A medical component of dagga may soon be easier to buy now

The Medicines Control Council‚ has issued a statement saying it intends to reschedule one of the chemical components of dagga‚ called cannabidiol‚ as a schedule four medicine down from schedule six making it easier to get a prescription.

Cannabidiol is removed from the plant and does not have any psychoactive and mind alerting properties as it does not contain TNC‚ the chemical in dagga that can give users a high.

It can be taken via oil and is used for chronic pain sufferers‚ patients with untreatable epilepsy and chemotherapy patients may use it to stop nausea.

It was a schedule 6 substance making it hard to prescribe and requiring special circumstances for a doctor to choose such a drug for a patient's ailment

A schedule four drug is an easier medicine to prescribe‚ but still requires a script and purchase in a pharmacy.

For example‚ a doctor confirmed to The Times that Ritalin and Morphine are schedule six drugs that require an original script for use at a pharmacy each month. The script cannot be faxed to a pharmacy and patients using schedule 6 drugs cannot get a script valid for six-month repeats. Instead‚ they require a new script by the doctor each month.

Schedule 6 drugs are seen as "potentially harmful" and so are very strongly regulated to prevent abuse.

Registrar of the Medicines Control Council Joey Gouws said in a letter that in a meeting last week the council "resolved to down-schedule cannabidiol from Schedule 6 to Schedule 4"

But she said this change had to be signed off by the health minister.

"Please be advised that the office of the Registrar is in the process of drafting an amendment to the published Schedules‚ for consideration by the Minister of Health and publication in the Government Gazette."

Many proponents of using dagga as a medicine prefer using the seeds‚ rather than removed components‚ as the more than 100 chemical components called cannabinoids are said to work together therapeutically for pain‚ muscle spasm and nausea relief.

Oncologist Donald Abrams‚ Professor of Clinical Medicine at the University of California San Francisco and Chief of Haematology / Oncology at San Francisco General Hospital‚ told the clinical cannabis convention in Johannesburg on Saturday that the plant chemicals are believed to work together "synergistically".

Abrams is a conventional doctor but recommends smoking dagga for pain and nausea relief for his cancer patients in San Francisco.