And after years of prohibition, in 2001, Canada became the first country to allow the use of marijuana for medical purposes. As the New York Times points out, until that time, not a whole lot was known about the marijuana plant, other than from word-of-mouth or short-term studies.
This is not to say that Canadian scientists were unable to study the cannabis plant. In 2011, it was Canadian researchers who published the first genetic sequence of the Cannabis sativa plant.
However, keep in mind the scientists never strayed beyond the social norms surrounding marijuana. Even though medical marijuana was legal in Canada, under the leadership of Conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper, interest in medical uses for marijuana dwindled.
Research picked up again in 2014 when it became legal to supply mail-order medical marijuana to Canadian patients, and with the legalization of recreational marijuana on October 17, scientists can now cultivate their own plants for studies. Commercial growers, like Tilray, are considered global leaders in medical cannabis research, cultivation, processing, and distribution.
Tilray has already partnered with five leading research centers in Australia and Canada that facilitate clinical research globally that further our understanding of the therapeutic value and risks of cannabinoid-based medicines.
And in an unusual move, in September, Tilray was approved by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration to supply cannabis extract from Canada to a California neurologist who’s developing a treatment for tremors in the elderly.
The Canadian government is funding 14 new studies and has set aside $20 million more for research grants that could ask questions like, Will a pregnant mother using cannabis harm her baby’s development? – along with other questions that would extend our knowledge of cannabis. Let’s look at a couple of research projects.
Sorting out the genetics of cannabis
Yang Qu, at 35 years of age, hopes to be the one who unlocks the full potential of cannabis — both commercially and medicinally.
He is set to become Canada’s first academic researcher focused solely on the cannabis plant. “Legalization just liberated the research on this plant,” said Qu, who will start in January at the University of New Brunswick.
Qi notes that there is still a tremendous amount we don’t know about cannabis, even though we do know it is an ancient plant. It is indigenous to Central Asia and the Indian sub-continent, and its use for fabric and rope dates back to the Neolithic age in China and Japan
We do know from archaeological evidence the plant was used in China before 2800 BC and found therapeutic use in India by 1000 BC. Cannabis was used primarily in religious and ritualistic ceremonies. It wasn’t until French psychiatrist Jacques-Joseph Moreau came back from travels in North Africa and the Middle East in 1840 that people in the West learned about the psychological effects of cannabis.
What interests Qi is the many different cannabinoids – chemical compounds in marijuana plants. Qi says we really only know about two of the compounds – tetrahydrocannabinol, the primary psychoactive compound in the plant, and cannabidiol, a compound most often used for pain relief.
But the possibility of some of the unknown compounds having medicinal benefits is too great to ignore. “Once we have more information about the individual activity of the cannabinoids, we can try to produce these cannabinoids in cannabis plants,” he said.
Qi also plans on improving the genetics of cannabis plants to reduce production costs and make them easier to grow both in colder climates and in greenhouses. He also would like to explore the possibility of synthetically producing cannabinoids instead of extracting them from a plant.
Scientists pinpoint CBD dose for safe pain and anxiety rtrelief
Cannabidiol (CBD) is one of the well-known compounds in marijuana that provides medical properties without the high typically associated with using cannabis.
What is interesting about CBD and the high-producing compound, tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), is that they have the exact same molecular structure: 21 carbon atoms, 30 hydrogen atoms, and 2 oxygen atoms. But it is how the atoms are arranged that makes THC and CBD cause the body to react in different ways.
Researchers at the Institute of the McGill University Health Centre (MUHC) and McGill University, Canada, wanted to find out at what dose CBD becomes effective. What they found out is that CBD did not stimulate the CB1 cannabinoid receptors, unlike THC does. Instead, they did find that CBD binds with specific receptors involved in anxiety (serotonin 5-HT1A) and pain (vanilloid TRPV1).
“We found in animal models of chronic pain that low doses of CBD administered for seven days alleviate both pain and anxiety, two symptoms often associated in neuropathic or chronic pain,” first author of the study Danilo De Gregorio, a post-doctoral fellow at McGill University, said in a statement.
The study is important because of the booming market in marijuana-related supplements, such as CBD oil. There are CBD tinctures, cookies, topical creams, and even CBD-infused lattes. The market is actually growing faster than the science we have today. There are still a lot of questions – like, how much CBD oil should you give a child?
Perhaps even more importantly, the CBD oil market is unregulated, meaning that products from different manufacturers vary wildly on the milligrams of CBD per dose.
The study, entitled “Cannabidiol modulates serotonergic transmission and reverses both allodynia and anxiety-like behavior in a model of neuropathic pain,” was published this month in the journal Ovid Insights.
Jonathan Page, a Vancouver-based plant biologist and a leader of the cannabis genome project, says, “Marijuana’s hard-won return to the Canadian mainstream suggests that psychoactive plants matter to modern lives and will continue to shape human culture. Prohibition was just a blip on the timeline of civilization and a dark age for science.”
