First alcohol-free beer and now “highless” marijuana. Israeli researchers have developed a medicinal marijuana that can ease the symptoms of some ailments without producing the euphoric high of pot. For many this may seem like tasteless cake or non-alochoiic vodka, but the discovery could lead to some interesting legal and political issues.
The culprit (or appeal) in marijuana is Delta-9-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). Researchers believe that the benefits widely reported from medicial marijuana comes from Cannabidiol, or CBD, a substance that gives anti-inflammatory benefits.
Israeli grower, Tikun Olam, has developed Avidekel, containing 15.8 per cent CBD and less than 1 percent traces of THC. Viola! Your Grateful Dead concert now sounds like a chamber music shows at the community center.
Of course, this assumes that patients are also not benefitting from the euphoric impact of the marijuana in easing pain. Like most Americans, I support the use of medical marijuana and I have no problem with patients receiving a high from the drug when struggling with things like terminal cancer. My mother-in-law died of breast cancer and my wife tells me that marijuana was the only thing that gave her any relief from the pain — a common report from patients.
This could present an interesting problem if the marijuana is still smoked but without the high. Police would have a difficult time distinguishing the products if smoked — assuming non-high marijuana is declared legal. The basis for banning non-high marijuana would be dubious at best. However, if smoked, the government could require some additives to distinguish the smell.
Of course this becomes moot if the growing movement for decriminalization continues. If that is the case, you can have your THC and CBD too.
Source: ABCIsrael
I think the lumber companies were the initial lobbyists for making hemp illegal. Hemp just grows soooo much faster than trees.
The pharmaceutical joined them awaiting their R$D patents for the drug instead of toke. MJ will probably continue to be illegal b/c there will be a pharma alternative. Screw the farmers, take a pill.
Well ID707,
When you’re flying solo…… Why put a raincoat on….
AY
For masturbation or intercourse? Have you forgotten the little automats: “For the prevention of disease only”?
It would seem that pharmaceutical forms of Cannabidiol (“CBD”) may available in the not too distant future, based on developments in patent filings, per http://www.google.com/patents/US20030166727. If this thing ever flies, pharmaceuticals will probably be the form of CBD that the FDA will approve, rendering the smokeable version moot.
I’m in the why bother camp…… Like alcohol free beverages…… Such as beer…… Or ……. Why use a condom when it’s just you……
We already have a ‘highless’ marijuana, as idealist points out.
. It is called industrial hemp. The seeds are a perfect food for the human brain with the best known fat ration of Omega 3 to 6.
The plant is also the best source to make ethanol. Henry Ford made his first cars to run on hemp oil instead of petroleum.
This plant can also be used to make hemp crete, a building material that insulates and ‘breathes’ and also is a thermal sink to store heat or cooling. Many buildings that use zero energy for heating and cooling are made from hemp mixed with lime.
It makes the most beautiful fabrics that last longer and are stronger than cotton or flax. I hope one day it will be legal to grow in rotation in the US. We need to improve our top soils from decades of Round Up and other toxins. The industrial hemp would clean our soils enough to plant real food in them again.
We must push to take marijuana off the Schedule 1 list. It is stupid that the government allows ‘medical marijuana; and than at the same time has it classified as a poison with no medical properties. Then researchers could really study all the cannabinoids for anti cancer benefits and other medications.
We could have whole new industrial plants and lots of new jobs if we legalized industrial hemp. Let the old industries renovate or fail if they refuse. We could be making auto bodies out of hemp as well as replace every single use piece of plastic with biodegradable hemp substitute.
Malisha I am so glad he is feeling better. I, o fcourse, have to get on my soapbox for a second. Those in chronic initractable pain often have a hard time being believed, and not just by friends, and family but by members of the medical community. As more people become aware of these diseases that have pain as the sole or main complaint hopefully we will have an easier time being believed, diagnosed and properly treated.
My kid spent a few years smoking up and I didn’t carry on too much about it — he was an adult by then and living in a place where a white kid (he’s white) wouldn’t get rousted for that activity. Later on, we discovered that he had been suffering from a chronic and incurable disease for the prior 9 years, while doctors kept telling him there was no reason for his pain and he must have pulled a muscle or sprained something or he was a complainer or blah blah blah. When it (ankylosing spondylitis) WAS diagnosed, he had already given up the pot and the pain had become so much worse that he couldn’t just ignore it any more. By going to six doctors in a row, he finally got a diagnosis, and it was subsequently confirmed. I think the MJ was helping him cope with the pain. Since his diagnosis, we paid a fortune for him to visit a place in NJ that has developed a non-invasive lifestyle technique that has helped him considerably in dealing with the illness, and it’s all based on regulation of the activities of the heart and musculoskeletal system, so I believe that one way or another, physiologically, his body is now able to produce whatever MJ was giving his body during the “toking years.” No way to confirm this by a controlled experiment, of course…
Put it in e-liquid form and apply for a patent.
Marinol, a synthetic form of THC, has been out on the market for years. There is no “high” (I was given it years ao for my chronic pain and had no benefit.)
According to the DEA “The active ingredient of Marinol is synthetic THC, which has been found to relieve the nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy for cancer patients and to assist with loss of appetite with AIDS patients.”
It seems to me if there is proof that marijuana does have medicinal benefits, and sure seems to: for glaucoma, some folks with CIP says it helps their chronic pain, help with wasting by pping appetite, etc then stop fooling around already, do some good solid research and let pharma make a ton on it.. Thinking about i yo uwould think pharmawould be in first in line clamoring for it to be legal but with enough ‘safeguards’ that they would be forced to be the guardians of it.
(Many years go I contacted a site, in Canada, that provided marijuana seeds for those with medical illness. I planted them in a sink in my workroom and they grew beautifully.
One morning my cat was really enjoying himself, running and rolling around, chasing something I couldn’t see.
I walked into the workroom and all the tops of the plants had been eaten off. For a couple of hours he was probably the happiest cat on earth)
The “high” is what helps the brain cope with the whole state of being in pain to do chronic illness. It’s more than “just pain relief.”
Mike S.
The $64,000 question:
” does anyone really know whether or not the “high” adds to its benefits?”
If police couldn’t tell the difference between “high-producing marijuana” and “non-high-producing marijuana” and they had to give up the stupid marijuana capers, taxpayers wouldn’t suffer too terribly.
I have a friend dying of cancer in Oregon. She never tried MJ until it became the only drug that helped her be able to take nourishment. Why anybody could get hyped up about the illegality of this plant is beyond me. In South Africa, during Apartheid, the owners of the mines GAVE THEIR “EMPLOYEES” (miners were more like slaves than employees of course) free marijuana to keep them mellow and productive. FREE. At the same time, in the city, the servant class (generally wives and other relatives of the miners who were being given free marijuana) could be arrested any day of the week for six months at a clip for having a single leaf of the stuff. It’s past being idiotic and into being HELP I CAN’T BREATHE FROM LAUGHING AND CRYING AT THE SAME TIME.
“Highless” pot is like alcohol free beer, why bother? As for it’s illness soothing properties, does anyone really know whether or not the “high” adds to its benefits?
In many cases won’t it depend on the way a statute defines “Marijuana”, especially crimnal statutes?
One of the reasons given as to hemp’s illegality is that the thugs, er, I mean agents, can’t tell the difference between it and the happy stuff. So how could they tell the difference between happy stuff and happy stuff light??? Also, it would still mean less profit for pharma if folks could grow their own.
I don’t see this becoming legal anytime soon
Am amazed no one has mentioned that THC-less “hemp” has been cultivated for 30+ years. It was cultivated as good fodder source, good oil supplier, and for its fiber used in making many products, including rope.
Whether that closely observed prodution was allowed to continue I am not aware.
What if any percent it had of CBD was not stated as I recall.
Cannabidiol being the source of marijuana’s healing properties is no secret. I live at ground zero for marijuana cultivation in CA and you might say that the “technicians” that grow mj are very well versed in all positive aspects of their product as is much of the population that uses it for medical reasons or enjoys it purely as recreation. This science is fantastic, but it won’t change the conception among anti-legalization folks that mj is an all or nothing plant until the pro-legalization people wage an all out information war on the distinction between the THC and Cannabidiol acids within the plant and really push it as a medicine (in much the same way that compounds in red wine are known to be beneficial to a person’s heart).
Will it still have the medicinal properties without the THC?
Works for me. The stuff makes me sick. And this experience is from 40 years ago when it was far weaker than now, and a couple tokes made nausea the rule of the day. Or night. I hope I never need it, but this development gives hope.