to be more common than in the general population.
CONCLUSIONS: Cannabis use does not appear to be causally related to the incidence of schizophrenia, but its use may precipitate disorders in persons who are vulnerable to developing psychosis and worsen the course of the disorder among those who have already developed it.

Please do purchase the articles from the relevant journal if you have an interest and are in a position to do so... We just like to provide the research so you can read what the researchers wrote (and where provided the raw data which allows you to draw our own conclusions) rather than what the reporter says that the papers say about what the TV said about a spokesperson for the researchers may have once been misquoted as saying........

THE CANNABIS CONUNDRUM

THE CANNABIS CONUNDRUM

As the founder of a British pharmaceutical company puts it, if it weren't called marijuana there would be an entire biotech business built around this plant.

And that's just what's starting to happen (but not for the U.S. drug industry or the American patients these medicines might help).

One night in late September, Ethan Russo stood before a classroom packed with students on the University of Massachusetts' Amherst campus, and asked how many of them had been through the popular secondary-school program known as Drug Abuse Resistance Education, or DARE. Almost every hand in the audience went up. "Just as I thought," said Russo. "Well, we're going to
hit that one head-on." He then cheerfully presented his version of what can only be described as a drug reeducation program.

Russo is a physician specializing in child neurology and one of the world's pioneering investigators into the therapeutic uses of pot. A slight, preternaturally good-humored man, Russo exhibited an outsized knowledge of his subject. Sticking strictly to the botanical name, Cannabis sativa , he
noted that the plant's effects on the mind and body were first recorded by the ancient Assyrians in 2200 BC. These days, cannabis is used, mostly illegally, to relieve the nausea that accompanies chemotherapy, stimulate the appetites of AIDS sufferers, prevent blindness induced by glaucoma,
suppress migraine headaches, and reduce the pain and muscle rigidity that accompanies multiple sclerosis.

Although nonprescription medications such as aspirin kill thousands of people every year, not a single death has ever been attributed to a cannabis overdose. The "therapeutic ratio" of marijuana is estimated to fall somewhere between 20,000 and 40,000--meaning it would take that many
times a normal dose to kill you. If the drug is delivered as a pill or a spray (smoking just about anything is bad for you, after all), then Russo is unequivocal: "Cannabis is a safer medicine than almost all of the standard pharmaceuticals available today."

As he spoke, Russo clicked through a dazzling slide show: verdant fields of cannabis covering the foothills of Morocco's Rif Mountains; Thailand's marijuana plants on steroids, taller than a NBA center.

But the most compelling slide was of a homely, quart-sized bottle labeled "Cannabis Tincture," which seemed to symbolize this country's inconsistent attitude toward medical marijuana.

The United States has at times embraced the cannabis plant and its products: From the mid-19th century up until the mid-20th century, cannabis was a mainstream medicine, listed in the U.S. pharmacopoeia. The company that marketed the bottle of tincture was none other than Eli Lilly, the $11 billion behemoth that today is best known for another mood-altering drug, Prozac.

More recently, of course, the U.S. government has cast cannabis as a pariah drug. This past June, Karen Tandy, the first woman to head the Drug Enforcement Administration, declared that marijuana "has not been shown to have medical benefits."

Ethan Russo and a small group of trailblazing doctors, scientists, and businesspeople hope to prove her wrong.

Russo recently signed on as a senior medical adviser to GW Pharmaceuticals, a British biotechnology company that has conducted clinical trials of cannabis-based medicines on people suffering from multiple sclerosis and chronic pain. In a memorandum to the House of Lords' committee on science and technology, GW reported that a vast major-ity of its patients have
indicated "significant alleviation" of at least one symptom, including pain, spasticity, and bladder problems; in some cases, it said, the improvement "has been sufficient to transform lives."

This past May, GW inked a deal with the German pharmaceutical company Bayer Healthcare AG to market Sativex, a cannabis-laced oral spray that's used for treating severe neuropathic pain and multiple-sclerosis symptoms.

Bayer, which agreed to market Sativex in the UK and Canada--and optioned rights for Europe--is betting that in the next few months, the first modern medicine made entirely of cannabis will pass muster with British regulators. GW estimates that the European market for Sativex could total
$300 million to $400 million. "We're finding that cannabis medicines have enormous pharmacological capabilities and a unique capacity to attack, in a disease like MS, an entire range of symptoms," says Dr. Geoffrey Guy, GW's founder and chairman. "If it wasn't called marijuana, by now there would have been an entire biotech industry built around this plant."

GW's breakthroughs have put Guy in the vanguard of the aboveground marijuana economy, a handful of pharmaceutical entrepreneurs who are racing to build a legal market for cannabis medicines in countries that accept the drug's therapeutic potential (read: Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and most of western Europe). If Guy's bet pays off, GW just might become the
Eli Lilly of medical marijuana.

"Cruel Hoax" or Solid Science?

The push to develop plant-based and synthetic cannabinoid medicines has been building since the early 1990s, when researchers identified nerve receptors in the brain that are stimulated by marijuana's active ingredient, THC, as well as the natural body chemical that binds to those receptors.

The discovery of an entirely new class of brain receptors and the neurotransmitters that act on them--the endocannabinoid system--proved to be an astounding development, opening a whole new area of therapeutics. Investigators believe that the system plays a critical role in mediating
pain, appetite, movement, and memory.

The giants of the drug industry, including Lilly, Merck, Pfizer, and Schering-Plough, are now hard at work in the lab, attempting to cook up synthetic versions of the 61 cannabinoid compounds found in marijuana plants. These are complex molecules with 21 carbons unique to cannabis, of which THC is the best known.

Big Pharma has high hopes for these synthetics for the treatment of obesity, smoking, cancer pain, migraines, and MS symptoms.

But such efforts are still in the early stages of development. Investigators believe that the system in the brain that is stimulated by marijuana also plays a critical role in mediating pain, appetite, movement, and memory.

At the more controversial end of the aboveground marijuana economy, developers are using the plant itself instead of synthetic compounds. "At least in the near future, it seems extremely unlikely that one of these companies will come up with a single synthetic agent that's as widely applicable as a cannabis-based medicine," says Russo. GW is taking whole extracts from the marijuana plant and recombining them to produce drugs that treat specific ailments.

This plant-based approach has enabled the company to develop and test Sativex in five years, at a price tag of about $60 million.

It's a remarkable feat, considering that Big Pharma on average shells out $800 million on a new drug and can easily devote a decade or more to animal research and first-dose-in-man testing.

GW did minimal animal testing, taking Sativex rapidly to controlled, double-blind human trials. "Something like 400 million people a year take cannabis in one form or another, and yet there's never been a recorded fatality from it," says Guy.

But you won't find any commercial development of plant-based marijuana medicines being pursued in the United States. Andrea Barthwell, a deputy director in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy and President Bush's point person on medical marijuana, says cannabis medicines aren't compatible with modern science.

They do not constitute "a serious line of research," she says.

"The people who are advancing marijuana as a medicine are perpetuating a cruel hoax that exploits our compassion for the sick," Barthwell says. "They are using patients' pain and suffering in an attempt to change America's drug control policy. Marijuana is a crude plant product that most definitely is not a medicine."

It's a curious statement, given that it seems to reflect neither the views of the international scientific community nor those of the government's own regulatory agencies.

For one thing, the Food and Drug Administration is reviewing 139 new-drug applications involving botanical research products, so plant-based medicines certainly aren't anathema.

As for cannabis, in 1999 the Institute of Medicine, working at the behest of the White House drug czar's office, issued a lengthy report that assessed the scientific evidence concerning potential medical uses of marijuana.

Its preeminent recommendation: "Research should continue into physiological effects of synthetic and plant-derived cannabinoids."

Barthwell, however, says that marijuana hasn't been standardized for pharmaceutical production. Nor is there any evidence, she says, that the plant's various compounds can be reliably produced in consistent concentrations. Clearly, she hasn't visited the world's most futuristic pot farm.

Down on the Farm

At a secret location in southeastern England, GW Pharmaceuticals has built what might well be the most high-tech pot palace on the planet.

Surrounded by electrified razor wire, video cameras, and motion detectors, the greenhouse sprawls across more than an acre of land. At any one time, more than 15,000 marijuana plants are growing under its 14-foot ceiling, with its banks of lights. Inside is a sea of green, comprised of some of the world's most potent strains of pot: Hindu Kush, White Widow, Skunk, Northern Lights. Outside of the Netherlands, GW is the only commercial organization in Europe licensed to cultivate cannabis on this scale.

GW's drug-development strategy is based on the belief that various components of the plant work to treat specific illnesses, and it is breeding plant strains in which different cannabinoids predominate. In addition to its THC variety, GW is cultivating a strain that consists almost entirely of cannabidiol, or CBD, which moderates the THC high and possesses no psychoactive effect of its own. CBD may be useful in treating neuropathic pain, inflammation, and central-nervous system conditions such as epilepsy.

To date, three drugs have been tested in clinical trials: GW's high-THC variety, high-CBD, and Sativex, which is a 50-50 mix of the two.

Geoffrey Guy's goal--to cultivate medical-grade pharmaceutical plants that produce a specific cannabinoid--has required him to raise the art of cannabis-breeding to a spectacular level.

Guy's CBD-producing plant strain is unique. And every one of Guy's plants--whether it's a THC, CBD, or one of several other varieties--is completely uniform, with absolutely no genetic variation between each plant.

In that respect, the greenhouse resembles a living factory, where the product takes exactly 14 weeks, from planting to harvest, to move down the assembly line.

"Our job is to find out, ahead of everyone else, what the cannabinoids do," says Guy. "To accomplish that, we grow into the plant the exact profile of the chemicals we want. We control our finished product by controlling the plant." Dressed Better Than a Banker

Geoffrey Guy is a physician and a maverick entrepreneur who has previously launched two publicly traded pharmaceutical companies.

On one day in his office in a high-security compound south of London, he was decked out in a double-breasted business suit, complete with a white handkerchief peeking above the breast pocket--people in the legal-cannabis business tend to dress better than bankers.

Guy cracks that his favorite mind-altering drug is rugby.

He claims never to have smoked anything, least of all pot: "I've brought 14 different drugs to market, and I've never taken any of those, either."

Guy might be the only man in England who has the know-how and the political connections necessary to launch a cannabis-based pharmaceutical company and shepherd its products through the British regulatory system.

Nineteen years ago, he founded Ethical Holdings, a pharmaceutical company that developed morphine products, which gave him real-world experience in winning controlled-drug licenses from Britain's Home Office. In 1990, he founded Phytopharm, a company that specialized in developing medicines from Chinese herbal remedies.

Starting in the mid-1990s, patient groups in the UK--particularly the powerful Multiple Sclerosis Society--began lobbying for changes in the drug laws that would allow sick people to receive prescribed cannabis.

Guy, who had been devouring the medical literature on marijuana, thought that if he could get dispensation from the government, he had the science-and-business wherewithal to develop an approved medicine from an illegal plant.

His hunch paid off. In June of 1998, after months of meetings with Guy, the British government granted GW the license to cultivate and supply cannabis for research and drug development.

Still, had Guy failed to come up with an alternative to smoking cannabis, regulators never would have allowed him to proceed.

For Sativex, GW has devised a delivery device that looks like a breath spritzer: Patients spray the drug onto the lining of the mouth; it takes effect within 20 to 45 minutes.

The device allows patients to determine how many doses they need to relieve their symptoms. They tend to settle out at relatively modest levels--on average, 8 to 10 sprays of Sativex a day--which appear to be enough to relieve their symptoms without incurring an intoxicating effect. "These people are suffering from a terribly debilitating disease," says Guy. "They're just looking for a safe, efficacious medicine that will help them get on with their lives."

For the U.S., a Missed Market?

While the United Kingdom seems to be on the verge of approving Sativex--and countries from Canada to Australia are permitting the compassionate use of marijuana for seriously ill people--medical marijuana research remains mired in politics in the United States. California has established the Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at the University of California at San Diego, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse has implemented a mechanism for supplying marijuana to the center's investigators. (Scientists outside of California who aspire to investigate medical marijuana face a torturous regulatory approval process.) Thus far, federal regulators have approved 14 of the center's studies. One such study is investigating the short-term effects of cannabis on spasticity in 30 MS patients.

Meanwhile, GW has just completed phase III clinical trials on more than 1,000 patients--the largest program of clinical research on cannabis ever.

In September, a California physician who had just returned from a two-day conference of the International Association of Cannabis as Medicine at Germany's University of Cologne--which brought together the world's best minds in the field--bemoaned this country's stunted research environment. "It is frustrating to watch the advancements in research on cannabis and cannabinoids taking place that we here in the USA can only dream of," he wrote in a well-circulated email. "The dark ages of medicine and science imposed by the American disease, prohibitionism, is painfully apparent."

If Geoffrey Guy realizes his dream, Sativex will simply be the first of many such drugs to sweep through Europe and Canada. Meanwhile, the politics of pot insure that cannabis-based medicines will remain out of reach for U.S. patients and the U.S. pharmaceutical industry alike.

MANITOBA FARMERS PLANNING HEMP FACTORY

Pubdate: Mon, 09 Feb 2004
Source: Winnipeg Free Press (CN MB)
Copyright: 2004 Winnipeg Free Press
Contact: letters@freepress.mb.ca
Website: http://www.winnipegfreepress.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/502
Author: James Low
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?330 (Hemp - Outside U.S.)

FARMERS PLANNING HEMP FACTORY

Dauphin Group Hopes To Build This Summer

A group of farmers is hoping to build Manitoba's first hemp processing plant in Dauphin.

Construction of the $15-million plant, which would turn hemp fibres into products such as insulation, has been five years in the making, but hopefully ground can be broken this summer, said Joe Federowich, chairman of the Parkland Industrial Hemp Growers Co-op.

Federowich said the Manitoba government was on board fairly quickly, but the federal government was slower to react.

But he said recently "the doors have swung wide open" since a new administration in Ottawa began to look at the future blueprint for agriculture.

"I think the federal government is now showing a real commitment," he said. "They want to see farmers take local initiative."

"We've been doing our homework," he said. Parkland Industrial Hemp Growers Co-op, a group of 59 farmers, went to work on a sustainable business plan in the fall of 2000.

The proposed processing plant would give local hemp farmers a place to bring their crop. The hemp, which is a drug-free marijuana with almost no THC (tetrahydrocannabinol -- the cannabis narcotic), would be turned into fibre and sold on the open market.

Federowich said a business prospectus should be finished in a month's time.

Rey Pagtakhan, minister of Western Economic Diversification, said the Dauphin plant is being considered for federal funding.

"It looks like an exciting opportunity and we take it very seriously."

Federowich hopes Dauphin can be the hemp capital of Canada. "Our target goal is not just one facility," he said, noting the goal is to build similar plants every 100 to 200 miles.

"Once you build the first one and it's up and running and proving itself, others will be built quite quickly."

Federowich said the economic spinoffs for the Dauphin-area would mean up to 25 jobs for the community, not including people needed to haul the crop to and from the plant.

He said the project is crucial for hemp farmers in rural communities struggling to make ends meet. "Our rural communities are dying a slow death and this may breathe new life into them."

The RM of Dauphin and City of Dauphin continue to support the project 100 per cent, said Dauphin Mayor Alex Paul.

UK Roadside drugs tests 'could be flawed' say researchers

Roadside drugs tests 'could be flawed' say researchers

TOM CURTIS
HEALTH CORRESPONDENT
tcurtis@scotlandonsunday.com

ROADSIDE tests that are the only way of catching people driving under the influence of drugs may be fatally flawed, it was revealed last night.

Research in Glasgow has cast doubt on the mental and physical tasks that police have been using for three years to try to crack down on what is feared to be an epidemic of drug driving.

The problem could put traffic officers, who admit the tests are "not scientific" compared with breathalysers, back to square one in the search for an effective way of finding grounds to arrest and charge a drug-driving suspect.

Dr Paul Skett, a senior lecturer is pharmacology at Glasgow University and one of the main expert witnesses in drug driving court cases, has been assessing the Fitness Impairment Tests imported to Scotland from the US in 2001.

In the absence of any drug equivalent of the alcohol breathalyser, they were thought to be the best way of giving officers grounds to arrest and charge a driver driving erratically who was thought to be under the influence but whose breathalyser result proved negative.

The tests include a series of physical and mental tasks, such as balancing on one leg while counting, walking heel to toe along a straight line and touching the tip of the nose with a finger.

Skett said early results of research at Glasgow were "worrying", however, because volunteers with no drugs in their system have been testing positive after carrying out the tasks, sometimes simply because they are tired.

In another case a driver taken to a police station after failing the tests turned out to have had a mild stroke.

Skett said there "may or may not" be any scientific basis for the tests, which he said had been copied from the US without analysis of their efficacy. "I think the legislation will have to be tightened up."

Even when a test leads to an arrest and analysis of a blood sample there is disagreement on what concentration of a particular drug would impair driving ability. Skett is advising on two cases a month which are being disputed in court and said he believed accused drivers were being acquitted as a result.

Meanwhile motorists are under no obligation to take the tests in the first place, and can refuse.

Skett said: "I think these tests have just been taken on trust because they were being used in California. We are looking to see if there is a scientifically valid basis for the tests. There may or may not be one.

"So far the results have been fairly worrying. We are finding that people who are tired can’t do the tests, for example.

"No one has done research on how much of a drug is enough to impair driving."

Nicola Sturgeon, the SNP's justice spokeswoman, said: "Drug driving is extremely serious and I would hope any test being carried out is credible and reliable. If there are doubts it will need to be looked at because whatever test is used people have to have confidence in it."

Inspector Paul Fleming, of Strathclyde Police's road unit, said: "It's still a subjective decision by an officer. It's not scientific like the drink-driving test where you either get a pass or fail on a machine. People will fail the tests if they are tired."

But he defended the system as a good way of screening drivers and said it had a high "hit rate" in terms of the proportion of motorists arrested who then give a blood sample that tests positive for drugs.

Fleming added: "Before the new tests there was an 80% to 84% hit rate. Since the tests were introduced that has gone up to 95%-96%."

He said anyone wrongly arrested at the roadside because they were tired or ill should in theory be identified by a police surgeon at the police station, avoiding a wrongful charge.

Dr John Oliver, a forensic medical scientist at Glasgow University who tests blood samples from drivers who have failed Field Impairment Tests, said the fact that there could be "false positives" did not matter.

"I don't have the concerns that others have because I'm seeing what the police are seeing, which is that the tests are screening out a lot of time-wasting in the laboratory," he said.

Oliver was involved in the DoT's Glasgow study, which is understood to have looked at the test results of 200-300 drivers in the two years to July last year, but its details are currently confidential.

The only evidence police are prepared to release from the report which went to the Department of Transport is the 95%-96% figure. Even that means that four in 1,000 people are being wrongly charged with driving under the influence.

A spokesman for the Department of Transport said: "We will give close and careful consideration to the findings of the report."

THAT'S ALL FOR NOW FOLKS!

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