Cannabis is the one growth industry in the U.S. that you can count on. Recreational use of marijuana is now legal in many states. Moreover, there's increasing attention being paid to the medical uses of cannabis-based products. An Israeli lab has been set up to provide clinical validation for cannabis medical research (see: Israeli lab set up to give clinical validation to cannabis research). Below is an excerpt from an article on this topic:
Israeli firm Asana Bio Group Ltd. has invested $2.3 million in a lab that will provide clinical trial services to companies that are developing a wide range of medical cannabis-based products in a bid to help them get widespread legitimacy....The initiative will be led by Prof. Lumír Ondřej Hanuš, a Czech chemist and an authority in the field of cannabis research who has worked closely over the years in Israel with Prof. Raphael Mechoulam, considered a pioneer in cannabis research. Hanuš has identified and isolated all the active ingredients in the cannabis plant — more than 140 cannabinoids and over 1,000 other active substances....Cannabinoids are a class of medical compounds that act on cannabinoid receptors in cells in the brain....The establishment of a laboratory that provides clinical validity for research “is an important milestone for the cannabis industry in Israel and abroad,” said Yotam Hod, the CEO of Lumir Lab. “To date, the vast majority of cannabis products available in the various markets have no scientific basis, preventing the medical community from supporting the legitimization of cannabis-based therapies. Our goal is to provide tools and solutions that do not exist in the market today while setting an international quality standard in the medical cannabis market.”.... Researchers at the Hebrew University and elsewhere in Israel have shown that cannabidiol, or CBD, a naturally occurring cannabinoid constituent of cannabis, and CBD derivatives, work on epilepsy, schizophrenia and other psychiatric diseases, pain, some cancers and Type 1 diabetes.
Surely many of claims now being made about the medical uses of cannabis are not supported by legitimate research. In the past, such research has been hampered by legal constraints on the use of the drug but many of them are gone or will soon be gone. Look for an explosion of clinical trials for cannabis-based drugs. It turns out that there is a Center For Medicinal Cannabis Research that was created under the auspices of the University of California, San Diego. The CMCR has its own web site that posts reviews of cannabis research. Here are some articles cited on this web site: San Diego company testing marijuana-derived multiple sclerosis therapy; Study to Examine Possible Effects of Cannabis Compound for Common Movement Disorder; DEA slowly takes steps to affirm the medicinal value of marijuana.The funding of the CMCR may be increasing, depending on the whims of the California state legislature. Here's a quote from the CMCR website, background tab:
....California Proposition 64 (Adult Use of Marijuana Act) is expected to provide funding (beginning in 2018) to the CMCR to “[enhance our] understanding of the efficacy and adverse effects of marijuana as a pharmacological agent.”
Comments