By Dr. Thomas Stuttaford

(Ed. note: If cannabis were a new drug, then something like this piece might excusable. Instead, it only demonstrates the total lack of intellectual standards in "medical science" and journalism when the subject is cannabis. They really seem to want to pretend that there are not centuries of history, that there are not hundreds of millions of people who have used it, that Holland does not exist, that its medical uses have just been discovered, and – perhaps most of all -- that a movie called Reefer Madness had never been made.)

ARE THERE REAL USES FOR CANNABIS?

LAST year the British Medical Association recommended against the use of cannabis as medication but suggested that its derivatives, the cannabinoids, should be more thoroughly investigated.

There is evidence that many of these derivatives are remarkably safe and might be more effective than several remedies at present in use to treat, for instance, the spasms experienced in multiple sclerosis.

The British Medical Journal has recently reported that a committee of experts, to be headed by Sir William Asscher, has now been set up to study the role of cannabis and its derivatives in medicine. The same edition of the BMJ covered the result of random drug tests performed on recruits being called up for National Service in Italy.

The writer, as an experiment, had tried cannabis and experienced a psychotic reaction in which he thought others were controlling his thoughts. He also had a quite unprovoked flashback three days later.