Cannabis is one of the most widely used drugs in the world yet surprisingly little is known about its effects. The largest ever study aims to change that.
The largest-ever independent study into the effects of cannabis on the brain is being carried out in the UK.
Medicinal cannabis in the UK can only be prescribed if no other licenced medicine could help the patient. At the moment, GPs can't prescribe it, only specialist hospital doctors can. The NHS says it can only be used in three circumstances: in rare, severe epilepsy; to deal with chemotherapy side effects such as nausea; or to help with multiple sclerosis.
The study is spearheaded by Dr Marta Di Forti and has been allocated over £2.5 million in funding by the Medical Research Council."It’s a really unique study. We are aiming to see what’s happening to people using cannabis in the privacy of their homes for medicinal, recreational reasons, or whatever other reason.
"All of this data will then be analysed to see if we can get close to understanding what makes some cannabis users susceptible to paranoia while others who are using cannabis get some benefits, even in the domain of mental health.""What we don't want is to get only people who are the classic friends and family of academics to do the study. We want a representative sample of people out there who are using cannabis.
"Normally when you receive a prescription for a medication the physician in charge will tell you the potential side effects which will be monitored to make sure it’s safe, and you may have to swap to a different medication. Now this isn't really happening with medicinal cannabis, which is one of the reasons clinicians are anxious about prescribing it and they have been criticised for not prescribing it very much.
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