Marijuana To Control Alcohol Abuse

A new research effort has a provocative outcome as University of California-Berkeley researchers suggest substituting cannabis for treatment of heavy alcohol abuse.

Research published in BioMed Central’s open access Harm Reduction Journal features a poll of 350 cannabis users, finding that 40 percent used cannabis to control their alcohol cravings, 66 percent as a replacement for prescription drugs and 26 percent for other, more potent illegal drugs.

Amanda Reiman carried out the study at the UC-Berkeley Patient’s Group, a medical cannabis dispensary.

She said, “Substituting cannabis for alcohol has been described as a radical alcohol treatment protocol. This approach could be used to address heavy alcohol use in the British Isles – people might substitute cannabis, a potentially safer drug than alcohol with less negative side effects, if it were socially acceptable and available.”

Reiman found that 65 percent of people reported using cannabis as a substitute because it has fewer adverse side effects than alcohol, illicit or prescription drugs, 34 percent because it has less withdrawal potential and 57.4 percent because cannabis provides better symptom management.

Reiman believes this discovery brings up two important points.

“First, self-determination, the right of an individual to decide which treatment or substance is most effective and least harmful for them. Secondly, the recognition that substitution might be a viable alternative to abstinence for those who can’t or won’t completely stop using psychoactive substances.”

Speaking about legalization of cannabis, Reiman added, “The economic hardship of the Great Depression helped bring about the end of alcohol prohibition. Now, as we are again faced with economic struggles, the U.S. is looking to marijuana as a potential revenue generator.

“Public support is rising for the legalization of recreational use and remains high for the use of marijuana as a medicine. The hope is that this interest will translate into increased research support and the removal of current barriers to conducting such research, such as the Schedule I/Class B status of marijuana.”

Source: BioMed Central

Psychomotor Impairing Effects Of Cannabis Are Nominal In Experienced Users, Study Says - NORML

November 18, 2010 - Maastricht, The Netherlands

Maastricht, The Netherlands: Experienced marijuana consumers become tolerant to the substance's impairing potential on psychomotor skills, according to clinical trial data published online in the journal Psychopharmacology.

Investigators at Maastricht University in The Netherlands and Goethe University in Germany assessed the neurocognitive effects of cannabis and alcohol in 21 experienced marijuana consumers (defined as smoking more than four days per week.) Subjects completed various driving simulator performance tests, including measures of perceptual motor control (critical tracking test), dual task processing (divided-attention task), motor inhibition (stop-signal task), and cognition (Tower of London).

Researchers determined that alcohol dosing significantly impaired subjects' critical tracking, divided attention, and stop-signal performance. By contrast, investigators reported that smoking THC cigarettes "generally did not affect task performance."

"THC did not affect performance of heavy cannabis users in the critical tracking task, the stop-signal task, and the Tower of London," authors wrote. "These tasks have previously been shown to be very sensitive to the impairing potential of THC when administered to infrequent cannabis (users). The lack of THC on these tasks basically confirms the previous notions that heavy cannabis users can develop tolerance to behaviorally impairing effects of THC."

Authors did report that subjects' performance on the divided-attention task was affected by both THC and alcohol, and their combination.

Investigators further reported that heavy marijuana use did not produce cross-tolerance to the impairing potential of alcohol alone or the synergistic effects of alcohol and cannabis when used concurrently.

A previously published study from July also found that experienced cannabis consumers overall performance accuracy on episodic memory and working memory tasks was not significantly altered by marijuana. Researchers in that study concluded: "This pattern of effects is consistent with results previously reported by other researchers studying the acute effects of marijuana on cognitive performance of regular users. ... The observation that frequent users' response accuracy is not altered after marijuana smoking to the same extent it is for infrequent users ... suggests that near-daily marijuana smokers may have developed tolerance to some marijuana-related behavioral effects."

For more information, please contact Paul Armentano, NORML Deputy Director, at: paul@norml.org. Full text of the study, "Tolerance and cross-tolerance to neurocognitive effects of THC and alcohol in heavy cannabis users," appears online in the journal Psychopharmacology. For additional information regarding marijuana and psychomotor skills, please see NORML's white paper, "Cannabis and Driving: A Scientific and Rational Review" here: http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=7459.

Dr Melamede Responds to DEA agent's lies

The Science of Medical Cannabis: A Conversation with Donald Abrams, M.D.

Cannabis May Protect the Brain Against Alcohol Damage

Compounds in cannabis may protect the human brain against alcohol-induced damage, according to clinical trial data published online by the journal Neurotoxicology and Teratology.

Investigators at the University of California at San Diego examined white matter integrity in adolescents with histories of binge drinking and marijuana use.

They reported that binge drinkers (defined as boys who consumed five or more drinks in one sitting, or girls who consumed four or more drinks at one time) showed signs of white matter damage in eight separate regions of the brain.

By contrast, the binge drinkers who also used marijuana experienced less damage in seven out of the eight brain regions.

“Binge drinkers who also use marijuana did not show as consistent a divergence from non-users as did the binge drink-only group,” authors concluded. “[It is] possible that marijuana may have some neuroprotective properties in mitigating alcohol-related oxidative stress or excitotoxic cell death.”

In 2005, researchers at the National Institutes of Mental Health reported that the administration of the non-psychoactive cannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD) reduced alcohol-induced cell death in the hippocampus and etorhinal cortex of the brain in a dose-dependent manner by up to 60 percent. “This study provides the first demonstration of CBD as an in vivo neuroprotectant … in preventing binge ethanol-induced brain injury,” investigators concluded in The Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

Commenting on the findings, NORML Deputy Director Paul Armentano said, “Alcohol and cannabis appear to have contrasting effects on the body,” he said. “Ethanol is clearly toxic to healthy and developing cells whereas cannabinoids appear to be relatively non-toxic and possibly even neuroprotective.”

San Diego, CA–(ENEWSPF)

August 27, 2009.

Source: norml.org

Study Explains How Marijuana Kills Cancer Cells

Nov 6, 2003, Steve Kubby

A new study published in Nature Reviews-Cancer provides an historic and detailed explanation about how THC and natural cannabinoids counteract cancer, but preserve normal cells.

The study by Manuel Guzmán of Madrid Spain found that cannabinoids, the active components of marijuana, inhibit tumor growth in laboratory animals. They do so by modulating key cell-signalling pathways, thereby inducing direct growth arrest and death of tumor cells, as well as by inhibiting the growth of blood vessels that supply the tumor.

The Guzman study is very important according to Dr. Ethan Russo , a neurologist and world authority on medical cannabis: "Cancer occurs because cells become immortalized; they fail to heed normal signals to turn off growth. A normal function of remodeling in the body requires that cells die on cue. This is called apoptosis, or programmed cell death. That process fails to work in tumors. THC promotes its reappearance so that gliomas, leukemias, melanomas and other cell types will in fact heed the signals, stop dividing, and die."

"But, that is not all," explains Dr. Russo: "The other way that tumors grow is by ensuring that they are nourished: they send out signals to promote angiogenesis, the growth of new blood vessels. Cannabinoids turn off these signals as well. It is truly incredible, and elegant."

In other words, this article explains several ways in which cannabinoids might be used to fight cancer, and, as the article says, "Cannabinoids are usually well tolerated, and do not produce the generalized toxic effects of conventional chemo-therapies.

Usually, any story that even suggests the possibility of a new treatment for cancer is greeted with headlines about a "cancer cure" - however remote in the future and improbable in fact it might be. But if marijuana is involved, don't expect any coverage from mainstream media, especially since mainstream editors have been quietly killing this story for the past thirty years.

That's right, news about the abilility of pot to shrink tumors first surfaced, way back in 1974. Researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institutes of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, found instead that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice -- lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia.

The Washington Post reported on the 1974 study -- in the "Local" section -- on Aug. 18, 1974. Under the headline, "Cancer Curb Is Studied," it read in part: "The active chemical agent in marijuana curbs the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice and may also suppress the immunity reaction that causes rejection of organ transplants, a Medical College of Virginia team has discovered." The researchers "found that THC slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers, and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent."

"News coverage of the Madrid discovery has been virtually nonexistent in this country. The news broke quietly on Feb. 29, 2000 with a story that ran once on the UPI wire about the Nature Medicine article," complained Marijuana News.com editor Richard Cowan, who said he was only able to find the article through a link that appeared briefly on the Drudge Report Web page. "The New York Times, The Washington Post, and Los Angeles Times all ignored the story, even though its newsworthiness is indisputable: a benign substance occurring in nature destroys deadly brain tumors," added Cowan.

On March 29, 2001, the San Antonio Current printed a carefully researched, bombshell of a story by Raymond Cushing titled, "POT SHRINKS TUMORS; GOVERNMENT KNEW IN '74." Media coverage since then has been non existant, except for a copy of the story on Alternet .

It is hard to believe that the knowledge that cannabis can be used to fight cancer has been suppressed for almost thirty years , yet it seems likely that it will continue to be suppressed. Why?

According to Cowan, the answer is because it is a threat to cannabis prohibition . "If this article and its predecessors from 2000 and 1974 were the only evidence of the suppression of medical cannabis, then one might perhaps be able to rationalize it in some herniated way. However, there really is massive proof that the suppression of medical cannabis represents the greatest failure of the institutions of a free society, medicine, journalism, science, and our fundamental values," Cowan notes.

Millions of people have died horrible deaths and in many cases, families exhausted their savings on dangerous, toxic and expensive drugs. Now we are just beginning to realize that while marijuana has never killed anyone, marijuana prohibition has killed millions.

http://www.sierratimes.com/03/11/07/article_kubby.htm

NORML AUSTRALIA

NORML AUSTRALIA

To help educate and have a say in the ending of prohibition for Hemp and Medical Marijuana in Australia

Rick Simpson Exiled

Hemp Medicine´s Emperor´s Political Exile in Europe
- a message from Rick Simpson

On November 25th, 2009, one day before I was crowned the Freedom Fighter of the Year 2009 at the Cannabis Cup in Amsterdam, I received a word that I have been raided again by the RCMP. I contacted Tim Hunter at the Amherst attachment and asked I was being charged. Of course, he refused to give me straight answer. All he would say was that the RCMP wanted to talk to me.

After openly growing hemp in my backyard this past summer and announcing this fact to the public on tom Young´s open line talk show in June, how could the RCMP not be aware of my activities? The truth is they knew exactly what I was doing. RCMP officers were even sending people that needed help to me. I can only surmise that the purpose of this raid was to keep me from returning to Canada.

full story here

http://www.phoenixtears.ca/

Cannabis 'easier to buy than pizza'

Cannabis is easier to buy than pizza, one drug expert claims, calling for it to be legalised and taxed to benefit all Australians

Dr Alex Wodak, director of the Alcohol and Drug Service at Sydney's St Vincent's Hospital, says cannabis will soon be Australia's smoke of choice.

"Experts are calling for the legalisation and taxation of cannabis"

"In a few years time, we'll have more Australians smoking cannabis than we have smoking tobacco and by default that market is largely taken over by criminals," Dr Wodak said.

"Having a black market of that size is not good for anybody and inevitably big black markets can only survive if there's significant police corruption."

Dr Wodak delivered the keynote address at the Australian Drug Law and a Civil Society symposium at the Lismore campus of Southern Cross University on Thursday.

He also heads the Australian Drug Law Reform Foundation.

Drug trade run by criminals

"At the moment, we have no control over cannabis at all because the trade is run by criminals," he said from Lismore.

"By taxing and regulating it, we would start to have some influence over the way people use cannabis.

"Overall, the aim should be to try and reduce the harm."

Cannabis prohibition was expensive and ineffective, Dr Wodak said, with surveys showing up to 2.5 million Australians will smoke cannabis in 2010.

"It's easier for most Australians to purchase cannabis than to buy a pizza - it's a readily available substance," he said.

Dr Wodak said legalising cannabis and regulating it could be carried out similar to what happens in the alcohol and tobacco industries.

Warning labels, age restrictions

"We could have warning labels on packets, we could have age restrictions - we could also have help-seeking information if you're trying to cut down or stop," he said.

Dr Wodak said research had shown punishing people for possessing cannabis does not inhibit their desire to keep using the drug.

"We've proved that we've stimulated a huge black market for cannabis in Australia by prohibition," he said.

He quoted polls in the United States showing support for legalising cannabis had climbed from 12 per cent in 1969 to 44 per cent in 2009.

"I think the minute that politicians start to see that 51 per cent of the population is supporting the taxation and regulation of cannabis, they'll take 10 seconds to work out that's what they want too," Dr Wodak said.

He also expects a legal international trade in cannabis to develop one day, but acknowledged making cannabis a legal drug in Australia and overseas will happen incrementally.

Cannabis will stay on banned list

WORLD Anti-Doping Agency president John Fahey says he resents the use of the term "recreational drug" and has defended his body's stance on cannabis.

Fahey claims it violates at least two of the three requirements to be a banned substance.

In response to calls from leading trans-Tasman drug experts for WADA to review its policy on recreational drug use following the lifetime ban given to a rugby league player on the Gold Coast, Fahey gave no indication the policy on cannabis would be altered.

Writing in The Australian today, Australian Drug Foundation CEO John Rogerson, Australian National Council on Drugs executive director Gino Vumbaca and New Zealand Drug Foundation executive director Ross Bell claimed WADA's stance on cannabis has the potential to ruin careers and inexorably alter lives.

The trio also suggest the policy is too repressive. Only last month, player unions representing footballers and cricketers in England also called for recreational drugs to be removed from WADA's prohibited list. Fahey, however, was unmoved by the calls for change.

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"I resent the word recreational drug," Fahey said. "Nobody can say marijuana is a recreational drug. The cemetery is full of people who started on marijuana. It's illegal. They may be what society is using, but that doesn't make it legal.

"To try to say recreational drug, to me is a misnomer. There are only two types of drugs -- the legal drugs that we get under prescription or otherwise . . . and illegal drugs.

"The prohibited list contains a combination of both. In my view, the only recreational drugs that I would concede are entitled to that description are alcohol and tobacco.

"The rest are illegal drugs -- they breach the criminal code and let's call them just that. For me, it tries to dilute the message of the seriousness of drugs that are outside the law.

"To me, I think that's most unfortunate that people describe them as recreational drugs. They are illegal drugs."

Cannabis has been on WADA's list of banned substances since 2004.

In September, the agency's executive committee approved a new version of the list for next year, still banning cannabis.

Fahey stressed marijuana met two of the three arms of the WADA code, in it was a risk to the health of an athlete and contravened the spirit of sport. The code describes the spirit of sport as a celebration of the human spirit, body and mind, and is characterised by values including health, respect for rules and laws, and respect for self and other participants.

"The second condition is that the use of the substance represents an actual or potential health risk to the athlete," Fahey said.

"Nobody could argue that particular condition hasn't been met. If anyone wants to argue marijuana is not a potential risk to the athlete's health, I would doubt they would get many supporters.

"The third arm is if the use of the substance violates the spirit of sport. Nobody could argue against that one. The two (requirements) are there."

Alternate Cures for Cancer

Tobacco-Related Health Costs: $800; Booze-Related Health Costs: $165; Pot-Related Health Costs: $20

Health-related costs per user are eight times higher for drinkers than they are for those who use cannabis, and are more than 40 times higher for tobacco smokers, according to a report published in the British Columbia Mental Health and Addictions Journal.

According to the report, “In terms of [health-related] costs per user: tobacco-related health costs are over $800 per user, alcohol-related health costs are much lower at $165 per user, and cannabis-related health costs are the lowest at $20 per user.”

The review, authored by researchers from the Centre for Addictions Research of British Columbia at the University of Victoria and the Canadian Centre on Substance Abuse at the University of Ottawa, stated: “Alcohol is used by a very large number of people with the vast majority of these using in low- or moderate-risk ways. Conversely, cannabis and tobacco are used by far fewer people. The majority of cannabis use is low- and moderate-risk, however, while the majority of tobacco is high-risk.”

The study reported that social costs applicable to marijuana are primarily “enforcement-related.”

The authors concluded: “The harms, risks and social costs of alcohol, cannabis and tobacco vary greatly. A lot has to do with how the substances are handled legally. Alcohol and tobacco are legal substances, which explains their low enforcement costs relative to cannabis. On the other hand, the health costs per user of tobacco and alcohol are much higher than for cannabis. This may indicate that cannabis use involves fewer health risks than alcohol or tobacco.

“These variations in risk, harms and cost need to be taken into account as we think about further efforts to deal with the use of these three substances. … Efforts to reduce social costs related to cannabis, for example, will likely involve shifting its legal status by decriminalizing casual use, to reduce the high enforcement costs. Such a shift may be warranted given the apparent lower health risk associated with most cannabis use.”

According to a recent Rasmussen national poll of 1,000 likely voters, Americans believe by more than two to one that alcohol is “more dangerous” than marijuana

Is cannabis a treatment for brain tumours? : Cancer Research UK : CancerHelp UK

Research into cannabis as a cancer treatment

In the past few years cannabis has been the subject of a lot of medical research. There were many media reports in August 2004 about very early stage research into the use of chemical cannabinoids to help treat a type of brain tumour called glioblastoma multiforme. Cannabinoids are the active ingredients in marijuana. Complutense University in Madrid and the University hospital of Tenerife jointly carried out the research. Their results were published in the medical journal 'Cancer Research' on August 15th 2004.

The research found that cannabinoids interfere with the activity of genes needed to produce a chemical called ‘VEGF’. VEGF stands for ‘Vascular Endothelial Growth Factor’. It helps to make new cells grow.

VEGF is one of the most important chemicals controlling blood vessel growth. Doctors call the growth of new blood vessels ‘ angiogenesis’. As they get bigger, cancers need to grow their own blood vessels. Without its own blood supply to bring food and take away waste from cells, a cancer can’t grow bigger than a pea. If doctors could block VEGF, this could limit the growth of blood vessels supplying tumours and so they won’t be able to grow. This is called anti VEGF treatment.

The researchers first tested cannabinoids in the laboratory, with some promising results. They then looked at the effects of injecting cannabinoids into the brain tumours of two people with advanced glioblastoma multiforme. The researchers at the University hospital of Tenerife then used injections of cannabinoids into the tumours of 9 patients. The substance seemed to slow the growth of the tumours but more research is needed before we know whether cannabinoids may really be helpful in treating brain tumours.

Clinical trials

As far as we know, there are no trials at the moment. Further trials may take place. There are already several other anti VEGF inhibitors in clinical development for several types of cancers. It is all very early research and it may be many years before we know for sure how safe and effective anti VEGF treatment really is for people with cancer.

Clinical trials test new drugs in humans. They test drugs that have already shown potential in the laboratory. Trials initially recruit a small number of patients and if the treatment shows promise, the researchers will go on to plan larger trials. If you would like to read more about clinical trials, there is information about understanding clinical trials on CancerHelp UK. If you are looking for trials that are open and recruiting patients in the UK, go to our clinical trials database. Pick your type of cancer from the drop down menu of cancer types.

More information about brain tumours

There is information about brain tumours and their treatment in the brain tumour section of CancerHelp UK.

Cannabis destroys cancer cells

Research at Barts and The London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry reveals

01 March 2006

Researchers investigating the role of cannabis in cancer therapy reveal it has the potential to destroy leukaemia cells, in a paper published in the March 2006 edition of Letters in Drug Design & Discovery. Led by Dr Wai Man Liu, at Barts and the London, Queen Mary’s School of Medicine and Dentistry, the team has followed up on their findings of 2005 which showed that the main active ingredient in cannabis, tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, has the potential to be used effectively against some forms of cancer. Dr Liu has since moved to the Institute of Cancer in Sutton where he continues his work into investigating the potential therapeutic benefit of new anti-cancer agents.

It has previously been acknowledged that cannabis-based medicines have merit in the treatment of cancer patients as a painkiller; appetite stimulant and in reducing nausea, but recently evidence has been growing of its potential as an anti-tumour agent. The widely reported psychoactive side effects and consequent legal status of cannabis have, however, complicated its use in this capacity. Although THC and its related compounds have been shown to attack cancer cells by interfering with important growth-processing pathways, it has not hitherto been established exactly how this is achieved.

Now Dr Liu and his colleagues, using highly sophisticated microarray technology – allowing them to simultaneously detect changes in more than 25,000 genes in cells treated with THC – have begun to uncover further the existence of crucial processes through which THC can kill cancer cells and potentially promote survival. Further, Dr Liu found that the mechanism of cannabis may be independent of the presence of receptors – proteins found on the surface of cells to which other signalling molecules bind. Binding of molecules to receptors elicits a response in the cell, be it growth or death. The finding that cannabis action may not require the presence of these receptors introduces the possibility that the drug may be used more widely as the cancer cell’s dependence on the cannabis receptor is removed.

Whilst leukaemia treatment is on the whole successful, some people cannot be treated with conventional therapy - 25 per cent of children with leukaemia fail to respond to traditional treatment leaving their prognosis outcome poor. Dr Liu’s research findings provide a crucial first step towards the development of new therapies that can eradicate a deadly disease which affects millions of children and adults worldwide.

Dr Liu said: “It is important to stress that these cannabis-like substances are far removed from the cannabis that is smoked. These novel compounds have been specifically designed to be free of the psychoactive features, whilst maintaining anti-cancer action. Ultimately, understanding the fundamental mechanisms of these compounds will provide us with insights into developing new drugs that can be used to effectively treat cancers.”
Ends-

For further information, please contact:

Alexandra Fernandes
Deputy Head of Communications
Queen Mary, University of London
Tel: +44 (0) 20 7882 7910
email: a.fernandes@qmul.ac.uk

Notes to Editors:

Queen Mary, University of London

• Queen Mary is one of the leading colleges in the federal University of London, with over 11,000 undergraduate and postgraduate students, and an academic and support staff of around 2,600.

• Queen Mary is a research university, with over 80 per cent of research staff working in departments where research is of international or national excellence (RAE 2001). It has a strong international reputation, with around 20 per cent of students coming from over 100 countries.

• The College has 21 academic departments and institutes organised into three sectors: Science and Engineering; Humanities, Social Sciences and Laws; and the School of Medicine and Dentistry.

• It has an annual turnover of £200 million, research income worth £43 million, and it generates employment and output worth nearly £400 million to the UK economy each year.

• Queen Mary’s roots lie in four historic colleges: Queen Mary College, Westfield College, St Bartholomew’s Hospital Medical College and the London Hospital Medical College.

Institute of Cancer, Barts and the London, Queen Mary's School of Medicine and Dentistry

Created in 2003 the Institute of Cancer brings together some of the most eminent cancer research teams in London across six research centres. Under the leadership of the Director, Professor Nick Lemoine, and supported by an Executive Board of senior investigators, it is creating the academic environment fitting for an internationally recognised, comprehensive cancer centre. Its Cancer Research UK Clinical Centre – the first such international centre of excellence to be established in the UK - is the largest group of Cancer Research UK clinical and translational groups in London. The Institute is supported by a host of charities, research councils and industry with grants awarded totalling more than £5million per annum.

Microarray technology

A microarray is a slide on which have been embedded thousands of probes specific for all the genes found within a cell. Dr Liu’s data showed that certain pathways involved in cell survival were acted upon by cannabis, resulting in the death of the cell.

BBC NEWS | Health | Cannabis compound 'halts cancer'

Cannabis compound 'halts cancer'

The CBD compound found in cannabis is non-toxic

A compound found in cannabis may stop breast cancer spreading throughout the body, US scientists believe.

The California Pacific Medical Center Research Institute team are hopeful that cannabidiol or CBD could be a non-toxic alternative to chemotherapy.

Unlike cannabis, CBD does not have any psychoactive properties so its use would not violate laws, Molecular Cancer Therapeutics reports.

The authors stressed that they were not suggesting patients smoke marijuana.

They added that it would be highly unlikely that effective concentrations of CBD could be reached by smoking cannabis.

This compound offers the hope of a non-toxic therapy that could achieve the same results without any of the painful side effects Lead researcher Dr Sean McAllister

CBD works by blocking the activity of a gene called Id-1 which is believed to be responsible for the aggressive spread of cancer cells away from the original tumour site - a process called metastasis.

Past work has shown CBD can block aggressive human brain cancers.

The latest work found CBD appeared to have a similar effect on breast cancer cells in the lab.

Future hope

Lead researcher Dr Sean McAllister said: "Right now we have a limited range of options in treating aggressive forms of cancer.

"Those treatments, such as chemotherapy, can be effective but they can also be extremely toxic and difficult for patients.

"This compound offers the hope of a non-toxic therapy that could achieve the same results without any of the painful side effects."

Dr Joanna Owens of Cancer Research UK said: "This research is at a very early stage.

"The findings will need to be followed up with clinical trials in humans to see if the CBD is safe, and whether the beneficial effects can be replicated.

"Several cancer drugs based on plant chemicals are already used widely, such as vincristine - which is derived from a type of flower called Madagascar Periwinkle and is used to treat breast and lung cancer. It will be interesting to see whether CBD will join them."

Maria Leadbeater of Breast Cancer Care said: "Many people experience side-effects while having chemotherapy, such as nausea and an increased risk of infection, which can take both a physical and emotional toll.

"Any drug that has fewer side-effects will, of course, be of great interest."

But she added: "It is clear that much more research needs to be carried out."