Uttar Pradesh: ‘Ganja has little benefit, serious impact on health’

VARANASI: A critical analysis of medicinal use of ganja (cannabis) has found that it has little medicinal benefit but serious health consequences.
A team of researchers at Tata Memorial Center, Mumbai led by Dr Pankaj Chaturvedi (Deputy Director, Center for Cancer Epidemiology, Tata Memorial Center, Mumbai) conducted critical analysis of all major studies conducted on the use of cannabis and marijuana and reached on this conclusion, which has also been published in the ‘Indian Journal of Palliative Car’e on August 29. After TMC’s Mahamana Pt Madan Mohan Malviya Cancer Centre shared details of the studies on Saturday, TOI contacted Dr Chaturvedi for details.
He said, “Our team is conducting a research to see whether cannabis extract can be effective in giving relief to palliative cancer patients, who suffer unbearable pain both physical and mental. This study had been started recently and is in initial stage. But, before this research we worked to critically evaluate the available data regarding its medicinal benefits, health hazards and long-term outcomes of legalization. Major outcome of this study was that cannabis has several serious health consequences.”
Efforts are made to know cannabis’s medicinal benefits, he said adding, “We studied cannabis role in the control of nausea and vomiting, in control of chronic pain, epileptic disorders and other problems. We found that there is very weak evidence that cannabis is beneficial when used in other diseases such as Crohns disease (chronic inflammatory bowel disease), sleep disorder, glaucoma, Tourette syndrome (nervous system disorder.”
There are several case reports of tumours that have responded to treatment with cannabis such as gliomas, lymphomas, prostate cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer, and pancreatic cancer, he said adding, but there is no strong evidence to recommend them in routine oncology practice.