The drugs used to treat cancer are among the most powerful, and most toxic, chemicals used in medicine. They kill both cancer cells and healthy cells, producing extremely unpleasant and dangerous side effects.
The most common is days or weeks of vomiting, retching, and nausea after each treatment. The feeling of loss of control is highly depressing, and patients find it very difficult to eat anything, and lose weight and strength. People find it more and more difficult to sustain the will to live, and many chose to discontinue treatment, preferring death to treatment.
Cannabis can be used as an antiemetic, a drug which relieves nausea and allows patients to eat and live normally. Despite great advances in the last few years of antiemetic research, cannabis is safer, cheaper and often more effective than standard synthetic antiemetics.
Smoking cannabis can be more effective than taking it (or its synthetic derivatives such as Marinol) orally as patients it difficult to keep anything down long enough for it to have an effect. Smoking cannabis produces an immediate effect, and patients find it easier to control the dosage. Additionally the euphoric properties act as an anti-depressant, and the hunger and enjoyment of food properties ('the munchies') make weight gain easy, and these increase the chances of recovery.
The method by which chemotherapy generates nausea and vomiting is not entirely certain, although studies point to it being caused by receptor stimulation in the central nervous system or gastrointestinal tract. However, cannabis as an antiemetic seems to work via a different mechanism than the currently-used antiemetic drugs in this field (such as corticosteroids).
It is therefore worthy of investigation whether a combination of cannabinoids and existing therapies may benefit the patient more than either of the two taken separately. It also suggests that patients who do not respond well to traditional antiemetic medications may find greater benefit with cannabis-based drugs.
A relatively large number of studies have been done on the anti-emetic properties of cannabis in regard to the negative effects of chemotherapy. Almost invariably cannabis (and some of its constituent cannabinoids) have been found effective.
As a result of this, in 1985 the US FDA licenced synthetic THC (Dronabinol) for these symptoms. In the UK however it is not licensed in this way. It is actually possible to prescribe Dronabinol to patients in the UK, but only on an individual basis.
This is very rarely done, perhaps not surprisingly given the large amount of administrative obstacles that need to be overcome.
However, in 1982 Nabilone (an analogue of delta-9-THC) was licensed in the UK to allow it to be prescribed for nausea following chemotherapy, as long as other treatment was ineffective and that it was solely used within a hospital environment.
The treatment of nausea and vomiting is not the only way in which cannabis can help cancer sufferers. Both the analgesic (pain-relieving) and appetite-stimulating qualities of cannabis can make a patient's life both longer and far more bearable.
