CANNABIS MEDICAL USE TRIALS BACKED

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."

Checked-by: Melodi Cornett