Is cannabis addictive ??? was Re: Poitical abuses...

[Dave Peritt]

In article <328270BF.60AE at ic.ac.uk> Nigel Foden, n.foden at ic.ac.uk writes:
>Just a thought, this, but cannabis is officially illegal, and so it is 
>difficult to produce quality research on its addictive properties in
humans 
>without crossing ethical barriers.  Therefore any studies you find
(there 
>probably were some in the sixties) will be anecdotal and retrospective
rather 
>than prospective, as in the kind of addictive properties trials that
might be 
>done with, say, a new antidepressant.  Also remember that sometimes, a
paper 
>may be biased in its outlook to reflect the political mood of the time.


As someone who has done immunological research on illegal drugs I can
tell you that you get the drug for free and this carefully controlled
substance can be used for research experiments.  They do not allow
protocols on humans so all of our studies were on mice.  Although we
worked mainly with morphine and cocaine I assume cannabis is also
available for serious research purposes in animals..  Animal models are
more useful than human since they decrease time of experiments,
variability of lifestyles and dosage variations....  Toxicities are more
easily studied as are lower level trials and withdrawal effects.....