https://www.kentonline.co.uk/sandwich/news/viewers-moved-by-steph-and-doms-cannabis-quest-197825/

A celebrity couple’s fight to get a marijuana-based treatment for their son’s epilepsy was aired on Channel 4 last night, sparking a huge reaction on social media.

Gogglebox stars Steph and Dom Parker, together with son Max and daughter Honor, featured in the one-off Channel 4 film Can Cannabis Save Our Son?

It saw the one-time Sandwich residents share their family story for the very first time.

Steph and Dom Parker lived at the Salutation in Sandwich

They revealed how their son Max was diagnosed with a rare form of epilepsy as a baby and had been on various types of medication since the age of four.

He suffers several seizures every day, which has left him brain damaged and with a mental age of about five or six.

The couple had been given hope with the increasingly effective use of medical marijuana / CBD being shown to control epileptic seizures.

Yet the renowned ‘posh couple from Gogglebox’, like thousands of other UK families, are being refused this treatment for Max.

Max Parker, the 18-year-old son of Steph and Dom

Last night’s show followed the family around their home and on their travels around the UK and US talking to others who have secured controversial cannabis oil treatment.

And the show prompted an emotional reaction from fans and supporters of the families’ cause, even trending on Twitter at one point.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-us-canada-47039911

A California doctor is fighting for his licence after he prescribed cannabis cookies to a four-year-old boy.

Dr William Eidelman, a natural medicine physician, said small doses of marijuana would help control the child’s temper tantrums.

The doctor misdiagnosed the child with bipolar disorder and attention deficit disorder (ADD).

A board of state regulators labelled him “grossly negligent” for failing to consult a psychiatrist.

The boy’s father consulted Dr Eidelman in September 2012 because his son was misbehaving at school.

The doctor recommended small amounts of the drug, which was revealed when the school nurse was asked to give the boy his cannabis cookies at lunchtime.

The board did not seek to revoke the doctor’s licence because he prescribed cannabis to a child, but because he was “negligent in his care and treatment”.

Dr Eidelman has appealed against the ruling, made on 4 January, and said he will continue to practise. His lawyers said he had won a suspension of the revocation, pending a future hearing.

Medicinal cannabis usage has been legal in California since 1996, and Dr Eidelman estimates that he has recommended the drug to thousands of patients.

Which Is More Potent, Vaping Cannabis or Smoking a Joint?

Cannabis vaporizers and pre-packaged cartridges continue to grow in popularity, with sales estimated to grow nearly 50% from 2017 to 2018. Vaping delivers a different experience than smoking a joint, but it’s not easy to quantify that difference. Recently, though, scientists have looked into the question and found that vaping actually packs a more powerful punch than the traditional joint.

While the lead author acknowledged that the study has some limitations,  he echoed its conclusions in an interview with Leafly: “It was surprising, the magnitude of difference between equal doses of smoking versus vaping,” said Tory Spindle, a postdoctoral fellow with John Hopkins University’s Bayview Medical Center. Vaping “can produce drastically different impairment” for all consumers, he said.

More Efficient THC Delivery

Previous studies have shown that vaping is a more efficient THC delivery method than smoking, so researchers sought to examine its impacts on several outcomes at two doses and to compare these results with both smoking the same doses and consuming placebo doses of a THC-free substance. Researchers conducted the study between June 2016-January 2017 at Hopkins’ Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit.

The population studied was made up of nine men and eight women with a mean age of 27.3 who were prescreened for cannabis and other drug use beforehand to confirm they all had gone an average of 13 months without consuming cannabis before the study.

Additionally, researchers assessed the participants before they consumed cannabis and then at 10 points afterwards up to 8 hours after they had consumed each of the six study doses (three vaping and three smoking) and each dose was measured to ensure consistency and with participants blinded to the amount they were using.

“We were able to control dosing better across the two conditions,” Spindle said, noting that this was likely why the study yielded different results. This research method allowing for titrated doses, or more carefully-calculated individual doses, which has been difficult to achieve in much of the past research on this subject.

Measuring Vaporized Flower’s Effects

When it came to measuring the cannabis affects, researchers applied the Drug Effect Questionnaire and three computerized tasks, The Digit Symbol Substitution Task, Divided Attention Task and Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task. These tasks were chosen because they “previously demonstrated to be acutely influenced by cannabis self-administration and representative of workplace performance and/or operation of a motor vehicle.”

Researchers tested subjects vaping flower, not cannabis oil. So there’s more work to be done.

Comparing 17 participants’ outcomes across vaping and smoking, researchers found statistically significant differences at a 25-mg THC dose. With vaping, consumers experienced more adverse effects, or “pronounced impairment of cognitive and psychomotor ability,” determined by their performances on the computer tests. Consumers that vaped also experienced more paranoia and anxiety than their smoking peers.

The results were similar at a lower dose as well. At 10 mg THC, vaporized cannabis flower “modestly” harmed cognitive functioning and yielded significant differences with smoking, as measured by mean drug effect scores.

“For both inhalation methods, mean peak changes for ratings of drug effect at the 10-mg and 25-mg doses were significantly greater than placebo,” the researchers also found. “Significant, sometimes adverse, drug effects can occur at relatively low THC doses in infrequent cannabis users,” they wrote, “and accordingly, these data should be considered with regard to regulation of retail cannabis products and education for individuals initiating cannabis use.”

What This Means for Consumers

The cannabis administered in the study contained 13% THC (as well as 0.03% CBD and 0.8% cannabinol), according to Spindle, which says a lot about how infrequent users and especially new medical cannabis patients should dose themselves if they choose to vape. Keeping in mind too that cannabis products available at dispensaries are usually more THC-rich than these research doses.

As for regular cannabis consumers with a high tolerance to THC, the results cannot be extrapolated, one of a few limitations in the study. Other limitations included using a range of only three doses and one strain of cannabis (which was low in CBD, Spindle noted), and using only flower and a single vaporizer type (the Volcano Medic) for the vaping portion, and a small pipe for the smoking research. Researchers did not examine the effects of vaping liquid cannabis or using other vaping instruments.

“This is one vaporizer and we need to do more research,” Spindle said. “Definitely more studies are needed to see if these effects are applicable across other types of variables.”

Need to Test More Variables

That idea was echoed in the research, which stated that more controlled studies of a variety of vaporizing and smoking methods are “vital” and “may inform dosing guidelines, cannabis policy and regulation, and procedures for detecting acute cannabis intoxication.”

In addition, the corresponding author for this study, Ryan Vandrey, said, “We still don’t have a full look at the long-term effects of vaping, such as whether there is a risk for chronic bronchitis, and more work needs to be done on that front,” according to a news release issued by the Hopkins School of Medicine (where Vandrey is an associate professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences).

On the other hand, some results from previous studies were echoed in this John Hopkins study, like, for instance, researchers did not find strong correlations between results and THC blood concentration.

“THC doesn’t stay in the blood that long,” Spindle said, cautioning: Blood concentration levels “can go back to baseline before you’re done feeling the effects.”

Collectively, the findings from this study and others indicate yet again that blood THC concentrations are not a valid indicator of a cannabis consumer’s intoxication and/or impairment, and that it’s a much more complex issue than once assumed.

As the study concluded: “It highlights the need to explore other biological and behavioral means of detecting acute cannabis impairment.”

https://www.leafly.com/news/health/which-is-more-potent-vaping-cannabis-or-smoking-a-joint

A FORMER Romsey schoolboy who was caught dealing cannabis has been urged not to ruin his life by a crown court judge.

Ex-The Mountbatten School pupil Leyton Hookway was found with 15 grams of cannabis when officers stopped him in his Vauxhall Corsa in September last year.

The 19-year-old also had weighing scales, and £160 cash.

Police also uncovered an iPhone which had texts suggesting he was dealing the class-B drug.

Hookway pleaded guilty to one count of possession of cannabis with intent to supply when he appeared at Southampton Crown Court.

However, in mitigation the court heard how Hookway had accepted a guilty plea on the basis that the cannabis was not his and he was instead given it by a friend.

He said the scales were for his own personal use, to stop him being “ripped off by his own dealer”,

The court was also told that the money was recently taken from a cash machine and was intended to be given to his mother and grand-mother.

During his sentencing at Southampton Crown Court, Judge Peter Henry urged Hookway to steer clear of drugs.

He told the teenager: “You must get yourself off drugs.

“You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, don’t ruin it.”

Judge Henry handed Hookway, of Launcelyn Close, North Baddersley, a six month prison sentence, which he suspended for 18 months.

Hookway must also complete 20 days of rehabilitation, as well as 21 hours at an attendance centre.

Judge Henry also ordered the drugs be forfeited and destroyed.

https://www.dailyecho.co.uk/news/17388045.leyton-hookway-19-admits-to-dealing-cannabis/

‘Questions need to be asked about how those people were so brazen, living there and running a cannabis farm,’ says councillor

A huge cannabis factory spanning three floors of a derelict tower block has been discovered in the middle of a housing estate in Birmingham.

Police found plants with an estimated street value of £500,000 after breaking into the building through an internal steel-barred door, reinforced with a metal grille, and an industrial-sized padlock.

Officers also unconvered living quarters and stocks of food for those tending the “sophisticated” operation, as well a loading winch fitted into one of the block’s empty lift shafts.

The 20-storey block Warstone Tower in the Hodge Hill area has been empty for some time and earmarked for demolition by the city council.

West Midlands Police’s cannabis team found plants growing on the 16th floor but equipment sprawled across the 15th and 17th floors, covering 31 rooms in total.

Electricity was being abstracted, while another room had containers holding gallons of water with a pumping system installed, along with ducting for the air conditioning system.

The cultivators of the drug had knocked holes in the floors, ceilings and walls to run hundreds of feet of piping and cable. Reams of wiring had also been run up the internal staircases.

Further inside the warren of rooms, beds with mattresses, duvets and pillow cases had been brought in, along with food provisions including a box of tomatoes.

Members of the public alerted police on 24 January.

Five men were arrested at the scene on suspicion of cannabis cultivation.

Detective Inspector Jim Church said: “This is a sophisticated, organised crime operation that has clearly been running for some time, but which we’ve now been able to dismantle.

“We’ll be working throughout the day to establish the full scale of it and make the property safe.”

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/crime/cannabis-factory-tower-block-three-floors-birmingham-warstone-west-midlands-police-a8750726.html

https://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/northern-ireland/cannabis-oil-and-sugarfree-diet-helped-my-brain-tumour-to-disappear-37754010.html

Mother-of-two Cassandra Jordan was diagnosed with incurable tumours in her brain, lungs and abdomen after originally beating breast cancer.

However, she began chemotherapy in a bid to give her extra time with her loved ones.

At the same time the 39-year-old – mum to Kendall (21) and Jordan (6) – overhauled her diet, drastically cutting back on the amount of sugar she eats, and also started to take cannabis oil.

Last week CT scans revealed the cancer in her brain is gone, while the remaining tumours are shrinking.

Cassandra, from Larne in Co Antrim, said: “My doctor says what has happened is extremely rare. I’m convinced that my diet and the cannabis oil are responsible.

“The chemotherapy that I have had doesn’t target brain tumours so as far as I’m concerned there can’t be any other explanation.

“There are no words; it’s fantastic, it’s amazing, it was so incredible to get my scan results.”

Cassandra, also a grandmother to three-year-old Harlow, was first diagnosed with breast cancer in May 2017.

She started a course of chemotherapy and radiotherapy and also went through a double mastectomy.

“It was a no-brainer, I knew I had to do whatever it took to beat the disease,” she said.

It seemed like the treatment had worked and she began to look forward to getting on with her life.

However, she began to experience pain in her armpit in May last year and went back to the doctor.

Her discomfort was originally put down to her surgery and treatment for the breast cancer, but in September last year medics broke the devastating news that the cancer had returned and had spread throughout her body.

This time the tumours were inoperable and she was left distraught – but determined not to give up without a fight.

After last week’s encouraging development, she remains pragmatic about her prognosis and has vowed to continue to do everything to prolong her life.

She has also called for cannabis oil to be regulated and made more easily accessible so that patients like her can benefit without breaking the law and putting themselves at risk.

“Ultimately, my cancer will kill me, but I want to live for as long as possible,” she said.

“I’m only 39. There are a lot of things left for me to do.

“My daughter is 21, she’s grown up and can look after herself, but my son is just six, he’s still a baby.

“I don’t want my death to affect my son’s life, I want to be around until he finishes school.”

Martin Ledwick, head information nurse at Cancer Research UK (CRUK), said scientists are looking at cannabis and diet as potential treatments for the disease.

“Many researchers are investigating cannabinoids, and CRUK is supporting some of this work,” he said.

“These studies use highly purified chemicals found in the cannabis plant, or lab-made versions of them, and there’s genuine interest in these as potential cancer treatments, but the evidence is not clear-cut.

“And this is very different to street-bought cannabis and hemp oil, for which there is no suggestion of any impact on cancer.

“Similarly, the idea of using diet to help treat cancer is an area of interest for researchers, but there’s no good evidence that changing your diet could help treat the disease.

“It’s important that patients are eating enough to help them through treatment and recovery, and those looking for further advice should speak to their doctor.

“There’s also more information on both these topics on the CRUK website.”

Despite the absence of proper studies, Cassandra remains convinced that using medicinal cannabis and following a strict diet has played a part. She said: “I honestly believe the cannabis oil and diet has helped get rid of my brain cancer and is shrinking the other tumours.

“I would never advocate using just cannabis oil and not following the treatment programme prescribed by the doctors, but patients should be able to access medicinal cannabis in a safe way.”

With the knowledge that her condition is terminal, she is fundraising to help her cover the cost of a treatment outside of Northern Ireland when her health begins to deteriorate.

I’m happy to offer a free testing service…

https://internationalhighlife.com/science-weed-drying-up-your-vagina/?fbclid=IwAR24VTUh2yMwDfhTJew45o2VO1Mg3aojeUvOcXzQjDUKNgnJi9CS7flu_s4

https://www.gloucestershirelive.co.uk/news/uk-world-news/uks-first-completely-legal-cannabis-2475302