Health

A Better Way of Drugging with Cannabis

Vaporization, not smoking

By Stefan Anitei, Science Editor

16th of May 2007, 13:11 GMT

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This "social" drug comes to us under the form of marijuana and hashish.

Cannabis has been proved beneficial in relieving pains in some severe diseases. But smoking cannabis, besides the drug's effect, is as harmful as smoking tobacco.

Now, a USCF team has developed a smokeless cannabis-vaporizing device that delivers the same amounts of active therapeutic chemical, delta-9-tertrahydrocannibinol (THC) inducing the same biological effects as smoking cannabis, but with no harmful toxins. "We showed in a recent paper in the journal Neurology that smoked cannabis can alleviate the chronic pain caused by HIV-related neuropathy, but a concern was expressed that smoking cannabis was not safe. This study demonstrates an alternative method that gives patients the same effects and allows controlled dosing but without

inhalation of the toxic products in smoke," said lead researcher Dr. Donald I. Abrams, UCSF professor of clinical medicine.

The device heats the cannabis to a temperature of 180 to 200 degrees C, just below the combustion value (at 230 degrees C). The 6-day tests were made on 18 volunteers at the General Clinical Research Center at San Francisco General Hospital Medical Center. The subjects received on different days three different cannabis doses by two delivery ways - smoking or vaporization - thrice daily.

THC blood levels were assessed along with the exhaled carbon monoxide (CO) levels. CO is a highly toxic gas employed as a marker for many other gases generated when smoking. THC blood levels were similar between smoking and vaporization and the subjects related the same "high" rate in both methods. "Smoking increased CO levels as expected, but there was little or no increase in CO levels after inhaling from the vaporizer," said Abrams.

"Using CO as an indicator, there was virtually no exposure to harmful combustion products using the vaporizing device. Since it replicates smoking's efficiency at producing the desired THC effect using smaller amounts of the active ingredient as opposed to pill forms, this device has great potential for improving the therapeutic utility of THC," said study co-author Neal L. Benowitz, MD, UCSF professor of medicine, psychiatry and biopharmaceutical sciences.

Moreover, pills tend to provide the organism with more THC than required for optimal therapeutic purposes, thus resulting in side effects. "By a significant majority, patients preferred vaporization to smoking, choosing the route of delivery with the fewest side effects and greatest efficiency," said Benowitz.

TAGS:

cannabis | smoking | vaporization

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