Special thanks to DoseNation.com 5 for this.

Croatia’s supreme court has overthrown on appeal a jail sentence given to a war veteran who used marijuana to calm his nerves, with the court saying that his use of the drug against Post Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) was legitimate.

Technically, what the court did was to declare the man’s use of marijuana a “meaningless act” under Croatian law, which means that he could not be prosecuted.

Identified in Croatian media reports as “KD”, the man was reported to be one of up to 18 000 veterans of the 1991-95 war.

A court in his home town of Virovitica, about 100km east of the capital city Zagreb, sentenced him to jail – in line with common practice in Croatia where courts come down hard on drug consumption – for growing marijuana plants and being in possession of 67.71g of marijuana.

On appeal, the supreme court overturned the jail sentence on June 3 2009, saying that it had taken into consideration “that the defendant suffers from PTSD…marijuana relaxes him and helps him to overcome psychological problems”.

While the ruling is being seen as a precedent in cases of war veterans with PTSD, media reports quoted authorities as saying that strict sentences for drug cultivation, selling and consumption remained in effect.

source = ‘the sofia echo‘

Some of the Central American rainforest’s hidden treasures are being revealed by the Maya, more than a millennium after their passing.

A study of the giant trees and beautiful flowers depicted in Maya art has identified which they held sacred. Created during the Maya Classic Period, the depictions are so accurate they could help researchers spot plants with hitherto unknown medicinal uses. The research is published in the journal Economic Botany.

Plants played a significant role in the ecology, culture and rituals of the Maya people, whose artwork reflected the rich diversity of plant life around them. But while numerous examples of such artwork exist, few have been studied to see exactly which plants they depict.

So natural historian and archaeologist Charles Zidar of Missouri Botanical Garden in St Louis, US, and botanist Wayne Elisens of the University of Oklahoma, Norman, US, decided to find out. They hope to discover plants of importance to the Maya that are either unknown to modern people, or have since been forgotten.

“The Maya have lived and used rainforest plants to heal themselves for thousands of years. We are just beginning to understand some of their secrets”, said Archaeologist Charles Zadir.

The team’s first analyses focused on artwork produced within the southern lowland region of the Maya, located in the modern countries of Belize, Guatemala and Mexico.

They examined more than 2,500 images of Maya ceramics created within the Maya Classical Period of AD 250 to 900.

The images are held within an image collection taken by Justin and Barbara Kerr, curated by the Foundation for the Advancement of Mesoamerican Studies, based in Crystal River, Florida, US.

In particular, the two men searched for depictions of bombacoids, a diverse lineage of trees in the Neotropics characterised by swollen or spiny trunks and big, colourful, conspicuous flowers with long folding petals.

Across different ceramics, Zidar and Elisens found depictions of five species.

“I was surprised that a variety of plants from this family were depicted,” says Zidar.

The Maya clearly depicted the cebia tree (Ceiba pentandra) also known as the Silk Cotton or Kapok tree.

Trees of the Ceiba genus can grow up to 50m tall, with swollen trunks producing large buttresses.
Quararibea flowers and a cocao vessel
White blooms on ceramic: Quararibea painted on a cup for drinking chocolate

To the Maya, the ceiba tree was sacred, mapping out the upper, middle and underworlds.

Considered the “first tree”, or “world tree”, the ceiba was thought to stand at the centre of the Earth. Modern indigenous people still often leave the tree alone out of respect when harvesting forest wood.

The thorny trunks of the ceiba tree are represented by ceramic pots used as burial urns or incense holders, which are designed in a strikingly similar fashion. Two other tree species, the Provision Tree (Pachira aquatica) and the Shaving Bush Tree (Pseudobombax ellipticum) are also copied into the designs of similar pots.

On cacao pots and a plate for holding tamales, made from dough, the Maya drew flowers of either P. ellipticum or P. aquatica. On the cacao pot, the flowers seem to form part of the headdress of a high ranging individual.

Smaller white-flowered blossoms of Quararibea funebris or Q. quatemalteca also appear to adorn another vessel used for cacao drinking. The Maya used this species to flavour and froth cacao beverages so it is appropriate for them to represent the plant on the vessel, says Zidar.

“It was previously thought that only the ceiba tree was of great importance,” says Zidar.
Pseudobombax ellipticum flower and cocao pot artwork
A Pseudobombax flower inspires a headdress worn by the Maya elite

“It has amazed me that so many plants are depicted. These plants are not as stylised as previously though, and thus you can name the plant family, genus and even the species.”

Zidar is continuing the work, expanding it further to find out which animals as well as plants were considered of high importance by the Maya people. He also hopes the research will unveil secrets known to the Maya that have become lost in time.

“The Maya have lived and used rainforest plants to heal themselves for thousands of years. We are just beginning to understand some of their secrets.”

“By determining what plants were of importance to the ancient Maya, it is my hope that identified plants can be further studied for pharmaceutical, culinary, economic and ceremonial uses. More should be done to conserve large tracts of forest in order to properly study theses plants for their value to mankind,” he continues.

“This research has already been of interest to pharmaceutical companies that are looking to extract alkaloids from plants that were important to the ancient Maya.”

source = BBC 4

Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research

The use Cannabis sativa (cannabis) extracts as medicine was described in China and India (1) before the birth of Christ. The therapeutic use of cannabis was introduced in Western medicine in the first half of the 19th century and reached its climax in the last two decades of the same century. At the turn of the century, several pharmaceutical companies were marketing cannabis extracts and tinctures which were prescribed by doctors for many different complaints including pain, whooping cough and asthma, and as a sedative/hypnotic agent (2). However, the use of cannabis as a medicine almost completely disappeared at about the middle of the 20th century. The main reasons for this disappearance were the variable potency of cannabis extracts, the erratic and unpredictable individual responses, the introduction of synthetic and more stable pharmaceutical substitutes such as aspirin, chloral hydrate and barbiturates, the recognition of important adverse effects such as anxiety and cognitive impairment, and the legal restrictions to the use of cannabis-derived medicines (2).

Today this situation has changed considerably. The main active psychotropic constituent of cannabis, D⁹-tetrahydrocannabinol (D⁹-THC), was isolated, identified and synthesized in the 1960’s. Almost three decades later, cannabinoid receptors in the brain were described and cloned and the endogenous cannabinoids were isolated and identified (3). As a result of these discoveries the interest in cannabis research has remarkably increased. For instance, the number of publications using the key word “brain”, compiled by the ISI Web of Knowledge, increased 26 times from 1960-1964 to 2000-2004, while the number of publications about `cannabis’ increased 78.5 times during the same period. As a consequence, the research on the use of cannabis as medicine has been renewed.

Although D⁹-THC is commonly accepted as the main factor responsible for the effects of cannabis, several reports have demonstrated that other components of the plant influence its pharmacological activity (4). One of these components is cannabidiol (CBD), which may constitute up to 40% of cannabis extracts (5) and is devoid of the typical psychological effects of cannabis in humans (6). Studies on the interaction between D⁹-THC and CBD have produced apparently contradictory results (7). Although potentiation of the effects of D⁹-THC has been observed (8,9), this phenomenon probably involves pharmacokinetic interactions since CBD is a potent inhibitor of hepatic drug metabolism (10) and increases D⁹-THC concentrations in the brain (11). Several studies, however, have reported antagonism of the effects of D⁹-THC when both compounds are administered simultaneously to animals (12,13) or humans (6,14).

CBD (1 mg/kg) co-administered with D⁹-THC (0.5 mg/kg) significantly reduced the anxiety and the psychotomimetic symptoms induced by the latter drug in healthy volunteers (6). Since the dose of CBD used in that study did not change D⁹-THC levels in blood (15), it was suggested that CBD blocked the effects of D⁹-THC by some intrinsic pharmacological properties. Actually, when administered alone CBD produced its own effects, including hypnotic (16), anticonvulsive (17), neuroprotective (18), and hormonal (increased corticosterone and cortisol levels) effects (19,20). These effects led to the hypothesis that CBD could have anxiolytic and/or antipsychotic effects.

Anxiolytic effect of cannabidiol

The anxiolytic properties of CBD has been demonstrated by several pre-clinical studies that employed different paradigms such as the conditioned emotional response (21), the Vogel conflict test (22) and the elevated plus-maze (23,24). In the later study (24), the effective doses of CBD ranged from 2.5 to 10 mg/kg, and the drug produced an inverted U-shaped dose-response curve, the higher doses being no longer effective in rats. This could explain the negative results obtained with high doses of CBD (above 100 mg/kg) in a previous study employing the Geller-Seifter conflict test (25).

To evaluate a possible anxiolytic effect of CBD in humans, a double-blind study was conducted on healthy volunteers submitted to a simulation of the public speaking test. CBD (300 mg, po) was compared to ipsapirone (5 mg), diazepam (10 mg) or placebo. The results showed that both CBD and the two other anxiolytic compounds attenuated the anxiety induced by the test (26). The anxiolytic-like effect of CBD in healthy volunteers was also observed in a more recent double-blind study that investigated its effects on regional cerebral blood flow by single-photon emission computed tomography. Because the procedure, by itself, can be interpreted as an anxiogenic situation, it permits the evaluation of anxiolytic drugs. CBD induced a clear anxiolytic effect and a pattern of cerebral activity compatible with an anxiolytic activity (27). Therefore, similar to the data obtained in animal models, results from studies on healthy volunteers have strongly suggested an anxiolytic-like effect of CBD.

see the full article, head to the source = Brazilian Journal of Medical and Biological Research