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By Colin Brown

UK:’DON’T PUNISH CANNABIS USERS’ SAYS BMA

The British Medical Association yesterday threw its weight behind MPs who have been campaigning for cannabis to be legalised for therapeutic use by urging the Home Secretary not to punish sufferers for taking the drug illegally.

A BMA team complained to a Lords committee investigating the scientific use of the drug that the Home Office appeared to be dragging its heels in licensing trials for developing drugs from cannabis. There had been no response to 14 requests for licenses, the peers were told.

"If a patient is not suitable for trial, and there are no other alternatives available, then we do believe they should be treated sympathetically in terms of the law and any penalty where they are using herbal cannabis for their own therapeutic benefit," Professor Vivienne Nathanson told the Lords committee on science and technology.

Professor Nathanson, head of the BMA’s professional resources and research group, said she believed there could be a big worldwide demand for a cannabis-based drug which could relieve some of the symptoms of muscular dystrophy, muscle spasms, glaucoma, vomiting after chemotherapy and chronic pain.

"The numbers of patients who might benefit in a worldwide context may be very considerable," she said.
(Ed. note: Of course, most of the people in the world will not be able to afford these synthetics and no one should have to wait, which is sort of – more or less – what the BMA is kind of like saying, maybe. In reality they are pleading guilty to having suppressed a medicine that should never have been banned. Moreover, Marihuana, the Forbidden Medicine was published several years ago in Britain, so they cannot blame anyone for not telling them.)

The committee is focusing on the scientific value of developing cannabis, which it heard had fallen out of use after the Victorian era, when newer drugs became available. The BMA team told the peers that once drugs were developed, it was likely they would be administered in the future by use of inhalers.

But the BMA said smoking a cannabis joint could be five times more carcinogenic than a tobacco cigarette. The BMA came down firmly against the legalisation of cannabis for recreational use.

"Because of the way in which it is smoked, a single cannabis joint delivers the equivalent in carbon monoxide, irritants and carcinogens of 4-5 tobacco cigarettes and carries similar cardiovascular and respiratory health risks including the risk of lung cancer," said Professor Heather Ashton, Emeritus Professor of Clinical Psychopharmacology.

(Ed. note: "The way in which it is smoked" is a function of marijuana prohibition, not inherent in the plant. If these health risks were real, they would then be iatrogenic, that is caused by the very doctors who support the prohibition that causes the risk, which they then use to justify keeping control over our bodies!)

Professor Ashton, who was the consultant writer for the BMA report, Therapeutic uses of Cannabis, told the peers that her own students in Newcastle were also reporting dependency on cannabis, which was stronger now than 10 or 20 years ago.

The BMA is calling for research into developing synthetic forms of cannabis to avoid the side effects - including getting ‘high’ - in the use of the drug for therapeutic use.

The health risks associated with smoking cannabis, including possible passive smoking by the families of cannabis users, reinforced the BMAs case for new forms of the drug to be developed.