Claudette Cardinal smokes a lot of pot. She's also HIV positive.
Cardinal believes that marijuana helps not only with treating her HIV symptoms and the medication’s side effects, but with her overall health.
“Marijuana helps me with the maintenance of keeping on top of [my medication], to keep up my appetite, and maintain my weight, not looking like a pile of bones. When I started losing weight, that’s when I started to panic, and I went back to drinking vodka and doing other sorts of illicit drugs when that happened. [As of now], I haven’t injected drugs since 1995,” said Cardinal.
Although the use of marijuana is relatively open in Vancouver -- the city is home to 93 marijuana dispensaries, with new ones cropping up every month -- it remains an illegal drug in Canada with no plans of legalization or decriminalization from the federal government. Recently, Health Minister Rona Ambrose expressed her outrage at a Supreme Court ruling which legalizes all edible forms of medical marijuana.
However, an Angus Reid poll from last year showed that 6 in 10 Canadians would support marijuana’s legalization. Liberal Party Leader Justin Trudeau has openly admitted to having smoked marijuana and is allied with the NDP in advocating the drug’s legalization.
Within this atmosphere of debate surrounding the green stuff, UBC announced on June 8 its acceptance of a grant of $1 million from National Green Biomed, a Richmond-based company, to fund research studying the link between medical marijuana and its healing potential for patients living with HIV.
Heading up the study that received the grant is M-J Milloy, an infectious disease epidemiologist with the UBC Division of AIDS and the British Columbia Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS. Milloy does not look like a stereotypical academic: he is young for a professor, his dark hair is cropped close to his head, shirtsleeves rolled up and collar loosened. But then, his research topic is not exactly a typical academic subject.
Milloy was first inspired to study the link between marijuana and HIV when he heard about colleagues at Louisiana State University who examined the effects of marijuana on monkeys infected with HIV. The LSU study showed that monkeys who were given medical cannabis had higher levels of immune cells which helped stop the spread of HIV. Milloy then conducted a study with a similar idea behind it, examining the medical records of Downtown Eastside HIV-positive patients and comparing those who were frequent or daily marijuana users with individuals who rarely used the drug. In doing so, he found that humans who were daily marijuana users actually had a lower level of HIV in their bloodstream.
“The hope is that the gift that [National Green Biomed] is providing us will allow us to move forward with the next stage of our research: clinical trials. Our goal is to nail down the effects of marijuana on HIV, to figure out what is behind that mechanism, and to see if there might be clinical benefits,” Milloy explained.
“From a scientific standpoint, one of the real drawbacks when working with joints is that the dosage is very up and down,” said Milloy. “Patients don’t know how much of the drug they are taking when they smoke a joint. This is why a lot of clinical trials are moving towards vaporizing since it is well tolerated and offers a more consistent dosage.”
Milloy and his team are still in the preliminary stages of planning their clinical trials. The university is ensuring that scientific protocol is followed and will be watching Milloy and his team closely when it comes time for clinical trials.
Who is behind the grant making this research possible? Justin Dhaliwal is the CEO of NG Biomed, the company responsible for funding Milloy’s research. His interest in medical marijuana was sparked two years ago by CNN’s Chief Medical Correspondent, Sanjay Gupta, and his documentary on the benefits of medical marijuana, “Weed”.
There is a scene in the documentary of a young girl suffering from life-threatening epileptic seizures. She begins treatment with medical marijuana that drastically improves her quality of life. The scene stuck with Dhaliwal, who was reminded of his mother’s struggle with cancer.
“I lost my mother to cancer back in 2005. One of the things that I reflect on was her last days, when she was getting a lot of high-powered drugs, like morphine, to help her deal with the pain…. She might have relieved her pain and also been able to have those cognitive functions,” said Dhaliwal.
National Green Biomed is still awaiting its license to be approved as a medical marijuana dealer by Health Canada, but Dhaliwal feels confident about his chances.
“From the very start our focus is on building a very strong team of individuals with the utmost integrity. Based on the team we put together we feel quite confident,“ Dhaliwal explained.
The company has committed to providing the full $1 million to UBC researchers, even if they fail to secure the license.
With marijuana becoming increasingly accepted in the Canadian cultural fabric, is there any cause for surprise that NG Biomed’s funding of medical marijuana research did not spark any severe public backlash or controversy against the university?
“One of the great virtues of universities is their willingness and freedom to look for answers in unconventional places,” said President Gupta in a media release on the grant. “Canadian attitudes on the issue of marijuana’s legality and availability are still very much in flux. But if marijuana can help reduce pain or nausea, or even treat disease, we have a duty to find out.”
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