GW Pharmaceuticals launches world’s first prescription cannabis drug in Britain
GW Pharmaceuticals, the British biotech company, today announced the UK launch of the world’s first prescription cannabis medicine.
Sativex, a ground-breaking cannabis-based drug for treating symptoms of multiple sclerosis, was approved in Britain on Friday, lifting GW Pharma’s shares 11pc to a four-year high of 141p.
GW Pharma said the drug, which will be sold in Britain by its licensee Bayer, would cost the National Health Service (NHS) £125 for a 10 millilitre vial – enough to last the average patient just over 11 days, Reuters reports.
Dr Geoffrey Guy, chairman of GW Pharma, said today’s launch was the culmination of eleven years of research.
Sativex uses compounds extracted from marijuana plants. Clinical trials have shown that Sativex, which is sprayed under the tongue, reduces spasticity in multiple sclerosis patients who do not respond adequately to existing therapies.
It became the world’s first cannabis medicine to win regulatory clearance when it was approved in Canada in 2005 for neuropathic pain, but its roll-out in Britain – and other European markets thereafter – is a larger sales opportunity.
Last month, GW Pharmaceuticals indicated that the medicine would be approved by the end of June, with the final stages of the approval process involving only finalising product’s packaging.
At the time, Dr Geoffrey Guy, chairman of GW, said: “The first six months of this year have proven the most important in GW’s history, in which we have made material progress towards Sativex’s launch in Europe and generated positive cancer pain data.”
A regulatory green light in Spain is expected shortly after the British approval. Sativex is to be marketed in the rest of Europe by Spain’s Almirall.
Approval of the drug in Britain has triggered a £10m milestone payment from Bayer, the company said.
However, GW Pharma and Bayer must still convince Britain’s National Institute for Health and Clinical Excellence (NICE) that Sativex is a cost-effective treatment for use on the NHS. Until that happens, its sales may be slow, analysts believe.
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DARE to Go Green!
DARE has found an innovative way to combine the challenges for environment with the impact of the recession. Recycling!!
The charity has taken steps to reduce the amount of paper used in its operation by using as far as possible IT and sees recycling as an additional way of contributing to the environment. CEO David Gilbert said “We see this new measure as an ecologically friendly way for people to support DARE.”
DARE can now arrange for the recycling of old printer cartridges through a national recycling centre, and by doing so is helping to make a few pennies in what are challenging times for those in the charities sector.
The main benefits are:
• Recycle cartridges to reduce landfill
• Manufacture in the UK, reducing CO2 emissions
To recycle your old cartridges through DARE you can find their website at www.dare-uk.org and order your freepost return recycle bag or box. Just enter a few details and your items will be shipped out straight away and free of charge.
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Tags: Campaigns, DARE (UK), DARE in the News | 
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DARE dinner offers star-studded evening
Ryder Cup golfer Oliver Wilson’s prestigious celebrity golf dinner dance and auction at Hollinwell golf club is pulling in the stars.
The amazing event is being held by Oliver in aid of Nottingham-based charity DARE, Oliver’s chosen charity, which focuses on life-skills and education for young people involved in drug and alcohol abuse.
If you fancy attending a sumptuous four-course dinner with Oliver and other sporting legends like Tony Woodcock, former England soccer player, and former England cricketer Chris Broad. Oliver is advising immediate booking as tickets are selling fast.
June 24 is the date of the celebrity reception and dinner dance, at which former British Lions England and Leicester Tigers rugby star Tim Stimpson will be Master of Ceremonies.
Diners will get chance to ask celebrities questions between each course and the star-studded evening will include a raffle with great prizes, and the fabulous auction, which items up for bidding include a four-day holiday for two with hotel and yacht at the F1Abu Dhabi Grand Prix.
Oliver said: “It’s set to be a wonderful event with my sporting celebrity friends and other surprise celebrity guests, and I am proud to support the brilliant work done by DARE UK, which promotes the use of sporting activities during and outside school.
“Their key message is to promote healthy living and make positive life choices in relation to drugs, violence, tobacco, alcohol and other harmful substances.”
Tickets for the Oliver Wilson DARE sporting dinner and dance cost £65 and can be obtained by telephoning Jo Goodwin at Win Marketing on 01509 265890 or through the website www.winmarketing.co.uk
Posted in DARE Golf Day, DARE Summer Ball, Press Release |
Tags: DARE (UK), DARE in the News |
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Relationships Can Lower Substance Use In Young People
A new study of young people in the two years after high school finds that those in romantic relationships are less likely than their peers to report heavy drinking and marijuana use.
Researchers have known that marriage lowers the odds that people will get drunk frequently or smoke pot, said study lead author Charles Fleming, a research scientist at the University of Washington. The new findings, he said, reveal that other kinds of romantic relationships have the same effect.
“I’m not saying that we should set up dating services,” he said. “But it’s something for parents to know and it’s something for other people who are working with young adults of this age to know.”
The study findings appear in the June issue of the Journal of Health and Social Behavior.
Fleming and colleagues examined surveys of 909 young people followed from first or second grade in the early 1990s through adolescence and the two years after high school.
More than 80 percent of the participants, from a school district outside Seattle, were white, and 54 percent were male.
The researchers found that those who were not in romantic relationships at ages 19 and 20 smoked less and drank less than other students back when they were in high school. The situation changed when they got older: “They catch up and maybe surpass their peers,” Fleming said.
After adjusting their statistics so they would not be thrown off by factors like employment status, the researchers found the typical person who was not in a relationship was 40 percent more likely to use marijuana than a person in a dating relationship but without a live-in girlfriend or boyfriend.
What is going on? One possibility is that when people are in relationships, they are “happier and getting social support from their partner,” Fleming said. “They’re spending less time hanging out with their substance-using friends, spending less time at parties and in bars.”
In the big picture, the findings matter because they provide insight into the influences on people during a time of life “when you see peak rates of alcohol abuse and development of dependency on cigarettes and marijuana,” Fleming said. “You worry about people being disengaged from influences that might curb their risk of drinking and substance abuse.”
Kenneth Leonard, a researcher with the Research Institute on Addictions at the University of Buffalo, said the findings add a couple new things to existing research. For one, they provide evidence that marriages among young people reduce the risk of substance use just as marriages of older people do.
But he said there is an exception: The study shows that when someone’s spouse or boyfriend or girlfriend is a heavy drinker or marijuana user, that actually raises the odds that the person will smoke and drink.
Overall, the findings show that “intimate partners, even those who are cohabiting or dating, can have an important influence on another’s substance use,” he said.
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We must help our children connect with nature
The lack of direct experience of nature is impoverishing children – and adults – in ways that scientists are only beginning to understand, says Cassandra Jardine.
By Cassandra Jardine
One noise that children are guaranteed to hear this half term is not the cuckoo, or the sound of wind rustling through the trees, but that of parents moaning, “Get off that computer, and play outside.” Forceful mums and dads will try loading their “screenagers” in the car to take them for a walk. More certainly would, if they had been reading the new edition of Richard Louv’s book, Last Child in the Woods.
Five years ago, when the book was first published, Louv’s was the first voice heard in what is becoming a dawn chorus of concern about the way children are deprived of nature. He went so far as to call this disconnect an illness – Nature Deficit Disorder – the symptoms of which include depression, hyperactivity, boredom and loneliness. All of these problems have been increasing, along with obesity rates, as children spend more time either indoors, or in cars, glued to screens and divorced from nature. According to a survey by Natural England, less than a quarter of children (24 per cent) visit a local patch of green weekly, whereas 53 per cent of their parents did.
Louv’s concerns were echoed last week by Sir David Attenborough. Speaking at the tenth anniversary of the Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust, the presenter of numerous wildlife series lamented the various obstacles – parental fear, health and safety rules, and laws against collecting fossils or wild flowers – that prevent children from “roaming the countryside” in the way that he did eighty years ago, as a child in Leicestershire.
One of those obstacles, it must be said, is the hours that children spend watching his television programmes about nature, which make them feel that they have seen, and know, it all. “I daresay they know more about East African lions and game than they do about foxes,” he acknowledges. Entrancing though it is to watch the wildebeest migration or wheeling shoals of sardines, lack of direct experience of nature is impoverishing children – and adults – in ways that scientists are only beginning to understand.
We are profoundly ignorant of our own surroundings. In a recent poll conducted by the Natural History Museum, less than a quarter of Britons could identify a sycamore, two thirds failed to recognise a peacock butterfly, and less than a fifth correctly labelled a frog: they either thought it was its warty relative, the toad, or had no idea at all.
Such findings are shaming, but they are also worrying. Louv has drawn together all the various strands of research that add up to a mental and physical health disaster not just in the US, where Louv lives, or western Europe. “Worldwide, in 2008, for the first time more people were living in cities than in rural areas,” says Louv, who is currently touring Britain. “People are worried about NDD in Nairobi as well as London and Los Angeles.”
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‘Getting away from drugs and crime as young as I did is a rare thing’
There’s a fascinating article by Caspar Walsh over on the Guardian website.
Caspar speaks frankly of his ‘Write to Freedom’ project. The Write to Freedom project’s focus is on supporting socially excluded individuals and groups, offering them a safe place for reflection, connection to nature and a positive model of creative community.
Hit the banner to check it out!
Teenagers blameless for inability to concentrate
Here’s something we knew already!
Teenagers have difficulty concentrating on lessons and homework because their brains are less developed than was previously thought, a new study claims.
Despite having the physical appearance of young adults, teenagers have brains more similar to those of younger children, meaning they are more disorganised and susceptible to distraction than older people, experts said.
The brain does not become fully developed until the late twenties or early thirties according to the research, published in the Journal of Neuroscience.
Dr Iroise Dumontheil, one of the joint authors of the research, from University College London’s Institute of Cognitive Neuroscience, said: “It is not always easy for adolescents to pay attention in class without letting their minds wander, or to ignore distractions from their younger sibling when trying to solve a maths problem. “But it’s not the fault of the teenagers that they can’t concentrate and are easily distracted. It’s to do with the structure of their brains. Adolescents simply don’t have the same mental capacities as an adult.”
MRI scans were used to measure the mental activity of a group of teenagers as they were asked to solve a problem while trying to ignore a number of distractions. Scientists found a surprisingly high amount of activity in the prefrontal cortex, an area at the front of the brain which is used for making decisions and multitasking, showing that the brain was operating less efficiently than an adult’s.
Dr Sarah-Jayne Blakemore, who led the study, told The Guardian: “We knew that the prefrontal cortex of young children functioned in this chaotic way but we didn’t realise it continued until the late 20s or early 30s. “The part of the brain needed to complete this sort of process is still very much developing throughout adolescence. This means it continues to do a lot of needless work when making these sorts of decisions.”
She said teenagers’ brains contain too much grey matter, the parts of the brain that carry messages, meaning their thought process is more chaotic than that of an adult.
The amount of grey matter in the brain decreases with age, meaning the thought patterns of adults are more efficient and ordered, making the brain work more effectively.
Dr Blakemore said: “What our research has shown is that there is simply too much going on in the brains of adolescents. The result is that their brain energy and resources are wasted and their decision-making process negatively affected.”
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A DARE Graduation
In May, King Edwin Primary School held their graduation ceremony for their year six students.
You can check out their article here at their website.
Well done everyone!
English drinking less alcohol, official figures show
Fewer children are abusing booze but deaths are rising as north-south drinks divide opens in England
Fewer schoolchildren are consuming alcohol but deaths from excessive drinking are rising steadily, according to the latest government statistics.
The figures, revealing a surge in prescriptions for medicines to treat alcoholism and a slight decrease in overall consumption, suggest that awareness of the health dangers and, possibly, the recession may be having some impact.
A cultural divide in drinking habits appears to be opening up between southern and northern England, with far less being drunk in London than elsewhere in the country.
Deaths from alcohol in England climbed to 6,769 in 2008; liver disease was the most common cause. Fatalities have risen by 24% since 2001.
If overall consumption is falling, death rates – which chiefly reflect long term physical damage – will take some time to reflect any change.
Prescriptions for medicines to treat alcoholism rose by 12% in 2009; more than 150,000 were written for the two main drugs used to treat withdrawal symptoms or induce sickness when alcohol is drunk.
Among the young, the news was encouraging. “The proportion of pupils [aged 11-15] who have never had an alcoholic drink has increased gradually in recent years,” the study by the Office of National Statistics and the NHS Information Centre said. “In 2008, 48% of pupils reported having never tried alcohol, compared with 39% in 2003.”
The number of school-age children who admitted to having drunk alcohol in the past week also fell from 26% in 2001 to 18% in 2008. Beer, followed by alcopops and wine were young teenagers’ favoured drinks. Pubs and off-licences are being used less often by underage drinkers, reflecting more vigorous enforcement of age laws by landlords and police. Youngs people increasingly say they are drinking at parties or friends’ homes. The proportion resorting to outdoor drinking in parks and streets has climbed from 21% in 1999 to 27% in 2008.
“Young people in London are much less likely to have drunk alcohol in the last week than those living in other regions,” the report notes. “In London 12% of 11- to 15-year-olds have drunk alcohol in the last week; elsewhere the proportion varies from 19% in the east Midlands and the South-east to 26% in the North-east.”
Among adults a similar geographical split emerges. In terms of exceeding daily drinking limits, the highest proportions were among men and women in Yorkshire and the North-west while the lowest were in London.
Binge drinking – defined as consuming more than double your daily unit guideline – was most frequent in northern England.
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The new drugs taking mephedrone’s place
More risky alternatives have sprung up in wake of the ban, showing that education is a better way to deal with drug use
In the pre-election ferment, one of the last actions of the outgoing government was to ban the “legal high” drug, mephedrone. This occurred in a climate of rabid press calls for regulation partly fuelled by the deaths of two young men supposed to have taken the drug. It now turns out that this evidence was incorrect and they had not taken mephedrone. Nevertheless, given the febrile atmosphere, the ban may have given some people the comfortable feeling that a situation was under control. At the time there was speculation that other “legal highs” were waiting in the wings to replace mephedrone. It is perhaps too soon to know what effect the mephedrone ban has had, but there are signs.
For example, in the window of a prominent alternative cafe in the town where I live there is a neat handwritten notice entitled “2-DPMP (desoxypipradrol)”. The notice warns strongly against taking this drug as it causes profound hallucinations and has led to the hospitalisation of several local users. It seems that the drug has come in from Holland and is being used as a “mephedrone substitute”. Desoxypipradrol is a highly potent stimulant drug with actions related to those of methylphenidate (Ritalin), but unlike other stimulant drugs it stays in the body for a long time. This makes it very difficult to judge the dose to take and overdosing may lead to hallucinations and prolonged insomnia. There are alarming reports on the internet of the experiences people have had with this drug.
This is only a snapshot of what may be occurring with stimulant drug use following the mephedrone ban. It does, however, highlight some issues about drug policy in the UK that are not being addressed by these simple bans.
Banning drugs such as mephedrone may give the illusion of control, but the cheapness of synthesis in the Far East coupled with internet supply has changed drug availability forever. New drugs will become available as others are banned. The banned drugs may still be available. Because of a lack of regulation, we cannot be certain of the purity of the drugs supplied in this way, so that users may be consuming unknown mixtures of chemicals.
These new substances have often not been tested for toxic effects, such as neurotoxicity, carcinogenicity or birth defects. We also have only a rudimentary idea of how the new drugs work and no idea how they affect the brains of young people after prolonged use. These substances are not going to disappear, so we need to obtain this information. A good solution here would be for the government to set up research programmes to study these new drugs. The research programmes should aim to understand how the drugs work as well as establishing their possible long-term effects.
Despite the potential dangers, people clearly want to take drugs to change their mood and perception. We must try to understand this need and manage the situation – by putting in place public education programmes to make people aware of the risks they run when they take these drugs.
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