Research about the therapheutic uses of Cannabis

Philippe Lucas is the founder and director of the Vancouver Island Compassion Society, a Canadian non-profit therapeutic cannabis research and distribution center in Victoria, B.C., and founder of Canadians for Safe Access, the nation’s largest medical cannabis patients’ rights organization. A former school teacher who is living with Hepatitis-C, he is also one of about 1700 Canadians who are authorized to use therapeutic cannabis.

Mr. Lucas is a Master’s Candidate in UVic’s Studies in Policy and Practice program, where he was awarded the Blue and Gold Award 2007 for volunteerism and community service for his work on harm reduction and homelessness. He is a member of the Center for Addictions Research of British Columbia Advisory Board, and a Graduate Research Fellow with the same. He has recently served on the national steering committee of a Canadian AIDS Society study on the challenges facing people living with HIV/AIDS that wish to use cannabis as a medicine.

His thesis research is titled "Changes in pharmaceutical opiate use rates in chronic pain sufferers newly registered with a community-based medical cannabis dispensary", and is examining the potential of medical cannabis to both improve the quality of life of end-users, as well as reduce their use of pharmaceutical opiates. The theory being that cannabis can act as a substitute for potentially more harmful or addictive substances, including alcohol, illicit substances, and prescription pharmaceuticals. Other ongoing research includes an overview an policy analysis of the Canadian federal medical cannabis program titled "Regulating Compassion"; an end-user based survey of the federal medical cannabis program consisting of a 50 item questionnaire and 25 semi-structured interviews titled "Quality Assessment of Health Canada's medical cannabis policy and program"; a high-THC smoked cannabis and chronic pain protocol (approved by IRB; Health Canada approval pending); and an
observational study on the effect of ibogaine treatment on opiate use rates
sponsored by MAPS.

Past research includes a nausea, pregnancy and cannabis study published in
the Journal of Complementary Therapies in Clinical Practice (available at:
http://thevics.com/PDF/cannabis_nausea2006.pdf).

To get in touch with Philippe: phil@thevics.com