抄録
Recently drug abuse has been increasing among Japanese younger population, becoming a big social problem. Although the abused drugs include marihuana and narcotics, they are also used for medicinal purposes. Therefore, I will discuss the merit and demerit of marihuana in this preface.
Marihuana is produced from Cannabis sativa L. which is an annual and a dioecism plant belonging to Cannabinaceae. C. sativa has the oldest history of cultivation as one of fiber crops in the world. More than 70 cannabinoids have been isolated from marihuana and elucidated their structures. Among them tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) has the most strong narcotic and hallucinatory effects.
Recently, two types of receptor related to THC, CB1 and CB2, have been determined in the brain and macrophage resulting that two internal ligands, anandamide and 2-arachidonyl glyceride have been isolated. These findings have promoted the medical use of marihuana and/or cannabinoids directly and the research of drug development from cannabinoids. On the other hand the typical pharmacological activities such as psychotomimetic, psychiatric and mental instability (cannabis psychosis) have been confirmed by the marihuana use. Furthermore, the marihuana infection expands most widely compared to the other drugs and it is estimated that at least 160 million people using marihuana in the world. Currently, the marihuana use is illegal in Japan and strictly controlled under the Marihuana Control Law. However, since cannabinoids are the chemical compound attractive enough for new drug development research, it seems to be necessary to revise the Marihuana Control Law in the same category of the other abuse drugs like poppy, opium and morphine. We strongly hope that cannabinoids will be using clinically in Japan as therapeutic drugs as well as in foreign countries.
