“You can touch, smell, but not taste the marijuana”.

These were the words spoken by Prof. Clive Page, a King’s college pharmacologist who was chairing the wonderful talk on The Science of Cannabis last night. He was right – I could smell it from the third row.

While many people will be familiar with the psychoactive properties of THC found in cannabis, the talk last night was dealing with the varying medicinal properties of other chemicals produced by the plant.

Watch UCL’s Dr Andrea Sella explain the history and science of cannabis (6 minutes)

Our expert for the evening was the rather aptly named Dr. David Potter, a botanist and magistrate from GW Pharmaceuticals, who is part of the team responsible for last year producing the first legal medicinal product derived from marijuana.

Sativex was licensed in the UK last year for the treatment of spasticity in patients with Multiple Sclerosis, a debilitating and incurable condition that progressively damages the central nervous system.
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