Recent articles on Cannabis - The jury is out while NICE dithers

[desquinn]

Following on the heels of the first Scottish Medicinal cannabis clinic in Stirling the other day. While the current focus is on epilepsy you can see from the clinics site that chronic pain is a consideration.

Article here: bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-...

Within our community we have a lot of interest in CBD and medicinal cannabis, and it is promising that these clinics will allow some observational research to be carried out. However, the medical profession and patients really need good clinical trial evidence to ensure medicinal cannabis treatments are suitable or not. Not being able to see how cannabis works alongside other medicines or within the human body, limits confidence in prescribing. This also causes an ethical dilemma for health care professionals as they can use their clinical judgment to prescribe any medicine but need to confident it will be of benefit as a treatment AND that it will not cause harm.

This very dilemma is explored in the recent Guardian article below. While it is focussing on use within Australia there are many parallels with our own exploration of medicinal cannabis. The conversation is not a simple one and people with fibromyalgia are desperate for a solution to their chronic pain. They are being forced off "evil" opioids even when they feel these may be working for them.

What we do know is that even before the pressure on the health service in these covid times the service for patients with chronic pain was inadequate and choices were limited and often difficult to access. Not dying from chronic pain can leave other conditions being prioritised and people with fibromyalgia enduring a life limiting co-existence with pain.

This leaves us vulnerable to the next thing and hope that it may help. We feel that our community has plentiful anecdotal evidence that shows that there is an opportunity to research whether some element of cannabis may help us, but it needs to be good quality research so that a doctor can ethically prescribe it.

I cannot argue with Michael Vagg's take on the current evidence base, but it is showing a lack of good quality research rather than an absence of benefit. Clinical trials of good standard that can answer this question are needed. Our governments need to help people with their chronic pain better than is done right now. Lost income, productivity or just human decency should be reason enough to move people from existence to living once more.

theguardian.com/society/com...

[Alb2]

Many years ago I attended an international medical conference in which a team of Israeli professors spoke about how they were using medical cannabis for various health problems with good research based evidence to support their findings. In particular it was successful in preventing chemotherapy related nausea and vomiting. It puzzles me as an HCP why the UK is not exploring the myriad evidence already out there.