Mariëtte Le Roux
Paris
(AFP) - Swiss scientists have taken a leaf from the pothead recipe book
to brew an e-cigarette cannabis liquid for medical use they said
Thursday is safer than a joint and better than a pill.
"Therapeutic
cannavaping", they argued, should be examined as an alternative to
existing treatments which can come in the form of a syrup, pill, mouth
spray, skin patch, suppository, or a plain-old spliff.
The
team copied an improvised method popular among marijuana afficionados
using butane gas to extract and concentrate cannabinoids -- the active,
high-causing compounds of cannabis.
"We
were inspired by what is done illegally, underground, on the web fora,"
study co-author Vincent Varlet, a biochemist and toxicologist from the
University Centre of Legal Medicine in Lausanne, Switzerland, told AFP.
"Normally,
they use this form of cannabinoids to get high. Based on what is done
illegally, we found that it could be interesting" for the medical field.
The
method yields super-concentrated "dabs" of butane hash oil (BHO) --
comprising about 70-80 percent THCa -- the precursor of THC or
tetrahydrocannabinol, which is the psychoactive ingredient.
THCa is transformed into THC at high heat.
Usually
the dabs are burnt and the fumes inhaled. But for the study, the team
mixed their activated BHO paste into commercially-available e-cigarette
liquid at different concentrations -- three, five or 10 percent.
They
then put "vaping machines" to work: sucking at the e-cigarettes and
blowing out vapour, which was measured for its THC content, according to
results published in the Nature journal Scientific Reports.
"Cannavaping
appears to be a gentle, efficient, user-friendly and safe alternative
method for cannabis smoking for medical cannabis delivery," the team
concluded with a nod to "the creativity of cannabis users".
It was also more reliable than consuming cannabinoid pills or foods which are poorly and erratically absorbed, said Varlet.
Battery-powered
e-cigarettes heat up liquids containing artificial flavourings, with or
without nicotine, to release a vapour which is inhaled and exhaled much
like smoke.
They
are touted as safer than the real thing, and an aide for giving up
cancer-causing tobacco -- which is also an ingredient of the traditional
cannabis joint.
- Weeding potheads from patients -
Cannabis-infused e-liquids are advertised online, along with a rash of recipes for making your own.
Medical
marijuana can be legally prescribed in some countries for pain relief,
appetite stimulation, nausea reduction or the relief of muscle spasms.
A challenge, said Varlet, was to keep cannabis intended for therapeutic use out of the hands of recreational high-seekers.
One way to do that was to have legal drugs with microdoses of cannabinoids.
"We
have calculated that to have the same dose of what is present in a real
cigarette joint... with tobacco, we have to vape between 80-90 puffs"
of the 10-percent BHO liquid, said Varlet.
"Eighty puffs constitutes a rebuttal to getting high," he added, when a few drags from a joint will do.
"The
take-home message of our article is that vaping is less harmful than
smoking, so you can be sure that cannavaping is less harmful than
cannabis smoking for medical purposes," said Varlet, adding there was no
plan to patent or sell the product.
"Today,
we have set the cat among the pigeons. This is just the first step, and
we need to see how the scientific community is going to welcome this
kind of possibility."
Initial reactions were mixed.
"Whilst
vaping cannabis substances... does indeed remove the harmful effects of
tobacco smoke, my concerns about vaping cannabis would be around the
use of flavoured cannabis e-cigarettes that could be more popular
amongst younger people," said Michael Bloomfield, a psychiatry lecturer
at University College London.
David Nutt of Imperial College London said it was a "great idea", but "would be illegal in the UK currently".
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