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Doctors Begin NHS Cannabis Trials
By Hempology | July 3, 2002
From the Scotsman UK, June 30th, 2002
By Gethin Chamberlain
Hospital trials have begun on a cannabis spray intended to relieve the symptoms of multiple sclerosis sufferers and of other National Health Service patients in need of long-term pain-relief treatment.
Doctors began prescribing the drug and a capsule version to NHS patients at nine hospitals around Britain, including Gartnavel Hospital, Glasgow, after permission for the trials was granted earlier this year.
At the time, GW Pharmaceuticals, the British firm manufacturing the treatments, said it hoped to test the drug on up to 1,000 patients.
The trials come as ministers are said to be ready to press ahead with plans to reclassify cannabis, a move which will be seen as the effective decriminalisation of the drug.
David Blunkett, the Home Secretary, is expected to announce the changes later this month after a pilot scheme in south London, which allowed police to concentrate on more serious crimes, was judged to have been a success.
The purported medicinal benefits of cannabis have long been championed by MS sufferers, but until the start of the clinical trials they have had to buy the drug illegally.
If the trials are successful, the drug could be licensed by the Medicines Control Agency and made available on prescription by 2004.
Early results from the first two phases of the tests were said to have been encouraging, with MS sufferers and patients with spinal cord injuries reporting significant improvements in their symptoms.
GW Pharmaceuticals is expected to use up to 90 tonnes of the drug each year to produce enough for the trials, with 30 tonnes grown under greenhouses in the south of England.
The drug is administered to patients under the tongue, either in the form of a spray or a capsule.
Gartnavel Hospital is one of a number around the country taking part in the trials, after the west Glasgow hospitals ethics committee gave permission for the trials to go ahead. However, trials at Derriford Hospital, in Plymouth, have halted after a charity refused a £150,000 grant to extend the project.
MS sufferers have frequently complained that they have been criminalised by having to purchase the drug illegally, but, under the government’s proposals for the reclassification of cannabis, the drug should be more readily available and with less risk of prosecution.
Cannabis is currently classified as a class B drug, possession of which can bring a five-year prison sentence. As a class C drug, its possession would merit only a police warning or a small fine.
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