Body's own cannabinoids crucial to pain relief

Well I'm not sure if this is good news or bad. I like that they're finding the cannabis based medicines valid as a treatment for pain relief; but I'm not that keen that they're using the research to develop yet more pharmaceuticals that they intend to use as a wedge to keep the plant illegal.

A new study shows, for the first time, that the release of the body's own marijuana-like compounds is crucial to stress-induced analgesia – the body's way of initially shielding pain after a serious injury.

The work, led by scientists at the University of Georgia and the University of California, Irvine, may yield a target for new drug therapies that will completely bypass the current arguments over the use of medical marijuana. In theory, the new research makes it possible to design a pill that will have the same pain relieving effects as smoked marijuana, but through an indirect mechanism that could also reduce unwanted psychoactive side effects and not have the same political baggage.

"There is no prescription or over the counter drug that allows us to manipulate the level of the brain's marijuana-like compounds," said Andrea Hohmann, a neuroscientist in the department of psychology at the University of Georgia and co-author of the paper. "This is the first time anyone has shown that one of the body's naturally occurring cannabinoids, a compound known as 2-AG, has anything to do with pain regulation under natural conditions."

The study was published today in the journal Nature.

A drug derived from the new research would likely be more effective and specific than smoked marijuana, said Hohmann.

So this is the new propaganda. It's only good if the pharmas can make obscene profits on it. Hardly what we envisioned as a free market cannabis economy.