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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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UK: Transcript: Cannabis From The Chemist
Panorama, BBC
Sunday 04 Nov 2001 Credits: Reporter, Steve Bradshaw; Film Camera, Brendan McGinty; Sound Recordist, Matthew Jackson; Dubbing Mixer, Andy Smedley; VT Editor, Boyd Nagle; Graphic Design, Kaye Huddy, Julie Tritton; Film Research, Eamonn Walsh Videos: This documentary is currently (at least right now, we do not know if it will be archived) available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/progs/panorama/latest.ram A followup forum discussion video is also currently available at http://news.bbc.co.uk/olmedia/cta/progs/01/forums/panorama/cannabis05nov.ram (as this is posted a transcript has not been produced). CANNABIS FROM THE CHEMIST STEVE BRADSHAW: Marihuana, cannabis, grass - they used to say it just drove you crazy. Now it's being grown legally in secret in the South of England and tested in trials filmed exclusively by Panorama. Prof GRINSPOON: Cannabis will eventually be seen as the wonder drug of the 21st Century. BRADSHAW: All year the row over cannabis has been growing hotter than ever. Baroness GREENFIELD: You might literally be blowing your mind. BRADSHAW: Now we have the first results from the trials. DR NOTCUTT: We've seen their pain scores go down to zero. BRADSHAW: Results that have already influenced the government's policy on recreational cannabis and could soon mean medicinal cannabis from the chemist. Beirut 1982 [News broadcast] The French Foreign Legion Paratroopers have been reconnoitring some of the physicians....... BRADSHAW: Meet patient 002. Alex Ure used to fight with the French Foreign Legion, he had to leave because of a severe spinal condition made worse by parachute jumps. ALEX: The pain got so bad once or twice, I actually ready to commit suicide. I wanted rid of it, I just couldn't take no more. BRADSHAW: And morphine? That's supposed to work, isn't it? ALEX: The morphine did work but in a higher dosage, and that was when you were like a zombie, you just sat there. March 2000 : Police Foundation recommends softer line on cannabis BRADSHAW: Last year, as pressure to liberalise cannabis laws began to grow, Alex was enlisted in a pilot study into medicinal cannabis in East Anglia. The 23 patients suffered from pain caused by nerve damage for which other drugs can prove ineffective. They were given cannabis extract sprayed under tongue, safer than smoking it. Alex says the cannabis eased the pain so much he was even able to have sex again. ALEX: For five years the old willie would never work. It was because of the stress of the back.. I've no idea what it was, but since I've been on the trials, my middle wicket has decided it actually works, and of course when it did work I got Wendy with me and - bang! A new baby! BRADSHAW: Daughter Kayley Eleanor was born last February. Being on a medical trial, Alex was supposed to make sure he didn't get his partner pregnant. But if he broke the rules, nobody's too worried now. ALEX: Three to four years ago if I had a baby to actually hold and bend down and play with a child I couldn't do it before. I can do anything with the child now. With the help of this cannabis, that's my future, that's what I've got to look forward to. Dr WILLY NOTCUTT James Paget Hospital, Great Yarmouth I think undoubtedly cannabis does take the credit for Alex and Wendy's baby. Quite how this is I'm not sure. I think essentially it's because his pain has been sufficiently controlled to enable him to engage in sex again. I think there are huge possibilities for cannabis in pain and maybe many other conditions as well. BRADSHAW: But could Alex's results have been a freak? Much bigger trials were needed. The first major commercial cannabis trials in the world. They were centred on Oxford and on multiple sclerosis, or MS, which affects over 80,000 people in Britain. Through the year we followed three severely affected MS patients all hoping not for a cure but for some relief from their disabling symptoms. Jan 2001 Police: Belgium decriminalises cannabis for personal use BRADSHAW: Sandra lives in Banbury, she's a mother of two. She's had MS for almost 25 years. Her big hope was that the cannabis extract would relieve the tremor in her hand. SANDRA: I used to really enjoy my meals, but now it's just a case of shovelling it in. BRADSHAW: A risky brain operation called a thalamotomy helped a bit but only with one hand. SANDRA: The other hand doesn't work at all. The other hand is as my right hand was before I had the thalamotomy. (demonstrates uncontrollable shaking left hand) That's as good as it gets. BRADSHAW: Have you ever tried cannabis before? SANDRA: No. Well... yes (laughs) that's not true. My brother got some for me and it was just a block of resin and I baked it in a cake and I found it did help with pain at night so I'd always have a chocolate crispy cake at night before I went to bed. BRADSHAW: Over in Whitney Tyrone's morning routine is just beginning. Tyrone is in worse shape than Sandra. It takes two carers and a winch just to get him up, and it takes them over an hour. He's tried the odd joint before and found it did help a little, but he's promised to stop while he's waiting to take the cannabis extract on the trial. He makes do with tobacco to help him relax. TYRONE: It will just help my legs to flop down in a minute. BRADSHAW: Tyrone was diagnosed with MS 20 years ago. He stayed active much longer than doctors expected but he's now almost completely lost the use of his limbs. One symptom is an involuntary tightening of the muscles. TYRONE: There's no pain with it, it's just really annoying because you can't do anything about it. I'm hanging to this chair with my bum at the moment without being... I'm so close to the edge of it. BRADSHAW: I mean it does look absolutely exhausting. TYRONE: Oh it is. I feel as though I've been ten rounds with Mike Tyson. BRADSHAW: Tyrone doesn't expect a cure, he's just hoping to get back a little dignity. TYRONE: I would like to be able to sleep, I would like to be able to sit, feed myself properly and be able to hold a pen and sign my name. BRADSHAW: The St Mary's Girls school at Wantage, model for the famous fictional girls school "St Trinians". In the morning the chaplain takes the service. It's been a while since his wife Jo has been able to join him. Jo has the most debilitating MS of any patient we met. She also needs carers and winches to get up in the morning. Jo was an active young woman in good health until the mid 80s. Now at 58 she's almost totally paralysed. JO: I can move this arm a little and I can move my head and neck. BRADSHAW: And that's it? JO: Yes, but I can move.. I've got a lot of movement in my head, fortunately, but apparently that's very often the last thing to go anyway. Feb 2001 : Report underlines mental health risks from smoking cannabis BRADSHAW: Once she's up, Jo continues to work as a reading tutor and plays an active part in the school's daily life. But you're normally okay at night, sleeping at night? JO: Oh yes, wonderfully. BRADSHAW: Dreams? JO: Yes, wonderful, I chop logs and I ride bicycles and run marathons and things. There's no wheelchair in my dreams. It's all me - usually working quite hard. BRADSHAW: And then you wake up. JO: Yes, but I don't mind because I enjoyed it while I had it. I've tried pretty well all the alternative therapies and none of them really helped me. BRADSHAW: Had you ever thought of taking cannabis? JO: I've thought of it, I've never done it because I've got too much to lose really. My husband's job I think would be in jeopardy and we live in a tied house and I can just imagine the fun the local papers would have with school chaplain found hanging around pub wanting cannabis and so on, and it just isn't worth it really. BRADSHAW: This is the effect Jo's generation used to think cannabis had on young women. In the 30s cannabis was demonised by propaganda films, films that showed young women losing their minds as well as their morals, though the effects we were supposed to fear are just the ones many people like. But times change. Fifteen thousand cannabis plants are now being grown quite legally at a secret location in the home counties. Eight feet high with, carefully studied but never smoked, psychoactive seed heads. The company behind the trials is breeding from strains familiar to connoisseurs. The aim - to find an extract that can help patients without getting them high. How many conditions could cannabis based medicines treat? Dr PHILIP ROBSON Medical Director, Clinical Trials Multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury, inflammatory conditions like rheumatoid arthritis, irritable bowel syndrome, Crohn's disease, osteomyelitis, there's a number of painful conditions which aren't really well helped by morphine and other strong analgesics, cancer pain perhaps is an example of that. And then you've got the symptoms related to HIV AIDS, perhaps more speculative things cannabis may be useful in certain mental conditions, mental illnesses. On and on it goes. BRADSHAW: Early results from the historic British trials are being watched keenly across the world, not least at the prestigious Harvard Medical School in the USA, base of one of the world's leading proponents of medicinal cannabis. Prof LESTER GRINSPOON M.D. Harvard Medical School I believe that cannabis, because it is so versatile as a medicine, will eventually be used by millions of people around the planet. In fact, like penicillin was considered the wonder drug of the 40s, because it was versatile, it was non-toxic, it was inexpensive. I think that cannabis is very likely eventually to be seen as a wonder drug of the opening of the 21st Century. BRADSHAW: But in another famous university town in Oxford, centre of the new trials, those claims are strongly questioned by Britain's best known brain scientist. Baroness GREENFIELD CBE Prof of Pharmacology, Oxford University The very term 'wonder drug' is very frightening. I think it's important to realise that we are dealing with a drug that does affect the chemistry of the brain. Now at the moment there's lots of experiments, both INT the test tube and in laboratories as well as clinically to try and find out just how dangerous this drug is and what it's doing to the brain. BRADSHAW: At the Oxford clinic, Sandra, with a new haircut, has come for her first dose of cannabis extract. March 2001 : Met Police propose softer line on cannabis BRADSHAW: Over the next two months she'll be given four different formulas to take home. One formula will contain just scented water as a placebo. Placebos are used on trials so doctors can make sure it's the medicine working, not the patient's imagination. May 2001 : US Supreme Court blocks medical use of cannabis Tyrone's start date has been delayed. Patients have to be carefully screened for conditions like schizophrenia, heart problems or high blood pressure which might put them at risk from cannabis. Tyrone's only problem, his blood pressure was too high until today. TYRONE: I've actually been told today that my blood pressure is fine and I'm just waiting for the hospital to ring me and make an appointment. BRADSHAW: And what happens then? TYRONE: I go up there and hopefully I shall then be able to go on the trial. BRADSHAW: July, the debate is heating up and it's Jo's first day in the clinic. JO: Well they've accepted me on the trial and this is day one, and I'm not really sure myself. I know I'm going to be here a long time which is why Roger is going fishing. July 2001 : 'Decriminalise cannabis' says Mo Mowlam BRADSHAW: The chaplain's wife, ready to risk her first high, is about to take her first dose of cannabis extract. ROGER: I mean I appreciate that it's not going to be some sort of final miracle cure, she's not going to go home, she's going to be able to make the beds and walk around. But, if there was just a little bit less pain, a little bit less anxiety, a little bit more fluid movement then that would be absolutely tremendous. smoke cannabis and they don't get into great difficulties. But as a psychiatrist, what I see are the people who do get into difficulties, people who've smoked heavily for a number of years begin to become more paranoid, more anxious, more suspicious. Then they begin to get deluded and hallucinated, and they really present to us with a picture that looks just like paranoid schizophrenia. So we have lots and lots of patients, my clinics, my unit, the units in this hospital are full of people who have gone psychotic following taking large amounts of cannabis. Now if they then stop taking the cannabis, then they pretty well recover and they do really well. If they continue taking the drug then they do very badly and end up as a chronic psychotic person. BRADSHAW: Do you have any concerns about what might happen long-term to the people in these trials? Baroness GREENFIELD CBE Prof of Pharmacology Oxford University My concerns are not so much for the patients because if they are having help and its working, that's marvellous and I hope no on would stop that happening. My concerns are how those data are interpreted. If people think this is giving them the green light to just go and get high indiscriminately, I am very concerned, and I hope that enough floor space is given if you like forum space is given to actually ventilate the scientific arguments for and against so that we can really draw a clear distinction between a medicine and a drug of abuse. BRADSHAW: Mid summer, Sandra is close to the end of her trial. She's now allowed to take the spray she thought worked best, and there do seem to be clear benefits. BRADSHAW: You had trouble picking up the lighter on the table before. Is that something you could manage now? SANDRA: Well, it most probably is. BRADSHAW: And you can hold it still. SANDRA: Yes. BRADSHAW: That's fantastic. You simply couldn't do that before, could you. SANDRA: No. BRADSHAW: And you can take it back? SANDRA: Yes. BRADSHAW: And put it down. SANDRA: Yes. BRADSHAW: And that really is new. SANDRA: That's marvellous. That makes me feel so normal. BRADSHAW: That afternoon, time to decode her results. Under the rules doctor and patient are in the dark about which formula she's taken when. Dr ROBSON: Sandra, hello. SANDRA: Hello. How are you? Dr ROBSON: We meet at last. SANDRA: Yes, at last. Dr ROBSON: So, how's it been going? SANDRA: Well I feel so much better than I have done for months and months and months. BRADSHAW: Three of the four formula she's taken contain various combinations of the active chemicals in cannabis including THC which causes the high. The other contained the placebo, just scented water. Dr ROBSON: So three and four you thought was the treatment that was best for you. SANDRA: I now think it is better for me than three or two or one. Dr ROBSON: Okay, well the period for what in fact the high THC version, the period when you were taking a huge number of sprays turns out to be placebo. SANDRA: [to assistant] I kept telling you not to get stressed out about it (laughing). BRADSHAW: How typical is Sandra? Dr PHILIP ROBSON Medical Director, Clinical Trials I think she's very typical in a sense that all of the patients have been very severely handicapped by the symptoms of their disorder, which is usually multiple sclerosis, and it's been striking that most people have had a positive response. I mean if you took that twenty patients that we've initially seen, perhaps two or three would not have been helped because they'd have been too sensitive to the effects of THC, in other words getting intoxicated before they got effects. Another fourteen would be given at least some significant clinical relief of at least one symptom which had been previously intractable with standard therapy, and then two or three patients would have experienced symptom relief which really goes beyond that, in fact might reach the level which would transform their lives. That's striking. BRADSHAW: Just one problem, as often happens in medical trials, some patients have been feeling better even when they were on the placebo. It turns out that when Sandra started riding, she was not on cannabis at all. Now when you thought you were riding better because of the cannabis, it turns out that it was the placebo. SANDRA: Really? BRADSHAW: Did you know that? SANDRA: No. BRADSHAW: That was during the placebo period. Does that surprise you? SANDRA: Well, it doesn't.. it does surprise me because I felt much more able to do it. But I don't know whether it was me just telling myself that you will do it. BRADSHAW: I mean do you think, because you thought you were riding better and it was the placebo, do you think it could all be in your head imagining your better? SANDRA: No. No. The illness isn't in my head. BRADSHAW: Meanwhile Roger and Jo are away on holiday at a hotel at Sandringham in Norfolk. Jo's two weeks into the trials. They were both looking relaxed when I went to see them. Hi, how are you doing? How are you? JO: I'm fine thank you. BRADSHAW: How are you feeling? How are you feeling? JO: Wonderful, it's amazing. If it's the placebo, it's working. I'm very much more relaxed. People say my face looks less strained. And Roger, pick up my arm, look. ROGER: You see, before that would all be stiff. BRADSHAW: That was really stiff before. JO: That would have been a sight. ROGER: So can now actually move it which is lovely. BRADSHAW: So it's not all in your head, it's in your arm as well. JO: Well if I could have done this with my mind I think I would have done. And actually I had physiotherapy the day after they started me and one of her little tricks is to lean my right back and make me lift my legs and I can usually do six and she kind of calls it ten as I struggle - and I did twenty-five. BRADSHAW: Twenty-five...? JO: On the following day after they actually started. BRADSHAW: So you'd describe the effect as? JO: Miraculous, really extraordinary. I mean I've never had any sort of relief of this kind and as I told you, tried pretty well every alternative therapy that there is. BRADSHAW: When Jo says miraculous, that's not a word you would use.. either of you would use lightly. ROGER: No, it isn't. I mean when you have somebody whose arms and legs are stiff and difficult to move, then you discover that the person can actually move their hands easily, and that they're much, much lighter and their face is lit up and is much happier, then I think you have to use a word like that. BRADSHAW: Like? ROGER: Miraculous. It is, it has made a remarkable difference to Jo and that can be nothing but good. BRADSHAW: At home in Whitney there's good news for Tyrone too. Some of the old stiffness has gone. Today he's getting up with the help of just one carer. TYRONE: It's certainly easier to manoeuvre me. My legs just bend as I get up, instead of having to have a cigarette to relax me in the morning, I don't need that anymore. BRADSHAW: You mean an ordinary cigarette. TYRONE: An ordinary cigarette. BRADSHAW: You don't even need that any longer. TYRONE: No. BRADSHAW: And you think it's because...? TYRONE: Well it's because of the cannabis without a doubt. BRADSHAW: So what do you want to happen both of you now is...? TYRONE: For cannabis to be legalised. BRADSHAW: Medicinally. TYRONE: Not just... Well.... WIFE: How long have you got (laughs) I mean it's a big issue isn't it, legalisation of cannabis. BRADSHAW: Summer in London, high on grass, the national cannabis rally. The campaigners want an end to laws that last year meant over 80,000 cannabis prosecutions and cautions. The early medical trial results have already helped persuade the government to ease controls over recreational cannabis. Possession for personal use will no longer be an arrestable offence. If we find cannabis does work as a medicine, what effect will that have on the whole debate? Prof LESTER GRINSPOON M.D. Harvard Medical School It's going to have an enormous effect because cannabis is such a versatile medicine. Many people are going to be using it as a medicine, and they and the people who take care of them and the people who observe them, who surround them, are going to have to reconsider their notions of the toxicity of this substance, and as they come to understand that it's a relatively benign substance, this is going to bring about the decriminalisation of cannabis. BRADSHAW: That would mean cannabis or marihuana not just from the chemist but like Amsterdam, cannabis from the coffee house. But the government have ruled out going that far, and even under the more relaxed laws, supplying cannabis could still get you five years. How do you react when people say look, these trials are going to show cannabis is safe, could benefit lots of people and therefore we should decriminalise it? Baroness GREENFIELD CBE Prof of Pharmacology, Oxford University I think the dangers are that people might think they are taking a drug that has been proved to be harmless. What you must bear in mind is that there is more to your brain and your body than merely acute death. It's not so much that you're going to die, it is more that if you are changing the chemical landscape of your brain, as life does generally, but if you're doing it in this very large scale way, then perhaps - and I say perhaps - you are running the risk that you are changing your configurations and the kind of mind that you might have. You might literally be blowing your mind. BRADSHAW: September and the results are starting to come in, including from the pilot study into chronic pain in Great Yarmouth. Patient 002 is doing fine, and the other twenty-two patients with nerve damage pain report relief too, if not always quite so dramatic. ALEX: I can't really describe the pain no more because for the last seven months I've had no pain. What can I say about pain? I'm not the right person to talk to now. I'm free from pain. Dr WILLY NOTCUTT James Paget Hospital, Great Yarmouth The results so far have exceeded what I dared hope for. My previous experience with other similar types of material had led me to believe we might get a third better, and if we got a half.. 50% of our patients improved I'd say great, we were there. But we're seeing 80% of our patients getting good quality benefit from the cannabis. For some they have got almost total relief of their pain. BRADSHAW: Total relief? Dr NOTCUTT: Total relief. BRADSHAW: Complete pain relief from cannabis! Dr NOTCUTT: We've seen their pain scores go down to zero. BRADSHAW: It's the autumn term. Jo and Tyrone have had mixed results. Both now know they're taking the real drug. But Tyrone has been having trouble finding a dose that can help his paralysed back without making him high or nauseous, and Jo's early hopes haven't yet been fulfilled, but neither are ready to give up. JO: I got onto a higher dose and had a period of feeling out of it and rather sort of out of control, but now we've reduced the dose I'm feeling very much more hopeful and better. BRADSHAW: Still feel it's a miracle? Not quite. JO: In terms of what other help I've been offered over the years, it is, because I've had all kinds of things to try and help me. I can't remember the names of all the drugs but the sort of muscle relaxants that they give you have all had rather unpleasant side effects. Whereas this, I think now we've got the dose nearer to what I should have, it's helpful without being at all hindersome. BRADSHAW: If you haven't found the right dose now, could it be that there isn't one? TYRONE: No. No, I really do think it's going to take a long time of adding little sprays here and then taking a spray away there, but it will come. BRADSHAW: Sandra has had the best results of all and her best summer for years. She knows she won't be cured but it has helped some of her symptoms. Of course Sandra could just be feeling better because she's on trial, but she's convinced it's the drug that's helped her. So what has cannabis meant for you? SANDRA: A whole new outlook on life because of having a good night's sleep, pain free, and being able to feed myself breakfast, feed myself lunch, feed myself dinner, it makes me feel normal which is all I'm asking. Please, please, give me the cannabis and let me feel normal. BRADSHAW: With the government optimistic that the trials will be successful, we could see the drug in the chemist in just two years - four thousand years after cannabis was first used as a medicine.
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