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UK: Pot luck
Mike Verdin The Times
Tuesday 21 Dec 2004 Fortune has at least handed GW Pharmaceuticals the chance to exploit one of the oldest of drugs. By Mike Verdin, Times Online "Psst. I need cannabis. Only the best gear. "It's got to have enjoyed positive preliminary results in a phase three, multi-centre double-blind, randomised, placebo-controlled trial to assess its effects on spasticity in 189 patients with multiple sclerosis." Arguably the West's first legal cannabis in decades is about to hit the streets. High street chemists in Canada, at least. But don't blame the country's 50,000 multiple sclerosis sufferers, many of whom swear by the painkilling effects of cannabis, if it takes a while to get used to buying the drug from white-coated pharmacists rather than dealers in hooded jackets. Let alone to get used to a medicinal version, Sativex, which is sprayed on the tongue rather than drawn through a Rizla. It has taken years, and a series of court battles, for Canada's so-called "medical pot users", who claim to take cannabis for its medicinal rather than recreational qualities, to bring today's outline approval for Sativex. They first had to fight for consent for people with debilitating illness to smoke marijuana, then force permission to supply it, before today's decision heralding a more coherent policy. They tackled Government concerns over sourcing cannabis. While illegal marijuana growers fear raids by authorities, authorities feared raids by dealers, prompting them to sanction only cannabis derived from plants grown underground in a disused mine in Manitoba. The resulting drug was "disgusting", cognoscenti said. What is more, it cost $150 an ounce compared with a $100 an ounce from a besneakered dealer for the real thing. The plants from which Sativex are made, however, are grown at a secret location in England. A mysterious site, too, given that it enjoys enough sun to nurture a plant more typically linked to the Caribbean and Mediterranean. Still, GW Pharmaceuticals, which makes Sativex, lays great claims by the drug. It is just a pity that Sativex is set to be available only in Canada when UK officials have been assessing the drug for more than a year longer. The latest setback to UK approval came earlier this month when advisers to the Medicines Healthcare Products Regulatory Agency questioned Sativex's efficacy. Which appeared bizarre considering the wealth of data GW claims for the drug, and, indeed, millennia of anecdotal evidence. What pot smoker has not warbled of the drug's soothing effects - which have made it a candidate as a painkiller - and of the subsequent "munchies", which have rendered legal cannabis a candidate for stimulating appetites in cancer patients? It may also help sufferers of glaucoma, the eye disease, and stem nausea in chemotherapy patients. The irony is that GW is having such problems winning approval for Sativex when many drugs which have won official consent - such as Merck's Vioxx, AstraZeneca's Iressa and Pfizer's Celebrex - have proved duffers. Investors have already got the message. How AstraZeneca shareholders would welcome the 10 per cent rise which GW Pharmaceuticals stock enjoyed early this morning. Now is the time for regulators too to seek salvation underground. If not in the depths of a Manitoba mine.
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