Pubdate: Mon, 10 Apr 2000 Source: San Francisco Chronicle (CA) Copyright: 2000 San Francisco Chronicle Contact: http://www.sfgate.com/chronicle/ Forum: http://www.sfgate.com/conferences/ Author: Lawrence K. Altman, New York Times Note: Much information is available on the UK Medicinal Cannabis web site: http://www.medicinal-cannabis.com MARIJUANA INGREDIENTS COULD HOLD HEALTH FIRM'S POT OF GOLD Cannabis Medicines Wouldn't Be Smoked Iowa City, Iowa -- By cultivating marijuana and testing the most promising of its more than 100 ingredients, a British pharmaceutical company hopes to develop drugs for a variety of ailments, a company official said at the first national conference for health professionals on the medical uses for marijuana. The privately owned company, GW Pharmaceuticals Ltd. of Salisbury, England, is ``trying to turn an illegal plant into a pharmaceutically regulated product'' by developing cannabis-based medicines that are not smoked, said Dr. David C. Hadorn, the company's North American medical director. GW is studying what it believes will be the most promising ingredients of marijuana in a structured research program. Earlier this month, the British government approved the company's plans to advance to the next stage of testing, for effectiveness, among people with multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury and other conditions that produce severe pain and muscle spasms. Six healthy volunteers had earlier taken four different preparations several times over a period of several weeks in the earliest phase of testing, for safety. Full-scale testing eventually will involve about 2,000 patients in England, Canada and the United States, and the hope is to develop a licensed product by 2003, Hadorn said. The University of Iowa's colleges of nursing and medicine sponsored the two-day conference to help health care professionals and providers learn how to obtain and properly use medical marijuana. Melanie C. Dreher, the nursing school's dean, said the conference was needed because thousands of Americans use marijuana medically even though it is illegal in most states. Voters in at least seven states (Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington) have approved initiatives intended to make marijuana legal for medical purposes. But many doctors are afraid to recommend it because the federal government has threatened to prosecute them. In an interview, Dreher -- who has researched marijuana use for many years - -- spoke of a nurse's experience with the father of a man with cancer. The father told the nurse that marijuana had eased his son's nausea and pain at home. Taking the hint, the nurse rigged the son's intravenous tubing to a wheelchair to allow them to go off while the son smoked a marijuana cigarette. The therapy allowed the son a more comfortable death. The American Medical Association supported the Iowa conference by awarding doctor participants credits toward their continuing education. No government officials were among the 250 patients, doctors, nurses and lawyers who attended the conference and at telecasts in seven medical centers in the United States and Canada. Dr. David Satcher, the surgeon general of the Public Health Service, declined an invitation, Mathre said. In a government-commissioned study a year ago, the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences said some of the ingredients in marijuana are potentially effective in treating pain, nausea and severe weight loss from AIDS. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake