Clinical trials set to take place in United Kingdom will examine the therapeutic effects of whole smoked marijuana on multiple sclerosis patients, a London researcher told a House of Lords select committee Tuesday.
Dr. Geoffrey Guy, chairman of GW Pharmaceuticals, said that he hopes to begin administering marijuana to human subjects shortly. Guy received permission from the federal government in June to grow marijuana for medical research purposes. He said he hopes to license the drug as a legal medicine within five years.
Guy said that several patients with MS report their spasticity improves after smoking marijuana, and discouraged efforts to synthesize medicinal compounds in the plant. “I don’t see the value in taking apart something that seems to work at the moment,” he said.
Neurologist Denis Petro, who conducted clinical trials examining the effects of THC on spasticity during the 1980s, applauded efforts to study the medical benefits of whole smoked marijuana. Petro said that inhalation is an “ideal” delivery method for some patients, and speculated that marijuana’s medical benefits come from several constituents in the plant, not just one isolated compound. “If [Dr. Guy’s] studies focus on spasticity, the chances of a positive outcome are high,” he said.
Compounds in marijuana, particularly cannabidiol, have historically demonstrated value as potenial therapeutic agents for treating patients suffering from movement disorders, epilepsy and the spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis. Recently, NORML compiled abstracts of nearly twenty separate studies indicating therapeutic benefits of whole smoked marijuana and it’s constituents on spasticity disorders.
One of the strongest endorsements of marijuana’s value in treating spasticity comes from the Drug Enforcement Agency’s own Administrative Law Judge Francis Young. In 1988, after hearing two years of testimony regarding marijuana’s potential as a therapeutic agent, Young ruled: “Marijuana ‘has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States’ for spasticity from MS and other causes. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious to find otherwise.”
Allen St. Pierre, Executive Director of The NORML Foundation, praised the impending research trials. “It is encouraging to see English researchers focusing on the medicinal potential of the entire plant instead of limiting their scope to include only isolated compounds or marijuana-like analogs. The United States government should follow United Kingdom’s lead and approve similar medical marijuana protocols.”
For more information, please contact either Allen St. Pierre of The NORML Foundation or Dr. Denis Petro @ (703) 528-2647.
