Need For Weed: Can Marijuana Help Cure Illnesses? India Will Finally Research The Topic

In a boost to medical marijuana research in India, three significant administrators in the field of science in India - the Indian Council for Medical Research, the Department of Biotechnology and the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research are planning to combine their expertise to promote research in herbal drugs, out of which some involve deriving new medicines from the Cannabis plant, reports The Hindu.

A joint study by the Tata Memorial Centre (TMC), Mumbai, and the CSIR-Indian Institute of Integrative Medicine (CSIR-IIIM) is among the first studies of this type.

Researchers will test whether the strains of marijuana grown at the CSIR-IIIM campus in Jammu could be useful in the treatment of diseases such as sickle cell anaemia and breast cancer. These marijuana-derived drugs have already been approved by the United States Food and Drug Administration (USFDA).

Marijuana or Ganja, as it is most commonly known, is illegal for commercial cultivation despite which it is still grown in a few parts of the country. Meanwhile, a few states like Jammu, Uttar Pradesh and Uttarakhand have allowed restricted cultivation of the plant for medical research.

“There is an unmet need for terminal cancer patients, and because of restrictions, we have lost 50-60 years of valuable research into the properties of these plants,” said Ram Vishwakarma, Director, CSIR-IIIM.

These studies are part of a new governmental push to make new drugs derived from herbs and plants that are mentioned in Ayurvedic and other traditional medicinal knowledge systems.

The USFDA had approved the use of Epidiolex (cannabidiol) [CBD] oral solution of the drug for the treatment of seizures related to two rare and severe forms of epilepsy, Dravet syndrome and Lennox Gastaut syndrome.