Three puffs a day of cannabis, better known as marijuana, helps people with chronic nerve pain due to injury or surgery feel less pain and sleep better, a Canadian team has found.
''It's been known anecdotally," says researcher Mark Ware, MD, assistant professor of anesthesia and family medicine at McGill University in Montreal. "About 10% to 15% of patients attending a chronic pain clinic use cannabis as part of their pain [control] strategy," he tells WebMD.
But Ware's study is more scientific -- a clinical trial in which his team compared placebo with three different doses of cannabis. The research is published in CMAJ, the Canadian Medical Association Journal.
The new study ''adds to the trickle of evidence that cannabis may help some of the patients who are struggling [with pain] at present," Henry McQuay, DM, an emeritus fellow at Balliol College, Oxford University, England, writes in a commentary accompanying the study.
Ware evaluated 21 men and women, average age 45, who had chronic nerve pain (also called neuropathic pain). A typical example, Ware tells WebMD, is a patient who had knee surgery and during the course of the operation the surgeon may have had no choice but to cut a nerve, leading to chronic pain after the surgery.
Ware's team tried three different potencies of marijuana, with the highest a concentration at 9.4% tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) herbal cannabis. He also tested 2.5% and 6% THC.
''Each person was in the study for two months, and used all four strengths [including placebo]," Ware says. He rotated them through the four strengths in different orders, and they didn't know which they were using.
The cannabis was put into gelatin capsules, then put into the bowl of a pipe. Each person was told to inhale for five seconds while the cannabis was lit, hold the smoke in their lungs for 10 seconds, and then exhale.
They did this single puff three times a day for five days for each of the doses and the placebo. The participants were allowed to continue on their routine pain medications.
→ keep toking
Drug dealers never cease to amaze the law officials when it comes to new and original ways to transport their supply , but this is one of the most unique tales to date.
The airport border guards in Cincinnati Ohio found a tombstone that was being shipped across the world held more than sentimental words for the dearly departed when it came through Cincinnati.
A red flag was raised when they discovered a grave marker was being shipped thousands of miles by air and at a closer look and with the help of a drug sniffing dog it was soon discovered the hollow tombstone was packed with around 50 pounds of marijuana.
What lengths will drug dealers go to trying to come up with new and original ways to try and outwit the DEA.? The DEA revealed that they have seen some pretty strange ways for these dealers to sends their illicit drugs to their designated destinations but they have never seen until now the use of a tombstone as a transport..
Custom spokesperson Brian Bell stated that the officers became suspicious when the tombstone came through and had a discussion on why someone would send a grave marker from Jamaica to England when it would be more economic to purchase one there. That alone was cause to investigate and one of the drug sniffing dogs set off the next alarm.
After further investigation it was soon discovered that the concrete tombstone was only a shell and packed full of about 50 pounds of pot.
Ironically enough the investigation has reached a 'dead end' due to the fact that the sender and receiver both used false names and addresses.
source
A traffic stop near Mountain Home has turned into a major marijuana bust for police.
