The Dutch government has started distributing cannabis as a prescription painkiller to pharmacies to treat chronically ill patients

Cannabis sativa has been used therapeutically for many centuries. Known to the Chinese as a strong herbal remedy around 5,000 years ago, it was introduced into European medicine in Napoleonic times. Its pain relieving and sedative effects soon became accepted by Western medical practitioners, who prescribed it on a wide scale. Britain's Queen Victoria is said to have taken cannabis tincture for menstrual pains.

Contentious drug
Already in the latter half of the 19th century, cannabis use was as controversial as it was widespread, and not only because of its intoxicating effect. Amid doubts about its true medical benefits, cannabis fell out of favour in the 20^th century because of lack of standardised preparations and the development of more potent synthetic drugs. Today, some experts warn that sustained cannabis use increases the risk of depression and schizophrenia.

These warnings haven't stopped people with cancer, HIV and multiple sclerosis (MS) from taking the drug as a painkiller. The Dutch Health

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Lighting up in the kitchen

Ministry estimates up to 7,000 people in the Netherlands are using cannabis for medical reasons, buying it in coffee shops. The ministry expects the figure to double now that it's moved to regulate the cannabis supply, making the drug available from pharmacies in pure medical form.

Last resort
The Hague stresses the supply is in accordance with UN regulations and says doctors should only prescribe cannabis as a final resort: when conventional treatments have been exhausted or if other drugs had side-effects.

Production is left to two official suppliers, who grow their cannabis not for coffee shops but exclusively for the government. One of the licences went to James Burton, an American expatriate, who grows his plants in laboratory-style conditions in his well-guarded greenhouse, surrounded by water and guarded by 39 cameras and security staff.

Traceable

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Click to listen to James Burton interviewed by Anja van de Dam, 3´22

Every month, Mr Burton will sell approximately 10 kilos of medical cannabis to the Health Ministry, which in turn packages and labels the drug in small tubs to supply to pharmacies.

"Each plant is individually numbered," he says, "it has a starting date, an identification number and a pharmacy crop number, so that all the cannabis is recallable and traceable."

Mr Burton hails the plant's medical benefits, calling it "a miracle drug, because it works for many, many diseases." He has a special passion for the plant because it saved his eyesight. "All my family members have glaucoma on the male side, caused by a genetic defect, and they're either blind or legally blind. Had I not smoked cannabis at an early age in the military service, I also would have been blind."

Research subject
As cannabis proved to work where conventional therapy had failed, Mr Burton became a research subject in America, where academic centres and hospitals studied the effects of government-provided cannabis on his eyes.

But the tide turned in the early eighties when Ronald Reagan came in as US president on his "just-say-no-to-drugs" policy. All research into medical cannabis was stopped, and James Burton resorted to growing cannabis for his own use. After he was arrested and his house and car impounded, he moved to the Netherlands - "the only place in the world at the time, where you could grow cannabis, and with one of the best eye-hospitals in the world located in Rotterdam."

Now after 20 years, Mr Burton has become an official cannabis supplier to the Dutch government. He finds it ironic that in this capacity he'll soon be exporting marijuana into the US for new research purposes.

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