INHALING POT CAN LOWER CHRONIC PAIN

Briefly inhaling cannabis three times a day eases a kind of chronic
pain that affects tens of thousands of Canadians -- without making
them high -- Montreal researchers are reporting.

The study, the first clinical trial in the world to allow patients to
take marijuana home with them and "self-dose," found that for people
with neuropathic pain -- a common and dreaded condition that causes
electric, stabbing pain -- smoking cannabis reduced pain, improved
mood and helped them sleep.

Three different potencies (2.5 per cent, six per cent and 9.4 per
cent) of THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, were tested against
a placebo, or "dummy" pot in 21 patients with neuropathic pain, none
of whom had responded to standard treatments.

Participants inhaled a single dose through a pipe three times daily
for five days, followed by a nine-day "washout" period. They were
instructed to inhale for five seconds while the cannabis was lit, hold
the smoke in their lungs for 10 seconds, and then exhale.

Pain was measured on an 11-point scale ranging from "no pain" to
"worst pain possible."

Patients reported less pain, better sleep and less anxiety when they
were smoking the highest concentration of THC, compared with the placebo.

It wasn't a massive reduction in pain: The average daily pain
intensity was 5.4 with 9.4 per cent THC, versus 6.1 with the placebo.

"But the patients that we were recruiting had to be patients that had
tried and failed all other conventional treatments," said lead author
Dr. Mark Ware, director of clinical research at the Alan Edwards Pain
Management Unit at the McGill University Health Centre.

Neuropathic pain -- which is caused by damage to nerves -- affects as
much as two per cent of the population. The Montreal study involved
patients with post-trauma or post-surgical pain -- radiating pain from
prolapsed discs, for example, or burning pain from an incision.

"Through no fault of the surgeon's, it's impossible to do an operation
without cutting through some nerves," Ware said. "For some people, for
some reason, even after the tissue has healed they have persistent
pain at the site of the operation.

"All of these were very refractory, very difficult pain problems to
resolve. Any improvement in pain was quite remarkable."

"We're not going to argue that smoked cannabis is the be-all and
end-all of pain management," Ware said.

"It simply opens the door to the fact that cannabinoids may be an
additional tool in the physician's tool box, along with other
medications and other non-pharmacological approaches."

During the study, "psychoactive effects" were rare: After more than
1,000 different "administrations" of cannabis over the course of the
study, people reported feeling "high" on only three occasions.