Countries should move towards reasonable regulation, says grandfather of medical marijuana

The discovery of the active principles of marijuana and its medicinal properties made the Bulgarian-Israeli chemist Raphael Mechoulam the pivot of a promising new field of research and also of a market that already moves about US $10 billion a year and promises to multiply its size. In the next years.

It was he who identified, back in the 1960s, two of the main cannabinoids in marijuana: THC (tetrahydrocannabinol), the main psychoactive in marijuana, and CBD (cannabidiol), the most important component of most drugs industrially produced from plants. of the family Cannabis. They are medicines used to treat and relieve symptoms of diseases and conditions as diverse as Alzheimer’s, glaucoma, Parkinson’s, autism, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, cancer and depression.

Mechoulam’s research also identified that the human body has a group of receptors and enzymes that bind to the components of marijuana, called the endocannabinoid system.

His studies served as the basis for scientific research into the therapeutic properties of cannabis and earned him the title of father of medical marijuana. “I’m more like a grandfather”, jokes the scientist, who is 91 years old.

“When I started, nobody worked with marijuana, except for a small group in Germany. It was difficult to get the raw material, which was prohibited. Cannabis was considered a cursed drug”, remembers, who obtained material for his first studies in the department. of Israeli police. “The police were surprisingly open. And I always carried out my research freely. I was lucky.”

The proof of the therapeutic benefits of cannabis and the progressive legalization of its medical use, already admitted in more than 35 countries, have turned the image of marijuana built up over decades of prohibition and criminalization inside out. Now, they are driving auspicious growth projections for the medical marijuana market, in which Brazil is still in its infancy.

Even so, in 2021, more cannabis-based drugs were approved by Anvisa and bill 399 of 2015, which regulates the medicinal and industrial cultivation and production of cannabis in Brazil, was approved by the Special Commission on Cannabis in June. The procedure took place between heated debates and an episode of physical aggression by Bolsonarist deputy Diego Garcia (Podemos-PR) against the president of the commission, Paulo Teixeira (PT-SP).

“I am happy to know that the Brazilian government must establish a system of regulation of medical marijuana”, commented the Israeli scientist. “I’m sure this will help many patients.”

Mechoulam gave the interview below to Folha during a visit to his laboratory at the Hebrew University in Jerusalem, Israel, for recordings of the special Altered State, winner of the 2021 Vladimir Herzog award.

Why did you decide to research marijuana at a time when it was so frowned upon? – My interest has always been in the chemistry of natural products. And millions used cannabis without detailed knowledge of its chemical and pharmacological structure or its physiological and biological effects. So in the 1960s I decided to study marijuana and got raw material from the police, who were surprisingly open.

The staff at the institute where I worked in Israel called a senior officer at the police department, and a few days later I went to them and returned home with five kilos of hashish. In this branch of scientific research, it is always good to have a public administration and a government that is not too restricted.

How were the first experiences with the active principles of marijuana? – We’ve separated about a dozen compounds from cannabis. To understand if they had psychoactive effects, we tested them on mice. But we are not mice. So we had to find out how they worked on people, and we tested them on ourselves.

A group of friends came to my house — one of them, by the way, was a member of Parliament. And my wife, who is a very good cook, made cakes in which she put 10 milligrams of the compound. We found that THC was psychoactive in humans and we also found that 10 mg was a slightly high amount for people who had never used drugs. [risos].

How did the research evolve after that? – We elucidate the structure of compounds such as THC and CBD. So we tried to find out what these compounds do in metabolism, in the body. And that took a lot of work. In this research, I worked with many colleagues in Israel and also with Brazilian colleagues, such as Elisardo Carlini, from the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp), who tested CBD in rats for epilepsy and found that cannabidiol is very effective.

Then we tried cannabidiol on people who had epilepsy, with important results. We published the study that talked about the improvement of patients in 1980 and suggested that the finding should be turned into medicine. But developing a new drug is a project that requires millions of dollars and a large organization. Academics can’t afford it. We imagined that some pharmaceutical industry would take the project. But I regret to inform you that absolutely nothing has happened for long 35 years.

How did that change? – Some parents of children who had epilepsy heard about this study and started giving cannabis with lots of cannabidiol to their children. Because of public pressure, the industry became interested, and the US government approved a large clinical trial of CBD.

The study got the same results we got 35 years earlier! CBD is now a drug approved for legal use in the treatment of certain types of pediatric epilepsy. The thing is, it could have been done 35 years earlier and it would have helped a lot of kids. Nothing happened because the administrators responsible for health were not open-minded. A feather.

Are there other underused findings? – Yes. Carlini and I gave pure CBD to a girl who had schizophrenia and she benefited. Years later, a German group did a great investigation on 40 or 50 patients, and most of them benefited. Schizophrenia affects 1% of the world population and is a very serious disease. We could have helped these people. And we still can. But this requires further clinical studies in order to find out the best way to administer CBD to patients with schizophrenia.

The same occurs with type 1 diabetes, which is a serious disease and affects many children. We found that CBD protects the rat body against type 1 diabetes. And we published the study more than ten years ago. So far we’ve waited for the interest of the industry to do clinical trials with human beings.

Why is there still resistance to cannabis in science and health? – In the beginning, marijuana was a damn drug, and nobody studied it. There is an internationally accepted law that prohibits people from using drugs. It is illegal to use cannabis. And the fact that marijuana is placed alongside other drugs such as opioids, heroin and cocaine makes it all the more difficult for scientists and pharmaceutical companies. Still, each time she’s becoming a drug like the others.

Relatively few countries have regulated the medical use of marijuana and its production – For a lot of people, until recently, marijuana and heroin were pretty much the same thing. And perceptions, like laws, are very difficult to change. Where cannabis is illegal, people who use it can be arrested. That hasn’t changed even in the United States, where cannabidiol has been officially approved as an epilepsy drug and yet ranks at the top of the banned drug list, along with heroin.

We have to have a more rational way of dealing with this issue. Cannabidiol must be removed from the list of prohibited drugs. THC could remain, except in cases of approved uses, such as combating the side effects of chemotherapy.

How do you see this paradox? – Does not make sense. In the USA [onde cada estado tem sua própria lei sobre o tema], cannabidiol has generated billions of dollars while the federal government says something is wrong there. This obviously has to change. It is not possible for marijuana to be used as a medicine in one state and take the person to prison in the other, right next door. It’s ridiculous.

How do you rate the regulation of marijuana for recreational use? – I’m not sure if I agree with the current conditions. I am involved with marijuana from chemistry, which refers to the medical issue. As for recreational use, if people like to have fun with weed, I’m not going to be the one to say no.

But on the other hand, I know of many cases of people who abused marijuana the first time, especially young people, and ended the night with a psychiatric emergency — which is why many psychiatrists are against flexibilities. Maybe it was necessary to find a middle way, a good regulation, but I don’t know how that could be done.

In the case of Canada, which legalized recreational use, the logic was: we have 2 million people using cannabis about once a week. Even if we wanted to, we couldn’t put 2 million people in jail. And, even legalizing it, they created rules. Children and teenagers cannot use it, for example.

Have you ever used marijuana recreationally or medically? – I never used illegal drugs, except for that first experiment between friends. What I like is a little wine. And I’ve never needed marijuana-based medication. If I need to, I will. We know, for example, that CBD has an effect against cancer. It does not cure, but acts positively. So if I have cancer, I’m going to use cannabidiol.