The European Medicines Agency seeks data on cannabis flowers.
Late last week, the EMA’s Committee on Herbal Medicinal Products (HMPC) published a “call for scientific data for use in HMPC assessment work on Cannabis sativa L., flos (Cannabis sativa flowering tops).”
It begins: “The HMPC invites all interested parties such as pharmaceutical industry associations, health care professional groups, learned societies, consumers and patients’ associations, governmental institutions as well as EU and EEA-EFTA Member States to submit selected specific scientific data, which may be used in the assessment of Cannabis sativa L., flos as part of the establishment of European Union herbal monographs and/or European Union list entries.”
The EMA also published a handy Q&A about how these pieces fit together. The HMPC, it notes, is the EMA’s “committee responsible for compiling and assessing scientific data on safety and efficacy of herbal substances, preparations and combinations, to support the harmonisation of the European market. The HMPC prepares the Agency’s opinions on herbal substances and preparations, along with information on recommended uses and conditions of safe use, as compiled in an EU herbal monograph.”
It is not yet clear where this call for data will specifically lead. Nonetheless, more government entities around the world are collecting and capturing data regarding the cannabis plant in an effort to assess paths forward.
Oxford researchers will study CBD’s efficacy as a treatment for psychosis.
The global study will include 1,000 participants, including people at a high risk for psychosis, people who have had just one episode, and people who have psychosis that doesn’t respond to conventional treatment.
Jazz Pharmaceuticals is supplying the CBD free of charge. Wellcome Trust is funding £16.5 million toward the study, which will start later in 2023.
“This exciting programme will help us to find out if cannabidiol is effective at treating psychosis at various stages by testing it at scale,” Lynsey Bilsland, head of Mental Health Translation at Wellcome said in a statement.
“While antipsychotics are commonly used to treat psychosis, they can have significant side effects, patients often stop taking them, and they don’t work for everyone. This means that it is important that we explore avenues such as this one for new therapies.”
NYC City Council member introduces resolution asking President Biden to sign the CAO Act.
New York City Council Member Crystal Hudson introduced a resolution last week “calling on the United States Congress to reintroduce and pass and the President to sign the Cannabis Administration and Opportunity Act.”
The CAO Act “helps create a national approach to the decriminalization of cannabis and assist in addressing the disparate incarceration of people of color,” the resolution reads, in part.
Hudson represents District 35 in central Brooklyn, which includes the neighborhoods of Prospect Heights, Fort Greene, parts of both Crown Heights and Bedford-Stuyvesant. The resolution has six other sponsors.
