Turning back the propaganda and fallacies of an 80-year prohibition is a herculean task and everyone agrees the answer lies in education. MGC Pharmaceuticals (based in Europe and Australia) has committed itself towards helping with that re-education process by agreeing to fund an online cannabis library in conjunction with the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology (RMIT) and The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJ).
RMIT is one of Australia’s leading educational institutions and has a long history of evidence-based research on traditional medicines. Australia’s indigenous population, as well as the many immigrants from countries with rich traditions of plant-based medicine, such as China, make the country a natural for research of this type. Indeed, RMIT already hosts a Division of Chinese Medicine, School of Health Sciences that is a collaborating group with the World Health Organization (WHO) Traditional Medicine Center.
Ron Lipsky, MGC vice president, described the goal of the RMIT project at the recent CannaTech Sydney conference. The first project will be the establishment of a digital library of cannabis medicine that will encompass comprehensive information on medical cannabis research, including genetic information on strains, their cannabinoid profile, and their effectiveness in treating various disorders through research and clinical data. The library will be made up of research done at RMIT and any future research, as well as research and data completed by global partners. Once the library is complete, it will be used by doctors, clinicians and researchers to identify which cannabinoid strains are effective in treating various disorders.
Lipsky said that RMIT applied for permission from the Australian federal government to begin its classification efforts and research but the government is “dragging its feet.” The same cannot be said of MGC. Just three weeks after Lipsky’s presentation in Sydney, MGC signed an agreement with The Hebrew University of Jerusalem (HUJ) which will greatly expand the digital library’s capacity to start collecting and codifying data, especially given Israel’s cannabis-friendly atmosphere.
The combined efforts of the two universities will now operate under the name CannaHub and its research projects will initially focus on three key areas in the use of medicinal cannabis: 1) the treatment of cancer, 2) the effectiveness of traditional and medicinal cannabis combination treatments, and 3) drug delivery systems.
If you want to see the MGC presentation from CannaTech you can do so at the Proactive Investors Australia website.
Our next two blogs will focus on non-profit associations that are fighting for the rights of Australians to access medical cannabis. ❖
