Subj: Cannabis medical use trials backed

Date: May 13, 1998

Source: Press & Journal

CANNABIS MEDICAL USE TRIALS BACKED

By David Perry

PEERS are poised to back a leading Aberdeen academic's call for full-
scale clinical trials on the medical use of cannabis.

Dr. Roger Pertwee received a sympathetic response from the influential
Lords science and technology committee after saying: "We are all keen to
see clinical trials set up."

Dr. Pertwee, reader in biomedical sciences in the Institute of Medical
Sciences, told the committee yesterday he had formed working groups of
senior scientists to draw up guidelines for trials using cannabis and
its derivatives for relieving the distress of patients suffering from MS
and other diseases involving extremely painful muscle spasms.

He said: "Perhaps the best way forward is for the department of health
to call for someone to mount a trial."

Stand-in committee chairman Lord Soulsby, a former president of the
Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons and professor of animal pathology,
led a cross-examination whose friendly tone left it clear the eventual
report on cannabis will take.

At one point Lord Butterworth, a former vice-chancellor of Warwick
University, agreed: "There is a need for clinical investigations."

Dr. Pertwee, president of the International Cannabinoid Research
Society, said the potential for drug derivatives for treating MS needed
more clinical study.

He said cannabis was an accepted medicine until 1971, when it was banned
and made it clear there was no evidence of its use leading to taking
hard drugs and that stopping caused only mild withdrawal symptoms.

Dr. Pertwee said there could be ways of avoiding the "psychotropic"
effects of the drug while using it or its derivatives to boost the
appetites of AIDS sufferers, curb the desire to eat sweets and
chocolates, calm the pain from limbs that have been amputated and treat
bronchial asthma and the eye disease glaucoma.

Lord Dixon-Smith, former chairman of the governors of Anglia Polytechnic
University, said: "It has endless possibilities."