Three articles in the British Journal of Psychiatry look through research and weigh up the pros and cons of the drug and its effect on the body. Dr Andrew Johns, Consultant Forensic Psychiatry at the Maudsley Hospital, London, said he is concerned about the effects of the drug on the mentally ill - particularly schizophrenics. To look after their health they cannot mess around with drugs. And he said this must be considered carefully by anyone lobbying to change the law. Professor Heather Ashton reviewed studies on the recreational use of cannabis and its impact on the body and brain.
Cannabis affects almost every body system.
It combines many of the properties of alcohol, tranquillisers, opiates and hallucinogens. Severe users were found to smoke up to 15 joints a day exposing them to several hundred milligrams of cannabis every 24 hours. Dr Philip Robson, a psychiatrist at Oxford University, focused on the medicinal benefits. He found that THC, the compound in cannabis which causes the high, can also reduce vomiting and nausea in cancer patients, relieve muscle pain in multiple sclerosis patients and stimulate appetite and cut weight loss in cancer and Aids patients. But he said that it is difficult to carry out proper studies because the drug is not legal.