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bodies. It followed from that, that there would be opioid receptors of Drug Abuse, and the DEA, the Drug Enforcement in our brains. It wasn't long afterwards that a woman named Administration, focus on. Candace Pert discovered this. In other words, if you consider a JR: Can you tell me something about the US Drug receptor as a kind of keyhole and the ligand or the neurotransmit- | Enforcement Administration, the DEA? ter as the key that opens it, the key has to fit into that receptor to Dr G: The predecessor agency of the DEA, the Federal Bureau open it. of Narcotics, was organised in 1930 by a man named Anslinger. With cannabis it came about the other way: the receptor sites Anslinger undertook what he called a "great educational cam- for cannabis were discovered first. I believe this was in 1990. _ paign", which actually turned out to be a great disinformational From this it was implied that there had to be an endogenous campaign. This is symbolised by one of the flagships of that cam- cannabinoid, a ligand that would turn this receptor site on. Indeed, _ paign: the movie, Reefer Madness. If you see the movie Reefer a couple of years later, a man named W. A. Devane and his group Madness today, even a person who is not very sophisticated about discovered this ligand and they gave it the name “anandamide", marijuana will laugh at the grossness of the exaggerations drama- after the Sanskrit word ananda, which means “bliss". Now there _ tised in that movie. are many studies of these receptors and anandamide. It is clear = Do i think pharmaceutical drug companies have any- that these receptors are not just 7 : thing to do with the government's located in the brain but in various eo prohibitive stand against medici- other organs in the body as well. "Cannabis was a very much used 4! cannabis use? I think we are going to see in the |, Dr G: Absolutely. The future that these receptors play a | drug ‘up until 1941 when it was Partnership for a Drug Free very important part in the medicinal dropped from the US America has a budget of about a utility of cannabis. Right now the million dollars a day. A lot of clinical evidence is empirical and Pharmacopoeia. This was. after the that money comes from drug anecdotal but, in my view, powerful companies and distilleries. You enough to be translated into a policy passage of the first of the see, these companies and distil- which would allow people to use oni intr TOE , leries have something to lose— cannabis legally for medicinal pur- draconian US antl marijuana laws the distilleries for obvious rea- poses. wm 1937, the Marihuana Tax Act." sons. The drug companies are JR: Do these recent discoveries not interested in marijuana as a contradict past research that warned medicine because the plant can- of brain damage from cannabis use? not be patented. If you can't Dr G: In my view, that kind of thing is in the realm of myth __ patent it, you can't make money on it. Their only interest is a neg- and misinformation about cannabis. Think about it for a minute. ative one. It will eventually displace some of their pharmaceutical If the brain produces its own cannabinoid-like substances, it does- products. n't make much sense that it would produce a substance which is Imagine a patient who requires cancer chemotherapy. Now he going to damage the brain. Indeed, long before it was discovered can take the best of the anti-nausea drugs, which would be that there are endogenous cannabinoids, the empirical evidence ondansctron. He would pay about US$35 or $40 per 8-milligram did not demonstrate that cannabis damaged the brain. pill and would then take three or four of them for a treatment. There are a few studies which were methodically unsound that Normally, he would take it orally, but people with that kind of the US Government and, specifically, NIDA, the National Institute nausea often can't, so he would take it intravenously. The cost of one treatment for that begins at US$600 because he will need a hospital bed, etc. Or he can smoke perhaps half of a marijuana cigarette and receive relief from the nausea. Currently, marijuana on the streets is very expensive. One can pay from US$200 to $600 an ounce. This is what I call the prohi- bition tariff. When marijuana is available as a medicine, the cost would be significantly less than other medications; it would cost about US$20 to $30 an ounce. You can't tax it in the US because it is a medicine. So that would translate out to maybe about 30 cents for a marijuana cigarette. So our chemotherapy patient could get, many people believe, better relief from the marijuana cigarette for 30 cents. This, in comparison to the ondansetron which would cost at the very least US$160 a day and, if he had to take it intravenously, more than US$600 per treatment. Well, if you multiply that by all of the symptoms and syndromes we discuss in the book, Marihuana, The Forbidden Medicine, 16 ¢ NEXUS AUGUST-SEPTEMBER 1996