Misleading US Advertisement - GW Response

If you are in the United States and are accessing this web page in response to a US advertisement funded by Common Sense for Drug Policy, please note that this advertisement is not endorsed by GW Pharmaceuticals. Indeed, GW disputes and rejects the contents of the advertisement.

GW believes that this advertisement deliberately attempts to obscure the clear distinction between Sativex® and crude herbal cannabis / marijuana. The advertisement ignores the critical role of our unique formulations, their delivery system and the rigorous requirements of the scientific method. Such statements, in our opinion, deliberately seek to create confusion, among members of the public and the medical profession, concerning the nature of Sativex® and the goals of the company's program.

We are very disappointed that groups such as CSDP seek to exploit Sativex® for their own ends. GW is a pharmaceutical company focused solely on producing a medicine that can meet modern medical standards and serves the needs of patients. We are aggrieved that participants in the marijuana policy debate seek to use our information in an inappropriate and unsupportable manner.

Q: What is GW's position on crude herbal cannabis?

A: GW has never endorsed or supported the idea of distributing or legalizing crude herbal cannabis for medical use. In both our publications and presentations, we have consistently maintained that crude herbal cannabis can never meet the regulatory standards of the FDA and of other countries around the world. We have also repeatedly stressed that these regulatory processes provide important protections for patients, and we believe that any cannabis-derived medicinal product must be subjected to, and satisfy, such rigorous scrutiny.

Q: Why does GW believe that Sativex® is not just "liquid marijuana"?

A: Sativex® is not "liquid marijuana." Sativex® is a pharmaceutical product standardized in composition, formulation, and dose, administered by means of an appropriate alternative delivery system, which has been, and continues to be, tested in properly controlled preclinical and clinical studies. Crude herbal cannabis-often called "marijuana"-- in liquid or any other form, is none of those things.

Q: What impact should the approval of Sativex® in Canada have on the availability, for medical purposes, of crude herbal cannabis in the US and elsewhere?

A: The approval of Sativex® in Canada does not mean that any other product containing cannabis/marijuana should be made available as a prescription medicine in the US or elsewhere, unless and until it has gone through the same rigorous research, testing, and regulatory approval processes. Clearly, crude herbal cannabis or marijuana does not meet these criteria. We believe that other presentations of cannabis should not use Sativex® in an attempt to bypass standard processes for making legitimate medicines available.

Q: What type of cannabis-containing product should be made available to patients for medical use?

A: Only a scientifically-based cannabis-derived product, which meets the standards of modern pharmaceutical practice, and which has been approved by the appropriate regulatory agencies, would be suitable for distribution to patients as a prescription medicine.