A newsletter about cannabis and cannabinoids as medicine
A parliamentary committee urged the Canadian government on 12 December to relax its laws on possession of marijuana, an idea that Washington's drugs commissioner immediately branded as dangerous.
Substances that block the enzyme that is responsible for the breakdown of the endocannabinoid anandamide might be used to treat anxiety and depression, a new study says.
Nearly half of Parkinson's disease patients who have tried cannabis say the drug helped relieve their symptoms, according to a patients' survey. Dr. Evzin Ruzicka, neurologist at Charles University in Prague (Czech Republic), reported the findings at the Movement Disorders Society's Seventh International Congress of Parkinson's Disease and Movement Disorders held on 10-14 November in Miami (USA).
A federal appeals court in California ruled that the government cannot revoke the licenses of doctors who recommend marijuana to their patients. The federal government should now abandon its misguided policy of targeting doctors and sick people to fight cannabis use.
Voters in Arizona and Nevada will decide on state wide cannabis-law reform initiatives at this year's mid-term elections on 5 November. There are also an additional local initiative in San Francisco and a measure on the cultivation of industrial hemp in South Dakota.
The Community Research Initiative of Toronto and St. Michael's Hospital in Toronto announced on 9 October the start of the first Canadian government-sponsored trial evaluating the appetite enhancing effects of smoked cannabis in HIV/AIDS.
Dr Nathaniel Milton of London's Royal Free and University College medical school found that cannabinoids were able to protect nerve cells from the toxicity of amyloid-beta. This could help to prevent the development of Alzheimer's disease.
The Special Committee on Illegal Drugs set up by Canada's Senate unananimously recommended on 4 September that the government should legalize the use of cannabis, saying it should be sold on a regulated basis like alcohol.
Health Minister Anne McLellan told the Canadian Medical Association on 19 August that she had "a certain degree of discomfort" with distributing the cannabis grown for the government program in an abandoned copper mine in Flin Flon, Manitoba, to patients. She said she wants to wait until scientific trials prove cannabis is safe before giving it to patients.
Four people were arrested on 13 August after police raided the Toronto Compassion Centre which sold medical marijuana to more than 1,200 people. The four were charged with trafficking in a controlled substance and possession for the purpose of trafficking.
Researchers at the Max Planck Institute of Psychiatry in Munich (Germany) have shown that the endogenous cannabinoid system plays a central role in the extinction of aversive memories.
On 10 July Home Secretary David Blunkett told parliament cannabis would be downgraded from a Class B to a Class C drug, putting it in the same category as anabolic steroids and growth hormones, and making its use and possession less serious crimes.
Since June 2002 Delta 9 Pharma, a company of Bionorica (Neumarkt, Bavaria), provides pharmacies with dronabinol, who can make medicines (capsules, tinctures) from it, according to official formulas of the German Pharmacists Association. The increased resonance in the media has increased the demand for dronabinol by patients and doctors which allowed to reduce the price.
Researchers at the Center for Sleep and Ventilatory Disorders at the University of Illinois in Chicago investigated the effects of THC and the endocannabinoid oleamide on sleep, respiratory pattern and sleep apnoea in rats. Professor David W. Carley and colleagues found that THC and oleamide each stabilized respiration during all sleep stages and decreased apnoea.
Activists criticize the federal government's plans to crack down on medical marijuana clubs (cooperatives that grow cannabis and distribute it to patients) in California. They launched nationwide protests at Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) offices. Protests happened on 6 June outside of about 60 DEA headquarters around the country.
On 23 May eleven seriously ill patients confessed their illegal medical use of cannabis with photo and residence in the weekly Stern. They suffer from multiple sclerosis, Crohn's disease (a bowl disease), cancer, asthma, migraine, HIV and hepatitis C. They call for the end of criminalisation of medical cannabis users.
Last year U.S. drug-enforcement authorities refused to provide the Canadian government access to their research-quality supply of marijuana seeds, it emerged on 7 May for the first time. A Canadian cannabis program was intended both for research reasons and to allow patients access to legal cannabis. Former health minister Allan Rock announced details of the program in April 2001, saying the marijuana was supposed to be available by January 2002.
Health Minister Anne McLellan said she will not release any of the marijuana being grown for the government to distribute to sick patients until it has been tested in clinical trials, her spokeswoman said on 22 April.
In a study at the Clinic Montana (Switzerland) under the guidance of Dr. Claude Vaney the effects of capsulated cannabis extract in 57 patients with multiple sclerosis were investigated.
A clinical study conducted at the Medical School of Hannover (Germany) and published in the current issue of Pharmacopsychiatry demonstrated that a single dose of THC reduces symptoms of Tourette-Syndrome.
Venice's judge Barbara Bortot ruled on 13 March that the local medical authorities of San Dona di Piave, near Venice, not only have to tolerate the medical use of cannabis by a woman with terminal lung cancer but also must obtain the drug abroad and then provide it free of charge to the patient.
About 100 invited scientists and governmental representatives met for a scientific conference on cannabis in Brussels on 25 February initiated by the health ministers of Belgium, the Netherlands, France, Switzerland, and Germany, among them four health ministers of the inviting countries and one drugs commissioner (Germany).
On 12 February officials of the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) raided a medical cannabis dispensary centre in San Francisco, the Harm Reduction Clinic, and seized more than 600 cannabis plants. Several homes in San Francisco and surrounding communities were raided and four people were arrested, among them Richard Watts, director of the Harm Reduction Clinic, and marijuana author Edward (Ed) Rosenthal from Oakland.
The Second National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics will be held on 3 & 4 May 2002 in Portland, Oregon. The main focus will be on pain therapy.
GW Pharmaceuticals said on 16 January it was expanding clinical trials to ease the pain of cancer patients. Trials involving patients with multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury had already proved successful, the company said.
The International Association for Cannabis as Medicine was founded in March 2000 by members of the German Association for Cannabis as Medicine. An increasing number of people outside the German speech area is joining the IACM to help to make cannabis and the cannabinoids available for medical use, worldwide, and to increase our knowledge on their pharmacology, toxicology and therapeutic potential.