The medical high life or just a smoky remnant of a sixties dream?
The scientific briefing with Luke Boulter
For the last half a century, marijuana has faced a tormented battle in the public eye: still today it is associated with the ever fading ideals of the ‘free-love’ sixties, or more commonly with the red-eyed ‘stoner’ of our decade. However, in the smoke of this heated battle over the rights and wrongs of drug use, has the benefit of marijuana been lost, is it salvageable, or are those who endorse its benefits clinging on to the hope of legalisation?
Last week medical use of marijuana was vetoed by The US Food and Drug Administration (The FDA). Marijuana, it is claimed, is not a legitimate medicine because there is no hard evidence to show its safety or effectiveness. Marijuana researchers argue political obstacles are making it almost impossible to conduct research and, as a result, are asking for looser restrictions on marijuana as a medication. The FDA’s statement contradicts a 1999 report by the US Institute of Medicine (IOM) suggesting that marijuana had the potential to treat pain, nausea and anorexia. Since then, 11 US states have legalised the medicinal use of marijuana.
Evidence, however, does seem to be more than anecdotal; there have been long and intensive studies that have yielded a plethora of results, some condoning, others deploring the use of marijuana as a medical agent.
Marijuana plants, like all others, have chemical pathways which result in the production of compounds known as secondary metabolites. These metabolites do not generally serve any intrinsic purpose, that is the plant can operate quite happily without them. However, by producing these compounds, the plant in question infers an advantage over its neighbour, (e.g. it is less attractive to caterpillars, thus it is more likely to survive and thrive.) The active compound in marijuana that we can exploit is Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), it is this compound that gives the ‘high’ sensation. Coincidentally, TCH is a very close relation to nicotine, caffeine and morphine (known as canabinoids), all legally used in medicine or recreation.
There is an increasingly large body of evidence suggesting that those who smoke a lot of marijuana can develop symptoms commonly associated with acute mental illness, and even light, or occasional smokers exhibit signs of minor psychosis and paranoia, as well as mild memory loss. It is these concerns that are forcing the UK government to reconsider the down grading of marijuana to Class C - a piece of legislation that is still only a couple of years old. Lambros Messinis of the University Hospital of Patras in Greece believes it “definitely fogs your brain.” Messinis conducted a series of experiments that showed that those who have been smoking marijuana for 15 years can only recall seven of fifteen words in a memory exercise, those who have smoked the drug for 7 years can on average remember nine words and those who have never smoked marijuana could recall thirteen words of the fifteen they were given to memorise.
The results of this experiment are contested, however; Nadia Solowij suggests that the memory loss is an immediate result of the drug, but she admits that the degree to which memory returns after a prolonged abstention is at best under-researched.
There is a glimmer of light for medical marijuana, it appears that like some of its sister compounds it can be used as a medication. Eating low doses of THC, helps prevent arteries clogging up, at least in mice, great news in a nation where coronary heart disease is one of the biggest killers.
François Mach at University Hospital in Geneva manipulated the way a cell naturally recognises THC and reduces the risks of atherosclerosis (clogging of the arteries). Sure enough, when fed 1 milligram of THC per kilogram of bodyweight - a low dose that should not have any psychotropic effects - to mice susceptible to atherosclerosis, it greatly slowed its progress. Ideally, using THC as a basis, the drug can be chemically manipulated to bind only to the required cell types, this way there would be reduced clogging of the arteries, and without the psychotic side effects that seem to blight such medical advances.
A new weight loss drug that works by blocking a cannabinoid receptor in the brain has had “modest” success at helping people both lose weight and keep it off, researchers say. The patients on the drug also showed improvement in risk factors for cardiovascular disease beyond what would be expected from shedding on average 3lbs alone. The researchers found that patients taking the larger dose were able to lose significantly more weight than those on placebo.
The pill also appears to help in maintaining a new, lower weight. In the second part of the study, patients who had received the active drug were offered it for a second year. A 20mg dose in the second year seemed to be ample in allowing people to maintain their low body weights; those taking the lower dose or the placebo put some weight back on.
The researchers suggest that sustained weight loss may require “continuous long-term treatment”. That may be good news for drug manufacturers, but a concern to people who may spend decades on a pill whose long-term effects are unknown.
Each drug that is tested goes through a stringent set of tests, but, despite this, marijuana-based therapies seem to have been shackled by their association with the ‘high life.’ I am not suggesting that recreational use of marijuana is right or wrong, but if we want to manipulate it to the benefit of our increasingly weighty world then the stigma that is associated with this drug must be shed.
