Tag: Australia

Every responsible cannabis consumer and advocate on earth recognizes that operating a motor vehicle on a public roadway while being intoxicated by any substance, including cannabis, is not safe.

With that being said, just because someone has cannabis in their system does not automatically mean that they are too impaired to safely operate a motor vehicle. Governments have seemed to struggle with that premise when crafting DUI laws in their jurisdictions.

Medical cannabis patients are particularly affected by bad cannabis DUI laws, as they essentially have to choose between taking their medicine or risking prosecution for simply having metabolized THC in their system.

Researchers in Australia recently conducted a study involving medical cannabis use and driving performance. Below is more information about it via a news release from NORML:

Hawthorne, Australia: Patients display few changes in their driving performance following the use of medical cannabis products, according to data published in the Journal of Psychopharmacology.

Australian researchers assessed simulated driving performance in a cohort of 40 patients authorized to consume cannabis. (Under Australian law, physicians may authorize cannabis products to patients unresponsive to conventional prescription treatments.) Participants completed a baseline driving assessment prior to their participation in the study. On the day of the study, patients consumed their typical dose of medical cannabis (either cannabis-based extracts or flowers) at the testing site prior to engaging in a battery of driving simulator tests.

Researchers identified no significant changes from patients’ baseline driving performance that would indicate psychomotor impairment.

They reported: “In this open-label semi-naturalistic study, simulated and perceived driving performance among 40 patients was assessed prior to and following self-administration of their own prescribed medical cannabis product. While oil users tended to have higher SDLP [standard deviation in lateral positioning] values, this was stable over time and there was no evidence of impairment for either administration route. Furthermore, the lack of changes in speed variability suggests a modest but sustained stabilization of vehicle control. … [N]o notable evidence of driving impairment (i.e. a significant decline in driving performance metrics within the simulated driving scenario) was observed for either consumption modality, relative to baseline.”

The study’s authors concluded, “Overall, this semi-naturalistic study suggests that medical cannabis, used as prescribed, has a negligible impact on simulated driving performance.”

The study’s findings are consistent with those of several others determining that daily cannabis consumers, and patients especially, exhibit tolerance to many of cannabis’ psychomotor-influencing effects. According to the findings of a literature review published in the journal of the German Medical Association, “Patients who take cannabinoids at a constant dosage over an extensive period of time often develop tolerance to the impairment of psychomotor performance, so that they can drive vehicles safely.”

Full text of the study, “A semi-naturalistic open-label study examining the effect of prescribed medical cannabis use on simulated driving performance,” appears in the Journal of Psychopharmacology. Additional information is available in the NORML Fact Sheet, ‘Marijuana and Psychomotor Performance.’

The research surrounding cannabidiol (CBD) and other cannabinoids is still largely in its infancy, and scientists are unlocking new knowledge about cannabis nearly every week, particularly knowledge involving CBD-based research.

A recent example of that can be found in Australia where researchers examined the use of CBD among patients with advanced-stage cancer. For better or worse, the use of CBD does not appear to make changes in the disease’s progress. Below is more information about it via a news release from NORML:

Queensland, Australia: The use of CBD among patients with advanced-stage cancer is not associated with changes in either disease progress or survival, according to data published in the journal BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care.

Australian researchers compared outcomes of CBD versus placebo in a cohort of cancer patients. Study participants consumed either CBD (up to a maximum of 600 mg per day) or placebo daily for nearly three months.

No changes in either disease progression or survival were identified between the two groups.

The study’s authors concluded: “No significant difference was noted in disease progression or survival in patients with advanced cancer receiving CBD oil versus placebo in the context of this clinical trial. … Given the effect cannabinoids appear to have on cancer cell growth in vitro, it is not impossible to consider an anticancer role for these compounds, though we saw no specific benefit on disease progression with CBD prescription, or indeed survival.”

While numerous preclinical studies and a limited number of case reports have documented anti-cancer effects associated with cannabinoids, including THC and CBD, these effects have not been replicated in controlled human studies.

Full text of the study, “Cannabidiol oil or placebo in advanced cancer-disease progression and survival: A secondary analysis,” appears in BMJ Supportive & Palliative Care. Additional information on cannabis and cancer is available from NORML’s publication, Clinical Applications for Cannabis & Cannabinoids.

Cannabis opponents have long touted the unfounded claim that ‘cannabis is bad for the human brain.’ Those claims always fail to provide proper context to the subject, which does a huge disservice to such a very important conversation.

To be sure, cannabis can have an effect on the human brain, but to what level and in which ways depends on several factors. That is why one patient can consume cannabis in the same manner as a second patient, the same dosage, and all things being equal, yet have a different experience.

Not all cannabis use results in a change in how the brain functions. Neurocognitive performance after cannabis use was at the heart of a recent study in Australia, and the results are insightful. Below is more information about it via a news release from NORML:

Melbourne, Australia: The use of medical cannabis is not associated with significant changes in patients’ cognitive performance or driving abilities, according to data published in the journal CNS Drugs.

Australian researchers assessed neurocognitive performance in a cohort of 40 patients authorized to use medical cannabis products. (Under Australian law, physicians may authorize cannabis products to patients unresponsive to conventional prescription treatments.) Participants’ performance was assessed at baseline and again three hours later. Patients either vaporized herbal cannabis or consumed oral extracts. Study participants had regularly used medical cannabis products for at least ten months prior to enrolling in the trial.

Patients exhibited no changes in simulated psychomotor performance, executive function, memory, or reaction time following their self-administration of a “standard dose of their prescribed medical cannabis.” Results were consistent regardless of the type of cannabis product consumed.

Investigators reported: “We found no evidence for impaired cognitive function when comparing baseline with post-treatment scores on a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery, nor did we observe any change in performance on the DRUID [psychomotor] test battery over time. … These findings are consistent with two systematic reviews published in the last year that suggest that medical cannabis, when used regularly and consistently for a chronic health condition, may have little if any impact on cognitive function.”

The study’s authors concluded, “Medical cannabis may have minimal acute impact on cognitive function when prescribed and used as directed.”

Other studies have similarly determined that habitual cannabis consumers become tolerant to cannabis-induced changes in either cognitive or psychomotor performance. According to a 2018 meta-analysis of 36 studies involving over 1,000 participants: “Available evidence suggests that the effects of acute marijuana or Δ9-THC administration are less prominent in individuals with a regular pattern of cannabis use compared to non-regular users. Cognitive function appears to be the domain most likely to demonstrate tolerance upon repeated exposure, with some evidence of full tolerance indicating a complete absence of acute effect.”

A literature review published in the journal of the German Medical Association concluded, “Patients who take cannabinoids at a constant dosage over an extensive period of time often develop tolerance to the impairment of psychomotor performance, so that they can drive vehicles safely.”
Full text of the study, “A semi-naturalistic, open-label trial examining the effect of prescribed medical cannabis on neurocognitive performance,” appears in CNS Drugs. Additional information is available in the NORML Fact Sheet, ‘Marijuana and Psychomotor Performance.’

Cannabis prohibition enforcement strategies involve a number of tactics, many of them proving to be extremely costly and ineffective. One of the many examples can be found in the use of drug-sniffing dogs to ‘detect’ the presence of cannabis.

For those who may be unfamiliar with how dogs are used for this purpose, a dog is typically paraded around a vehicle or structure, and if it ‘alerts’ its handler, that is all the law enforcement entity needs to basically do whatever they want to the person being subjected to the drug dog search.

According to a recent study in Australia that examined nearly 100,000 search cases, the dogs provided false alerts 75% of the time. Below is more information about it via a news release from NORML:

Sydney, Australia: Drug sniffing dogs provide false alerts approximately seventy-five percent of the time, according to an analysis of ten years of data recently provided to members of the Australian Parliament.

The analysis reviewed over 94,000 searches. The overwhelming majority of those searches failed to identify the presence of illegal substances.

According to reporting in The Sydney Morning Herald, “The worst year for drug-detection dogs was 2014, when only 21 percent of the 14,213 searches resulted in illicit drugs being found; the best was two years later in 2016, where 32.5 percent of the 8746 searches were accurate.”

The findings of the analysis are consistent with those of prior studies. An analysis conducted by reporters at The Chicago Tribune similarly reported that drug sniffing dogs false-alerted over half of time, and that they were most likely to do so in instances where the suspect was Latino. Another study, this one  published in the journal Animal Cognition, reported that drug dogs frequently falsely alert when their handlers perceive that illicit substances are present. “Handler beliefs affect outcomes of scent detection dog deployments,” the study’s authors concluded.

Nonetheless, the US Supreme Court has previously ruled that an alert from a police dog during a traffic stop provides a constitutional basis for law enforcement to search the interior of the vehicle.

Anyone who has suffered from one or more health conditions knows that it can negatively impact a person’s quality of life. In some cases, one or more health conditions can completely debilitate the suffering patients’ day-to-day existence.

Part of the negative impact on the patient’s life is due to the health condition(s) that the patient is suffering from, however, in many cases that lower quality of life is compounded by the pharmaceutical medication regimen that the patient is tasked with.

Medical cannabis is being used as an alternative to many traditional pharmaceuticals, and a recent study in Australia found that cannabis extracts were associated with sustained improvements in reported quality of life among patients suffering from a range of conditions. Below is more information about it via a news release from NORML:

Sydney, Australia: The use of plant-derived cannabis extracts is associated with health-related quality of life improvements in patients suffering from pain, fatigue, and other chronic conditions, according to observational trial data published in the journal PLOS One.

Australian investigators assessed the efficacy of cannabinoid extracts in a cohort of 2,300+ patients authorized to use medical cannabis. (Under Australian law, physicians may authorize cannabis products to patients unresponsive to conventional prescription treatments.) Study participants consumed extracts containing varying percentages of THC and CBD for three months.

Consistent with the results of other large-scale observational studies, researchers reported clinically meaningful improvements following cannabis treatment.

“This study found [that] overall HRQL [health-related quality of life] improved over 3-months in patients accessing prescribed MC [medicinal cannabis] in Australia,” authors reported. “Results showed both statistically significant and clinically meaningful improvements in overall HRQL and fatigue for people with chronic health conditions. Similar improvements were found in pain scores for participants with chronic pain; depression scores for patients with depression; and anxiety scores in patients with anxiety.”

They concluded: “Our findings suggest that prescribing MC in clinical practice may alleviate symptoms of pain, fatigue, anxiety, and depression in patients with chronic health conditions and improve overall HRQL. … The findings from this study contribute to the ongoing evidence for decision making both in clinical practice and at policy level.”

Full text of the study, “Health-related quality of life in patients accessing medicinal cannabis in Australia: The QUEST initiative results of a 3-month follow-up observational study,” appears in PLOS One.

People experiencing pain in the neck and/or back is very common around the world. Over 7.5% of the world’s global population suffers from lower back pain alone, and hundreds of millions more people suffer from varying levels of neck pain.

In addition to the pain experienced by suffering patients, which can be extreme in some cases, the costs of treating the ailments for both the patient and society are considerable. A study in 2017 found that just in the United States alone, neck and back conditions cost $88 billion a year.

An increasing number of suffering neck and back patients are turning to cannabis products for relief and a recent study in Australia found that cannabis spray in particular is an effective treatment method. Below is more about it via a news release from NORML:

Sydney, Australia: The oral administration of a cannabinoid spray containing standardized ratios of THC and CBD produces clinically significant reductions in pain among patients with chronic back and neck pain, according to open-label trial data published in the journal Medical Cannabis and Cannabinoids.

Australian researchers assessed the safety and efficacy of an oromucosal spray containing 10 mg of THC and 25 mg of CBD in a cohort of 28 patients with moderate to severe back or neck pain. Participants in the study were unresponsive to over-the-counter non-opioid analgesics. Patients administered escalating doses of the spray daily for four weeks.

Investigators documented decreases in patients’ pain at even the lowest doses. Patients experienced further reductions in pain and improvements in mood in a dose-dependent manner over the course of the trial. Overall, side-effects from the spray were mild and well-tolerated.

“There were significant reductions in pain [at] all doses,” authors concluded. “There was also a reduction in pain interference in all domains including general activity, mood, walking ability, normal work, relationships, sleep, and enjoyment of life by dose.”

Australian law permits physicians to authorize cannabis products to patients unresponsive to conventional prescription treatments.

Full text of the study, “Tolerability and efficacy of a 10:25 preparation of delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol and cannabidiol for treatment of chronic back or neck pain: A multiple-dose escalation study,” appears in Medical Cannabis and Cannabinoids. Additional information on cannabis and chronic pain is available from NORML’s publication, Clinical Applications for Cannabis & Cannabinoids.