Corporate Cannabis

According to GW, 95 percent of the patients in clinical trials are like Gillian. They want the medicine to work, but they don’t want the high. And GW claims it has figured out a way to deliver cannabis in a spray in doses that are much lower than those needed for the desired highs of recreational use, but which are still medically effective. GW scientists are also doing research on specific strains of marijuana to develop a whole slate of medicines, including treatments for neuropathic pain involved in cancer, spinal-cord injuries and rheumatoid arthritis; as well, there are indications that even psychological disorders such as schizophrenia could some day be treated with marijuana.

The active ingredients in Sativex are primarily two cannabinoids, thc, or delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol—the psychotropic ingredient appreciated by stoners around the world—and cbd, or cannabidiol, although all 400 constituent chemicals of the plant are present. In other words, Sativex is not a conventional pharmaceutical, which is usually a single molecule synthesized in a laboratory. It’s a whole plant extract, a distillate of the best of the flowering female buds from those sixty tons of plants. Dr. Philip Robson was senior lecturer in psychology at Oxford University before becoming clinical director of GW four years ago. If you were casting a tennis coach for a soap opera he would be your man: athletic and welcoming. “The bottom line is,” he says in his office upstairs from the clinic, sitting beneath framed close-up photos of richly resinous marijuana buds, “if you take enough Sativex you will experience exactly the same effect you would if you were smoking a joint. But the delivery system is so different, the spike in the blood is so different—if you smoke a spliff you get this huge spike, and your plasma level of thc goes up to, say, 150 or 200 nanograms, which is quite a lot, whereas with Sativex we’re operating at a level more like four, five, six nanograms. So people do avoid the high.”

Using marijuana is still a social activity for many, and they will no doubt continue to grow their own rather than take it as a medicine. On the way to visit GW, I took a detour to a small town near the Scottish border to visit an illegal charity called thc4ms. The organization pretty much amounts to a shaggy-haired, amiable married couple named Mark and Lezley, who mix cannabis into chocolate bars, wrap them in foil, and ship them by mail to MS sufferers.

Lezley was diagnosed with a severe form of MS in 1984 after a stroke-like attack left half her body paralyzed. She was told that within five years she could expect to be in a wheelchair and incontinent. Then she met Mark, a recreational cannabis user. Today she smokes throughout the day, is mobile, active, and in control of her bowels. She’s not cured: occasionally she will still have a spasm and drop a dish. “No MS household has a full set of crockery,” says Mark.

Lezley decided to go public as a medical-marijuana activist after a nasty incident with a neighbour whose hunting dog had killed her cat. “I’m going to kill the dog,” she told him.

“And I’ll have you for smoking that pot,” he shot back.

Soon after the altercation, she was watching Kilroy, the British television equivalent of Oprah. At the end of the show they asked anyone who smoked cannabis medicinally to contact them. “I rang up,” she recalls, “and at the time Mark had quite the—”

“I had a good job, didn’t I?” says Mark, interrupting.

“He was management, in charge of a bakery,” she continues. “And when I said to him what I was going to do, he said, ‘Uh-oh, I’m gonna lose me job.’ ”

“And I did,” he answers ruefully.

Later, Mark mixes up a batch of chocolate and cannabis at what they jokingly call their “lab” in the kitchen of a sympathizer’s house in a nearby town. “We’ve come up with a new slogan for our literature: From Nature, Out Of Necessity.” Adds Lezley, “We had a snappier one: ‘Doing today for free what GW dreams of making millions from tomorrow.’ ”

Still, for everyone who wants to smoke their own, there are many more, believes Mark, who would prefer the prescription version. “I can’t wait until GW gets its licence,” he says. “I’ll chuck all this kit and get my life back.” Lezley immediately scolds him. “Those who want to press the button, take one spray, great. Those who want to use it herbally should be able to use it herbally. Freedom of choice.”

Lezley describes herself as “a good girl. I never had a detention in school.” Before using cannabis from necessity, she thought pot was for “druggies.” Now, after twenty years of using it for pain management, she insists, “I’m still good,” although she has changed in other ways. Once a stylish young hairdresser with “dyed-blond hair and high heels,” she has become an almost stereotypical counter-cultural New Age earth mother who is into crystals, holistic remedies, and the legalization of marijuana for all purposes, not just medical. “Why are people so afraid of it?” she asks. “It opens your mind to a lot of things.”

Later, Rogerson packed me back into the Hyundai and we travelled down to Salisbury to meet Guy. To get there Rogerson drove along the edge of a military firing range and parked outside the gates before registering at a small outbuilding. (My Canadian passport seemed to make me suspect, and slowed the process.) Then we walked through the checkpoint to a small building just inside the fence.

Guy is fifty, argumentative, short in stature and built like a fire hydrant. He shows little patience for marijuana activists who, he says, have “from time to time either latched onto, used, fed off of, or even hijacked the debate” on the therapeutic value of cannabis. Nor does he have time for those tinkering with cannabis as herbal medicine. “This is something that doesn’t seem to be understood in North America,” he says. “There is a massive, massive difference in being able to grow a plant, and being able to develop an approved medicine that can be prescribed by a doctor. There’s a lot of people who will have a long discussion about what a medicine is, but I am a pharmaceutical physician, and my definition of a pharmaceutical [product] is a ‘worthwhile medicine that makes money.’ ”