CANNABIS CAMPAIGN: A YEAR THAT CHANGED MINDS

The medical benefits of the drug are now widely accepted. Vanessa Thorpe
meets the research team developing a plant that could transform lives

NOT EVERY Dutch greenhouse the aeroplanes fly over on the descent to the
runway at Schipol airport is full of tulip bulbs. One cluster of glass
outhouses, in particular, contains a very different crop.

At a secret location between the airport and the city of Amsterdam a small
team of highly motivated scientists is working on the world's first patented
cannabis plant product. So far, their chief and only customer is a British
doctor.

Slide back the door to one of HortaPharm's large greenhouses and the smell
is overwhelming. Rows of cannabis plants of different types and sizes
stretch out into the middle distance. But, contrary to appearances, this
research farm is no paradise for the pleasure-seeking puffer.

"It looks like dope, but really it's hope," explains the proprietor,
American entrepreneur David Watson. What he means is that many of these
plants have been specifically bred not to produce an intoxicating resin or
hashish. Indeed, HortaPharm hopes to thwart the aims of the average
recreational user.

The team are already close to finding their own commercial Holy Grail -
seeds that will produce a one-off, female, seedless crop of plants with no
psychotropic effects (or THC highs, to the layman) for the consumer. Why,
you might ask, would they want to do that?

The answer is that Mr Watson and his Amsterdam-based scientists are working
to create a stable, plant-based medical product. They want to isolate the
beneficial effects of cannabis' various properties and then reproduce them,
ad infinitum, from specialised parent plants.

Mr Watson and his Dutch colleague, biochemist Etienne de Meijer, are
confident that by using their own exclusive cross-breeding methods, they can
develop healthy plants which will combine only the desired chemical make-up
of individual medicines.

There will be no generational deterioration and no genetic difference
between each plant because they will be bred from themselves: they will be
cloned. "You can clone a plant 10 times," explains Mr de Meijer, "and every
time it will be exactly the same."

Mr de Meijer has developed his own technique of "self-progeny" - or
"selfing" - where he turns half of one female plant temporarily into a male.
Fertilising a plant with itself in this way means the same genetic make-up
can be reproduced.

"I can make 20,000 clones with 'selfed' parents in two weeks," he says.
"Humans may degenerate from inbreeding, but these plants do not. I'm sure I
am the first person to apply this method of inbreeding to cannabis and I
found the selfing process was amazingly simple."

But the unique research has no market in Holland. "Because the sale of the
drug is tolerated in coffee shops, there is no interest - though people
don't really know what they are buying," says Mr Watson.

As a result, the seeds that HortaPharm is producing are passed straight on
to Britain to take their place in the soil at the ground-breaking facility
set up this summer by Dr Geoffrey Guy in south-east England. "We hooked up
with Dr Guy in January and right now all we are doing is providing the basic
building blocks for his work," says Mr Watson. "We were rather surprised
that it would happen in England first."

HortaPharm's sample plants are analysed in the laboratory with a gas
chromatographer and with each new batch the team homes in on the plant's
distinct chemical components or cannabinoids - THC, CBD, CBC, CBG and THCV.
When Dr Guy completes his medical research in Britain, HortaPharm will breed
plants to supply the right combination of active ingredients for his
treatments. "Once Dr Guy has worked out what he wants in chemical form, we
will find him the right physical characteristics, too, by combining
desirable features from plants found around the world - high-resin
production and resistance to disease," says Mr de Meijer.

HortaPharm is only interested in developing female plants that are sterile,
but this is not just to protect their genetic copyright. "If a plant is not
kept busy producing seeds, all its energy can go into resin production,"
says Mr de Miejer.

Sitting at his computer screen in Amsterdam, Mr Watson can keep an eye on
the perimeter fence at Dr Guy's British farm via the internet. "The security
he has there is amazing," says Mr Watson, who flew out to plant the first
seeds there two months ago.

In June, Dr Guy's company, G W Pharmaceuticals, secured the first British
licence to grow the plant for medical purposes. By arrangement with the Home
Office, the doctor can farm cannabis plants and investigate their properties
with a view to marketing a cheap herbal-based answer to the debilitating
symptoms of MS, Glaucoma, Parkinson's, cancer, asthma and Aids.

A year ago today the Independent on Sunday launched its campaign to
decriminalise cannabis, attracting tremendous public attention. Five months
later, the IoS held a march, attended by more than 16,000 people, and
organised an influential Westminster Conference to look at drugs
legislation. Yesterday, hundreds of campaigners met again in Hyde Park to
demonstrate their continuing concerns.

But it is the case for legalising the medical use of the drug which has
gained most ground in the past 12 months. Key markers of this shift in
public perspective were the positive outcome of the British Medical
Association's report in November last year and the House of Lords' select
committee decision to investigate the question. The committee has yet to
publish its conclusions.

This week, even more powerful evidence of the useful properties of cannabis
was revealed in the work of the research team working under Dr Ian Meng at
the University of California. Researching on rats, Dr Meng has found the
brain stem circuit which is involved in the pain-suppressing activities of
morphine, but which is also activated by the consumption of cannabinoids.
"The medical arguments are really gaining ground," says Dr Meng. "There is
some proof now that the drug can help people."

Dr Guy also believes scientifically verifiable research is the only way
forward. Although he is looking at anecdotal patient evidence, he knows that
outside the laboratory it is impossible to establish exactly which
cannabinoids are effective.

Mr Watson of HortaPharm makes the same point: "Domestic users can make a
contribution, but they don't know the profile of the plant they are treating
themselves with. The average hashish in a coffee-shop product is 5 per cent
THC. We can already make it 30 per cent. So, what are they doing to it?" He
believes the bright future of the drug is contained in the greenhouses of
HortaPharm and GW Pharmaceuticals.

At his Amsterdam glasshouses, he nods conspiratorially at the
healthy-looking garden produce. "Don't say anything yet, but we are also
working on putting THC into tomatoes," he confides. Then he cackles
reassuringly: "Only kidding!"

e-mail your comments to cannabis@independent.co.uk

Checked-by: Rolf Ernst