Pubdate: Mon, 24 Oct 2005
Source: Times, The (UK)
Copyright: 2005 Times Newspapers Ltd
Contact:  http://www.the-times.co.uk/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/454
Author: Dr Thomas Stuttaford
Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/find?207 (Cannabis - United Kingdom)

CANNABIS: GOOD FOR PAIN BUT BAD FOR YOUR HEALTH?

The Drug Can Be Used As An Analgesic, But There Are Still Risks In Its 
Recreational Use

A glance at last week's papers shows that cartoonists have had a field day 
over the political implications of research into cannabis smoking. The 
power of the cartoonist and satirist, which reached its zenith in Georgian 
and Victorian times, is still great. In those days, cannabis would have 
been considered small beer. Even Queen Victoria wasn't averse to using 
opium for relief of the kind of everyday pain that people today would take 
a Veganin tablet to control. Opioid tinctures were still the standard basis 
of cough medicines in my youth.

Rather more is now known about the potential side-effects of drugs, and 
legislators, as well as doctors, are rightly more chary about their 
medicinal use. Possibly as a result of all the publicity surrounding the 
political ramifications of cannabis smoking, the latest research published 
on its use as a pain reliever in patients suffering from multiple 
sclerosis, published in the journal Neurology, has received little attention.

A group of 66 patients with moderate to severe MS, the majority of whom 
required support to walk or were wheelchair-bound, took part in a trial of 
Sativex, a cannabis-based medicine. The patients had found that their 
existing analgesics had failed to control their pain - a problem in 52 per 
cent of patients with advanced multiple sclerosis, a third of whom describe 
the pain they suffer as being frequently disabling and inadequately 
managed. Half of the study patients received Sativex (in the form of an 
oral spray), the others were a control. All continued with other medication 
throughout the trial. Those taking the cannabis-based Sativex experienced a 
clinicially significant improvement in the reduction of both the pain and 
insomnia.

Earlier research into the use of other cannabis preparations to treat 
neuropathic pain has shown that the patients are not exempt from 
experiencing the adverse psychiatric effects associated with cannabis.

Discussion about cannabis smoking, whether among the student population or 
older, and whether inhaled or not, is a relic of earlier puritanical 
generations. What really matters is its long-term effect on both physical 
and mental health. Recent research has confirmed that cannabis smoking may 
induce psychotic-type breakdowns, and relatively frequently unmasks latent 
hereditary psychiatric disease, as well as causing psychological changes.

A report by leading Swedish scientists in 1998 - not a group that would be 
thought of as natural conservatives - summarised the psychological and 
psychiatric problems that may be induced by its use. They concluded: 
"Cannabis is one of the most psycho-pathogenic of all psychotic 
preparations. Compared with heroin abuse, cannabis smoking, in addition to 
the strong grip which develops with dependence, is associated with the far 
more serious risk of developing mental disorders of various kinds."

A person who suffers a psychotic breakdown after cannabis, had he not 
smoked it, might well have journeyed happily through life being no more 
than mildly eccentric. Research indicates that one person in four has the 
genes that might make them vulnerable to cannabis. Disturbingly, research 
has also shown that to inherit various packages of genes that might be 
associated with a vulnerability to cannabis is not rare. Cannabis's adverse 
effects may be dose-dependent but there is no way of determining who these 
people are. Cannabis will also cause psychological changes. These include 
poor memory, shortened attention span and lack of judgment and/or insight, 
as well as apathy, although the extent of this symptom is disputed.

The physical effects of cannabis include damage to the immune system, the 
lungs and the oral and nasal spaces. This last association accounts for the 
clear link between smoking cannabis and an increased incidence of head and 
neck cancers. Cannabis has an adverse effect on the reproductive system in 
men and women. In women it may cause ovulatory and menstrual 
irregularities, and in men can cause testicular atrophy with a marked 
reduction in sperm count.

The babies born to cannabis-smoking couples are, on average, shorter, have 
a lower birth weight and reduced head circumference, and after delivery are 
more restless and nervous. As children they have an appreciably higher 
incidence of one form of leukaemia, have poorer memories and verbal ability 
as toddlers, and do less well in intelligence tests up to the age of 9.

In rodents there is an increased incidence of foetal abnormalities and 
stillbirths in those given cannabis. Similarly, a long-term project 
evaluating the effect of cannabis on rhesus monkeys, either before or 
during pregnancy, showed that it quadrupled the death rate of babies in 
utero or soon after birth. There was also a higher incidence of congenital 
neurological deformities. Although there have been reports of similar 
findings in humans, a relationship between cannabis and foetal abnormality 
is difficult to prove.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom