One of the biggest challenges of studying the cannabis plant has clearly been the fact that it’s illegal in much of the world. The next biggest challenge is the plant is extremely complex and can’t be studied like pharmaceutical drugs.
The cannabis plant contains hundreds of different compounds that work together to achieve different effects on the human body (known as the “entourage effect”). Every strain of cannabis has different amounts of these compounds and every human has a different number of cannabinoid receptors in their body to interact with these cannabis compounds. Oh, and how you consume cannabis can also produce different effects.
This is why it will take so long to study cannabis – there are just so many different variables that need to be tested.
The fact that these compounds work together is also why the pharmaceutical industry will not be able to easily insert itself into the cannabis industry:
This is the main reason why the pharmaceutical industry will never interact easily with the cannabis industry. The pure cannabinoids by themselves do not work well because they’ve evolved to work in a combinatorial fashion with other compounds in the plant, and human biochemistry has adapted so that the combination works to promote and maintain homeostasis. Individual pure cannabinoids have not been shown to have the same properties as the whole plant.”
President of Canada House, Alex Kroon, explained that it would cost hundreds of billions of dollars and over 100 years to study cannabis the same way pharmaceutical drugs are studied in his opening statement to the Senate subcommittee on Veterans Affairs:
Despite the challenges, the scientific evidence for medical cannabis continues to accumulate. Here are some highlights:
- Condition: Epilepsy
Double-blind study. 52% reduction in frequency of convulsive-seizures using CBD (Devinsky et al. 2017).
Link to study. - Condition: Epilepsy
43% reduction in monthly drop seizure frequency using CBD as an add-on therapy (Thiele et al. 2018).
Link to study. - Condition: Multiple sclerosis
11% reduction in pain with single inhalation of 9.4% THC (Ware et al. 2010).
Link to study. - Condition: Multiple sclerosis
2.74 point reduction on the modified Ashworth scale. Pain scores on a visual analogue scale were reduced by average 5.28 points more than with placebo (Corey-Bloom et al. 2012).
Link to study.
- Condition: Irritable Bowel Syndrome
Study of 21 patients with Crohn’s disease that were not responding to traditional therapies. 5 of the 11 in the cannabis group experienced complete remission and 10 of the 11 experienced improvement (Naftali et al. 2013).
Link to study.
Contact Canada House
Have questions about medical cannabis? Contact us: call 1-844-852-0020 or email info@canadahouse.ca.