Cannabis

Patients taking cannabis in capsule form are unable to control the dose as they can with careful inhaling. So the pharmaceutical industry has started developing THC aerosols and inhalers that don’t harm lungs. This makes it easier for patients to control their cannabis dose and prevents them from getting too disorientated

Marijuana – increasingly used for pain relief

A powerful herb which has been used in pain-relief for centuries. There’s just one hitch – it is illegal. Despite this, people are risking going to jail to sell cannabis to total strangers who say that they desperately need to use cannabis as a painkiller

Marijuana, cannabis, weed, Skunk, grass, pot – they’re all names for cannabis. For decades people have taken the plant for fun – but sick people are increasingly turning to the drug as a painkiller. Please see your local doctor / police officer to seek personal advice on growing 1 or 2 plants for your own personal medical use, you don’t want break the law. Cooking and collecting is totally legal if seeds are used.

Case Histories

Pauline Taylor is a MS patient from Durham. She has had MS for 15 years, and for five of those, she has smoked Marijuana to ease her pain.

“At the very beginning it was my daughter who got it for me. I was very worried about exposing my daughter in that way… She could’ve got into a lot of trouble with the police.” Sometimes Pauline has to go without Weed for months because supplies can be erratic, but when the pain really kicks in, Marijuana helps and, as a result, Pauline says that she can at least manage to get out of bed in the morning.

Pauline had to smoke Weed and there are now organisations that have the courage and the guts to come forward to help people like her; however there is still the problem of legality and obtaining the drug safely.

Sixty-six-year-old Patricia Tabram from Humshaugh in Northumberland is Britain’s most unlikely drug supplier. This pensioner could go to jail for buying Marijuana which she adds to food which she cooks for herself and for sick friends who live near her home. It all started when Pat was involved in a car crash and endured a series of family tragedies. She also developed severe arthritis. Her first experience of trying to buy Marijuana was bemusing and would probably terrify most old age pensioners, as she explains.

“The first Marijuana I bought, I was told to go to a pub in Newcastle “I stood there with looking out of place with my shopping trolley.” Eventually Pat found a dealer who sold her a small bag for £29. She had no idea what to expect or what she was really getting into. Today she is still breaking the law, this time to help others and to keep the clandestine supply lines open. “I’m just like a little district nurse really but instead of going around with injection needles and things, I go round with boxes of food which will keep them pain-free.” Pat is constantly afraid of being caught, “I’m always nervous that I’m going to bump into the Police.”

A Potted History

The reported beneficial qualities of cannabis as a medicine have been known for centuries. Medicinal Marijuana was first written about by the Ancient Chinese in Sheen Nung’s Pen Ts’ao in 2737BC. The Roman surgeon Dioscorides also praised its medicinal virtues in 70AD whilst the English herbalist Culpeper wrote about it in the Complete Herbal and English Physician. Taken widely for its medicinal value until the 29th Century when it was stigmatised and eventually banned.