Doctors Volunteer To Test Cannabis

The therapeutic effects of cannabis are to be tested by two doctors who have volunteered to run the first official patient trials.

Dr Anita Holdcroft, from Hammersmith Hospital, London, will investigate whether the drug or some of its components can relieve post-operative pain. A second trial investigating the effects of cannabis on multiple sclerosis sufferers will be run by Dr John Zajicek, of Derriford Hospital, Plymouth.

Three hundred patients will take part in the post-operative pain trial and 600 in the MS trial. The doctors signed up for the trials yesterday at a meeting of Government officials and scientists at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society in London. Delegates were there to set guidelines for the trials.

Cannabis contains chemicals which are said to be useful as painkillers and for treating illness such as MS and epilepsy. Many MS sufferers now take the drug illegally. Dr Zajicek's trial will look specifically at the ability of cannabis to control spasticity - muscle rigidity - in MS patients.

The Home Office has already granted special licences to a drug company, GW Pharmaceuticals, allowing it to grow and supply cannabis for medical research. An initial crop of 5,000 plants was sown in August at a secure glasshouse in the south of England. The mature, 8ft plants are now being cut off just above the stem and hung up to dry before being transferred to a laboratory.

The aim of the trials is to obtain results that will be accepted by the World Health Organisation. Findings from previous studies have not been recognised as scientifically sound. Acceptance by WHO would pave the way for cannabis to be rescheduled under the Misuse of Drugs Act. Standardised preparations of cannabis or its active ingredients could then be prescribed, subject to certain regulations.

Prof Tony Moffat, chief scientist at the Royal Pharmaceutical Society, said that the tests should offer "conclusive scientific evidence" that cannabis could have therapeutic benefit. The trials are likely to start in six months' time. Assuming that they showed cannabis to work as a medicine, it could be prescribed on a named patient-only basis before being licensed.

It would take at least five years for cannabis or its active components to be fully licensed so that it was widely available on the NHS. One question that must be settled first is how the drug might be administered to the patient.

Dr Geoffrey Guy, chairman of GW Pharmaceuticals, has developed a special inhaler device for taking measured amounts of cannabis. Whether this system or another - such as capsules or injections - will be employed remains to be decided.

Copyright Telegraph Group Limited 1999

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