Archive for the ‘Health’ Category
NICE’s Draft Guidelines on Cannabis Prove That Its Methods Don’t Work and It Is Causing Harm to Patients
The draft guidelines produced by the NICE committee are nothing short of ridiculous. There is a complete absence of common sense and an absurd failure properly to consider all the available evidence.
But it’s actually much more serious than this. It is now abundantly clear that this committee, its membership and its conclusions were only ever intended to delay, obfuscate and sabotage the reforms which were introduced in November last year because of a public outcry.
The selection of members of the committee is by any standards corrupt. The most highly qualified people have been deliberately excluded. Anyone publicly expressing support for the use of cannabis as medicine has been rejected whereas those selected have frequently expressed opposition. The inclusion of the ‘reefer madness’ advocate Professor Finbar O’Callaghan is both reprehensible and inexcusable. If the man had any ethical standards or conscience he would recuse hismself. The committee is a confidence trick.
The medical establishment, the Home Office and all the various regulators, including the MHRA, the FSA and the Royal Colleges are all institutionally opposed to cannabis and they are doing everything they can to stop it reaching the people who can benefit from it. Cannabis, the more intelligent approach to medicine it both requires and inspires, threatens too many vested interests and the comfortable, self-satisfied and self-serving model of healthcare that prevails in Britain.
But if any NICE apparatchik or fat cat pharma supremo thinks they can stop cannabis they are fooling themselves. From right around the world the overwhelming weight of expert opinion and patient experience reveals that what is happening in Britain is merely delaying the inevitable. But in the meantime it is causing great suffering and unnecessary harm to patients. It is a scandal of the highest order and the people responsible for it must be called to account.
CLEAR has responded to the consultation on the draft guidelines in great detail. Without reproducing our line by line commentary, these are our three general observations.
1. The entire guideline is characterised by a failure to consider observational evidence and real-world experience. Cannabis is the oldest medicine known to mankind and failure to give substantial weight to real-world experience of its safety and efficacy is nothing short of absurd. Given its illegality over the past 100 years, the wild scaremongering about its recreational use and therefore the lack of formal clinical evidence, this is simply setting it up to fail. It is irresponsible in the extreme to fail to consider the enormous benefit at very low cost and the very few adverse events associated with illicit cannabis.
2. There is little evidence of potential for harm for cannabis for any medical condition. Given the enormous numbers using cannabis in its most potent form as a recreational drug and/or self-medicating (estimated at 250 million regular users worldwide) there are far fewer adverse events or incidents of harm than for common over-the-counter medicines.
3. The weight given throughout the guideline to the potential for harm of cannabis is wildly disproportionate. There is no evidence of any significant harm from cannabis when used as a medicine, especially when under the supervision of a medical professional. At least 10,000 years of human experience shows that cannabis is essentially safe. Seeking to evaluate its safety in the same way as a new, experimental medicine, synthesised in a lab for which there is no real-world experience is a fundamentally flawed approach. Unlike potentially dangerous or unsafe medicines, cannabis can and should be offered to patients on a ‘try it and see’ basis. Instead of being over-cautious, clinicians should welcome this approach and can be certain that it will benefit patients whether or not in proves effective in individual cases.
Review. ‘For Ava’. For the Shame of Simon Harris, Fine Gael and the Irish Government
An extraordinary book. Vera’s achievement as a novice author matches her achievement as a novice campaigner. I’ve worked with people who use cannabis as medicine for 40 years and I thought I was pretty hardened to the tragic and distressing stories but the tears were running down my face as I read this.
I was concerned it might be a rather turgid list of events but far from it, it is a riveting read. It is almost like a thriller, beautifully structured, it grabs you and won’t let you put it down as you have to turn to the next page.
The central message is of the inhumanity of bureaucracy and self-serving politicians who are not interested in an issue unless it can bring them easy and positive media coverage. They are impotent in the face of lobbying from vested interests such as the pharma industry and the medical establishment and prefer to do nothing rather than risk controversy, even while children suffer needlessly.
A magnificent achievement and SHAME on Simon Harris, Fine Gael and the Irish government. They will face judgement at the highest level for their inaction, cowardice and feeble conduct.
BBC Horizon to Ramp Up Discredited Kings College ‘Skunk Scaremongering’
Dr Marta di Forti. Scientist or Skunk Scaremonger?
Tonight’s BBC Horizon is going to follow the long-established BBC policy of overstating and exaggerating the potential harms of cannabis.
From clips already released it is clear the programme is to promote as gospel truth the hysterical scaremongering and fanciful statistical projections coming from Dr Marta di Forti at King’s College London’s Institute of Psychiatry. This so-called scientist and her colleagues base all their conclusions on profoundly unscientific methods, false assumptions, bizarre statistical trickery and the misuse of the tabloid term ‘skunk’ as if it actually means something.
This is the way the BBC has always operated – to support the false narrative of the establishment about cannabis, to demonise it, to minimise if not ridicule its medicinal benefits and to cherry pick evidence and biased opinion to support its case.
Anyone with any real knowledge of cannabis who has spent any time properly reseraching the evidence will know that Dr di Forti’s projections and claims are ridiculous. This is a British phenomenom. It occurs nowhere else in the world. Every other nation’s media, scientific and medical community takes a balanced and realistic view and recognises that cannabis is largely benign and for 99% of people, 99% of the time is harmless. Perhaps most instruictive is that virtually nowhere else in the world will you hear the word ‘skunk’ used by real scientists. Originally the name of a specific strain of cannabis it is now merely a scary word used to frighten people and it has no specific or defined meaning. Its use is, in fact, the very opposite of science.
But don’t take my word for it. In a devastating critique of di Forti’s latest 2019 study, read the words of leading scientists from Australia and the Netherlands as they dismantle di Forti’s wild overclaiming and statistical trickery: High-potency cannabis and incident psychosis: correcting the causal assumption
Centre for Medicinal Cannabis CBD Report Confirmed as Cheap Marketing Stunt
Steve Moore, ex-advisor to David Cameron, now leads the Centre for Medicinal Cannabis
At the end of June, the ‘Centre for Medicinal Cannabis’ (CMC) published a report which painted an appalling picture of the CBD market in the UK and has led to headlines and alarm everywhere that consumers are being ripped off and the whole industry is not to be trusted. See: Mischievous ‘Centre for Medicinal Cannabis’ Report Smears UK CBD Industry With Misleading Data
Now, as it publishes what it calls a “further update”, it is confirmed that the report and the extremely expensive PR operation around it is nothing more than a cheap marketing stunt.
The report claimed to have tested 30 major UK CBD products that can be purchased from the UK high street or bought online. It presented alarming results showing that many of the products contained far less CBD than claimed and almost half contained illegal levels of THC and/or CBN. It refused to release information about which products were concerned with evasive answers and excuses that there were ‘legal implications’. Now, in its further update, surprise, surprise, it says that all its members’ products were within 10% of the CBD content indicated on the label.
As CLEAR reported at the time, the report is nothing but a market manipulation exercise. We didn’t expect their preference for their own products to come so quickly and so brazenly, which is why we now christen the whole exercise a cheap stunt. Certainly, there are some rogue businesses and fake products but the impression given by this report is false, misleading and wildly inaccurate. Consumers can be confident if they buy from members of the two trade associations Cannabis Professionals (CannaPro) or Cannabis Trades Association (CTA) they will be getting a quality product which is lab tested and contains exactly what is claimed.
CMC now defines itself as a trade body, although it only has two or three members in the CBD business in the UK, which were formerly members of the long-established trade associations. It should be noted that the so-called ‘independent’ laboratory it used for testing CBD products is itself a member of CMC.
Mischievous ‘Centre for Medicinal Cannabis’ Report Smears UK CBD Industry With Misleading Data
A new report from the Centre for Medicinal Cannabis (CMC) paints an appalling picture of the CBD market in the UK and has led to headlines and alarm everywhere that consumers are being ripped off and the whole industry is not to be trusted.
Cannabis has great medical potential. But don’t fall for the CBD scam – The Guardian
Calling on the UK CBD sector to have better regulation and reform – Health Europa
Centre for Medicinal Cannabis survey finds six million adults used CBD in UK – NHS Executive
CBD oil brands contain little to no CBD, test by Sativa’s UK lab reveals – Proactive Investors
It is true that there are some rogue businesses and fake products but the impression given by this report is false, misleading and wildly inaccurate. For nearly three years the leading CBD businesses in the UK have been engaged in serious, responsible self-regulation and consumers can be confident if they buy from members of the two trade associations Cannabis Professionals (CannaPro) or Cannabis Trades Association (CTA) they will be getting a quality product which is lab tested and contains exactly what is claimed.
The report is nothing but a market manipulation exercise by the authors. To understand why, it’s necessary to understand who is behind the ‘Centre for Medicinal Cannabis’ and examine their record.
The CMC is the latest front for Paul Birch, a multimillionaire, who since 2015 has been funding a series of ventures in the cannabis campaign. Mr Birch has brought one extremely valuable commodity to the campaign which it had been sorely lacking – money. He has hired a lot of people with the right connections, impressive letters after their name and has thrown a great deal of his cash into expensive PR which, to be fair, has proved very effective. In fact, as with this CBD report, it is characterised by just how much media coverage it has obtained. This, of course, has earned Birch’s cannabis ventures a reputation as leaders in their field. In fact, they are very much followers. The content of their work is either directly copied from others’ work or is just a repeat of what has been done before.
The most high profile success achieved with Birch’s money and PR was the campaign around Billy Caldwell and Alfie Dingley, two children with severe epilepsy, whose stories touched the heart of the nation and under enormous moral pressure forced the UK government into long-overdue reform of its blanket ban on cannabis as medicine. Birch’s money certainly made all the difference. Exactly the same stories and messages had been delivered to the media many times before but it is a fact of life that you only get on to the breakfast and daytime TV shows and in all the tabloids with a very expensive PR operation.
So Birch is at it again with the CMC. It describes itself as “the UK’s first and only industry membership body for businesses and investors operating in cannabis based medicinal products (CBMPs) and cannabidiol (CBD) wellness markets.“, which is as wholly false a claim as has ever been published about anything, anywhere.
The existing trade associations, CannaPro and the CTA, were formed years before the CMC and between them represent nearly 1,000 businesses operating in the legal cannabis sector. Neither of them were consulted before or since the CMC’s report and the fact of their existence and the work they do in regulating the industry has been excluded from the report.
Of course, the CMC won’t name the products which its report showed to be so deficient because this would show that they are not from members of CannaPro or CTA and are therefore not at all representative of what consumers are actually buying. The irony is that PhytoVista, the lab used by the CMC, is itself a member of the CTA and provides testing services to many CannaPro and CTA members.
So take the results of the CMC CBD report with a very large pinch of salt, or perhaps with a tablespoon of hempseed oil containing only a trace of CBD. It doesn’t tell the truth. It paints a false picture of an industry that is actually a model of self-regulation.
Review. Coffee Shot CBD Drops
If I was asked to design the perfect product for consuming CBD, this would be it. I’ve found after much experimentation that taking CBD in coffee is the best way for me. I enjoy the taste it gives to a double espresso and I find it works very well.
Equilibrium CBD has developed a special formulation that includes added terpenes selected for an ideal flavour blend with coffee. Each drop contains 5mg of CBD so it’s easy to add what you want. I use between two and five drops in a double espresso two or three times a day.
Everything about this product has been thought through and worked out in the most effective way possible. Extracted from organic, low-THC cannabis grown outdoors in Colorado, the oil is winterised and filtered to remove all impurities such as chlorophyll and waxes so that it is a clear, clean, highly refined product, nothing like the dark, acrid oils which can be very unpleasant to taste. It’s then mixed with MCT (medium chain triglycerides) oil derived from coconuts to achieve the required concentration and enhance its ability to be easily absorbed.
I don’t take CBD for any particular medical condition but I’ve found that it does stabilise my mood very well. This is supported by the science of the endocannabinoid system which shows that CBD acts to prevent the breakdown of anandamide (AEA), the endocannabinoid most closely related to THC, so there’s more of what has been termed ‘the bliss molecule’ naturally present in your system. It also acts on the serotonin receptor providing a natural anti-anxiety effect. There are also a host of other long term health benefits to be gained by nourishing your endocannabinoid system as a form of preventative medicine.
Equilibrium Coffee Shot CBD Drops cost £59.95 a bottle. That’s enough for at least 40 cups of coffee at about 70p a time. That’s excellent value for money and for me the perfect CBD solution.
Order Equilibrium Coffee Shot CBD Drops here.
New NHS ‘Cannabis Clinic’ Announced as Kings College, Institute of Psychiatry Joins the ‘Green Rush’.
Dr Marta di Forti: “Cannabis-induced psychosis is a crisis which cannot be ignored”.
Mail on Sunday, 30th June 2019. NHS is forced to open Britain’s first clinic for cannabis psychosis to treat addicts of the mind-altering drug
Daily Telegraph, 30th June 2019. NHS opens first ever cannabis clinic as mind-altering ‘skunk’ fuels psychosis among users
Daily Star, 30th June 2019. First NHS clinic for weed addicts launched to treat cannabis-induced psychosis sufferers
The Times, 1st July 2019. NHS opens its first clinic to treat cannabis psychosis
Dr Di Forti, Professor Murray and their colleagues at the King’s College Institute of Psychiatry live in a bubble that is not replicated anywhere else in the world. The fantastic and frightening statistics that they publish are achieved through the use of complex, esoteric algorithms that generate theoretical projections which are regularly challenged by every other research team across the world working on the same subject.
Nevertheless, in the UK their theories are accepted as fact. Vigorously promoted by the King’s College press office, dutifully sensationalised by the Daily Mail and rarely challenged by other mainstream media, they are part of the anti-cannabis mythology which has a stronger foothold in the UK than any other country in the world.
Despite their best efforts, repeating the same or similar studies over many years, there is no evidence that cannabis causes psychosis, merely observational studies that show some people who are diagnosed with psychosis have used cannabis. Similar studies also show an association with drinking milk, energy drinks, using a skateboard, playing computer games or living in areas with heavy traffic pollution.
Research conducted at the Universities of Bristol and Cardiff, validated by further work at University of York, shows that the risk of a diagnosis of psychosis correlating with cannabis consumption is about 1:20000. See: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2017/04/170420132334.htm By comparison the risk of being struck by lightning in a lifetime is 1:3000. See: https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0623_040623_lightningfacts.html. This puts the risk into proper perspective and explains why nowhere else in the world, including where far more potent varieties of cannabis are legally available, is this a problem of any significance.
A few unfortunate souls will need treatment for psychosis where cannabis, probably with other substances, has been a component factor in their illness but the risk of this is infinitesimally small and compared to the panoply of other substances, activities and experiences we indulge in, completely irrelevant to 99% of people.
This clinic is another example of the skilled PR operation which enables Kings College to continue repeating this research year after year without ever discovering anything new or useful. It’s also clear that they want their share of the ‘green rush’ of huge investment funding going into cannabis as legalisation continues its unstoppable and very welcome roll-out across the world.
Legally regulated cannabis will result in a safer, happier, wealthier world for everyone and far better protect those very few people who are vulnerable rather than leaving the market under the control of gangsters.
Letter to the Irish Independent, 22nd June 2019. ‘Let’s look at the evidence when it comes to cannabis’
Peter Reynolds of CLEAR confronts the reefer madness of Irish psychiatrist, Professor Patricia Casey.
See her original column: ‘Dangers of sleepwalking into legalisation of cannabis use’
In response to Patricia Casey (Dangers of sleepwalking into legalisation of cannabis use’, 15th June 2019), how much longer must we be berated by the sort of arguments that Professor Casey puts forward? At best her column is disingenuous and misleading.
The ‘Cannabis Risk Alliance’ was directly contradicted by another group, similarly qualified, just a few days later and by the overwhelming weight of medical and scientific opinion around the world.
Research shows the risk of mental illness with cannabis is one in 20,000. By comparison the risk of being struck by lightning is one in 3000.
Medical cannabis is not “use of cannabis of the CBD variety”. Bedrocan, the leading EU medical cannabis supplier has three products with THC content of 22%, 13.5% and 14%. It’s clear Professor Casey simply doesn’t understand the subject.
Cannabis has been used as medicine for more than 5,000 years and doctors around the world now prescribe it with enormous benefit to patients. Some 99% of Irish doctors have not been educated in the endocannabinoid system, through which cannabis works. In other countries, medical cannabis has special regulations. Trying to regulate a 500 molecule medicine in the same way as single molecule pharmaceutical product is impossible.
Professor Casey is wrong about the Netherlands. By separating the cannabis market from hard drugs, the rate of heroin addiction is one-sixth that of Ireland. So talk about a ‘slippery slope’ and a “softening up process” is simply mischievous.
I agree that government must be careful of vested interest groups but these include doctors funded by pharmaceutical companies. Psychiatrists only see people with a problem and are blind to the benefits that 99% of people experience.
Can cannabis be misused and cause harm? Yes. Is the risk as great as with alcohol or tobacco? No. Is it any more than with coffee, bacon or chocolate? Not really. It really is time we acted in accordance with the evidence and not on scaremongering which verges on hysteria.
Peter Reynolds
Doctors Are Frightened Of Cannabis. It Challenges Conventional Medicine And Threatens Their Status.
Professor Andrew Goddard and Professor Finbar O’Callaghan at the Health and Social Care Committee, 26th March 2019
The British medical establishment is behaving like a spoilt child that doesn’t understand the rules of a new game.
The irony is that it’s actually a very old game that went out of fashion just a century ago despite thousands of years of practice. The wisdom accumulated across those many years has been dismissed by simplistic, reductionist, allopathic medicine and its return is being driven by patients – real benefit that real patients experience in real life, surely the most important criterion of all.
The doctors responsible for drafting the medicinal cannabis guidelines from the Royal College of Physicians and the British Paediatric Neurology Association have failed patients. Either through error or design they have overlooked the evidence of safety and efficacy that is widely available. They say there is ‘no evidence’ when what they mean is there is no evidence that suits them. For some reason they regard medical practice in Canada, the USA, the Netherlands, Germany, Spain or Israel as not applicable to the UK. Their guidelines are not based on evidence but on the disregarding of evidence and they are merely the opinion of doctors who have no experience of cannabis at all.
These doctors who expect their ill-informed opinions to be treated as scientific fact are directly opposing the doctrine of ‘do no harm’. They stand by while scores of young children suffer life threatening seizures, while hundreds of thousands in chronic pain are offered only highly toxic, addictive and dangerous opioids.
Their arrogance, stubborness and self-serving preference for lengthy clinical trials from which they earn fat fees is both damaging quality of life and putting health at risk for millions of us.
Since Finbar O’Callaghan and Andrew Goddard gave evidence to the Health and Social Care Committee, over three months ago, neither of them, nor any of their colleagues in their ivory towers, have done anything effective to improve access to cannabis as medicine. They have decided that their opinion counts above everything else. They have no interest in what patients have learned from experience, sometimes over many years. They choose to ignore the expertise of thousands of doctors from other countries. They will consider the benefits of cannabis only on their terms. They continue to wildly exaggerate the possible harms and side effects and their position is fixed, stubborn and intransigent.
It was notable in the two professors’ evidence that they preferred only to talk about cannabidiol, where they could refer to the evidence of clinical trials. They didn’t want to discuss full spectrum cannabis at all. Why is it that physicians are so risk averse when surgeons are lauded and idolised for the most perilous use of the knife? They will slice into flesh only millimetres away from vital organs, remove sections of the brain which could kill or paralyse with the slightest error. Yet unbelievably, O’Callaghan actually does recommend slicing into a child’s brain rather than to administer a tiny dose of a very low potency version of a drug which 250,000,0000 people worldwide consume regularly with very few problems.
It’s all about ignorance and fear. O’Callaghan, Gardner and 99% of British doctors have received no education at all in the endocannabinoid system through which cannabis exerts its therapeutic effects and this challenges their status. In our culture, doctors have been treated as infallible, almost as Gods, never to be questioned, only to be obeyed. So a medicine that works, that is safer than virtually all the pills you can buy over-the-counter and has powerful, benefical effects for very wide range of conditions is a real threat to doctors’ status. It shakes their world and so they are eager to disparage it, exaggerate its risks, diminish its efficacy.
This is the real issue with cannabis. It gives medicine back to the people, literally for those who grow their own, and with it a great deal of the power and prestige that the medical profession has held over us.
Of course more and more doctors are opening their minds and learning. It’s the establishment that’s the problem, as it so often is in British life. It’s those at the top of the Royal Colleges, the professional institutions and the NHS bureaucrats at the intersection between money and medicine. These are the people that stand in the way of the most inexpensive, multi-purpose, safe, effective, easily tolerated medicine that we have.
Review. ‘Cannabis Health’ Magazine
This is a milestone in cannabis law reform. A glossy magazine, produced to the highest standard, fit to sit alongside Country Life, Cosmopolitan or Vogue. It treats the subject with intelligence, with insight and the stories it tells are told with respect, sensitivity and common sense.
It would be easy to have made this sensationalist, to have made exaggerated claims, launched strident attacks on those who still oppose consumption of the plant or fallen into the trap of folklore rather than science, magic rather than medicine. The publishers have hit the bullseye with the right tone and style and provided it reaches the right coffee tables, perhaps doctors waiting rooms, it will help to drive reform. Never before have I been moved by a magazine but this represents the achievement of a level of acceptance that sometimes I doubted I would see in my lifetime.
CLEAR was able to contribute to this first issue, introducing our members, Robert Cohen and Marie Emma Smith, whose stories of how cannabis has transformed their lives are beautifully told and I am honoured to have been interviewed as part of a feature on the campaign.
It’s intended to be quarterly but I won’t be surprised if it takes off and becomes monthly before very long. There is a huge reservoir of advertising expenditure which has been stymied by the short-sighted attitude of social media companies. It will be poetic justice if traditional publishing can do well out of the reintroduction of this traditional medicine. A free, one year, postal subscription is available to the first 10,000 people to register by emailing chloe@aspectpublishing.co.uk
There is still a logjam of prejudice and lack of understanding, particularly amongst cowardly politicians and a medical establishment that feels threatened by a subject where patients know more than doctors. ‘Cannabis Health’ wll help to break this down. The sheer weight of public support, enthusiasm and real life experience will soon leave these sceptics desperate to catch up. Get yourself a copy and enjoy quality writing about cannabis published in print rather than online. The world is changing!
