Cannabis medicine offers hope for severe paediatric epilepsies

Abstract

Science does not need to take a position on legalizing the recreational use of cannabis, this is more a political issue or a personal choice. Cannabis, as the other drugs of abuse, produces several detrimental effects on brain function but differently from alcohol, nicotine, cocaine, heroin and ecstasy (just to cite the most commune ab- used ones) these are mostly present with acute intoxication and disappear after termination of drug intake. Consequently, there is no scientific reason for which we have some legal drugs of abuse such as alcohol and tobacco sold by governments and others labelled as il- legal and banned by society. This is, of course, a flawed situation but one that illustrates a major paradox in international laws on drugs. Despite being illegal, cannabis is (ab)used by about 87.6 million European adults (23.7% of adults) (EMCDDA, 2017). Cannabis is also the most commonly used illicit drug among the Maltese adult population aged 18–65 years. According to the 2013 general population study, around 4.3% of those aged 18–65 years reported having used cannabis during their lifetime (EMCDDA, 2017).