Inge Ruigrok
South African doctors are following international trends and calling for dagga to be legalised for limited medical use here — although its illegal status and cultural prejudices against its use make the local research needed to back this change extremely
Cape Town neurologist and researcher, Professor Frances Ames, says up to 70 percent of doctors treating cancer patients with chemotherapy are already unoffically “prescribing” dagga to help their patients relieve the nausea that follows treatment.
Another medical staffer at one of Johannesburg’s leading private cancer treatment centres confirmed that many cancer patients were smoking dagga to alleviate
Dr Greg McCarthy, registrar at Cape Town’s Valkenburg Hospital, believes conventional drugs for nausea from chemotherapy — Zofran and Stemitil — are no better than dagga. “At about R100 per injection, Zofran is expensive, and the side-effects of Stemitil are a lot worse,” he says.
“Dagga’s side effects are short and mild. It makes cancer patients sleepy, which isn’t bad, and can be inhaled on an empty stomach, which is important if someone is nauseous. The only disadvantage is that it causes a high feeling — and international researchers are looking to reduce this.”
The United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs decided in 1991 that dagga should be rescheduled as a Schedule 2 drug, which would allow its restricted prescription by doctors — as is the case with painkillers morphine and codein, and cocaine,.
Although South Africa allows these prescription drugs, it has not followed the example of Britain, Germany and the USA in allowing the limited prescription of dagga.
South Africa’s Medicines Control Council (MCC), which controls the registration of all legal medications in the country, is not yet convinced the plant has been proved an effective drug, says representative Christel
However, the MCC would be willing to register a drug containing dagga, provided its safety and quality is proved, she adds.
But, according to Professor Ames, local researchers struggle to get permission to research dagga, and to get enough evidence to prove its medicinal properties. “You meet opposition. Not only by the government, but also by medical professionals who don’t want to ruin their image,” she says.
Dagga already has a lengthy pedigree as a medicinal drug: international researchers have proved that it benefits patients with Aids, leading to improved appetite and weight gain, and lowers intra-occular pressure of patients with glaucoma, a disease which causes blindness by raising pressure inside the eye.
Nigel Gericki, director of UCT’s Traditional Medicine Programme, adds that it has been proven in over 100 000 scientific papers that dagga is a painkiller and has anti-asthmatic, anti-epileptic, anti-tumour, and anti- bacterial properties.
The herb has been used by cultures all over the world for at least 5 000 years, treating among other ailments, inflammation, digestive disorders, depression, rheumatism and migraine.
What medical problems can it pose?
Says Gericki: “The herb has a hypnotic impact and contains embryo-toxins. Pregnant women probably shouldn’t take it, as they shouldn’t take most conventional medicines.”
Dr Jeremy Long, cancer specialist at the Johannesburg Hospital, feels it is a bad option, considering the dangers when smoking it. “It’s unneccessary — we have a lot of other effective anti-nausea drugs.”
Dr Chris van den Burgh, national executive director of the South African National Council for Alcohol and Drug Abuse believes herbs can have medicinal properties, but says there are other, safer, drugs. “Dagga can be damaging because it contains so many toxins. One can never be certain that it has the same effect every
Gericki argues that opposition to medical research stems from the western world’s aversion to dagga. “It’s a cultural issue,” she says.
But times they are a-changing.
Says McCarthy: “Dagga has been found to have its own set of receptors in the brain. International researchers have more and more interest in its medical potential. We’ll know more about this in the next few