Italy’s Health Ministry has published the definitive “all you wanted to know about” guide to medical cannabis.

It is targeted to physicians who can prescribe it and to pharmacists who can sell it. In addition, it offers information about precise dosing, administration, special warnings, possible drug interactions and side effects, and overdose. The brochure adds that “medical use” “does not exactly mean that it is a medical therapy, but rather, a treatment of symptoms, offered to support other standard treatments” and it can be used as/for:

• analgesic for pathologies that implicate spasms associated with pain (multiple sclerosis, spinal cord lesions) that are resistant to conventional therapies;
• analgesic for chronic pain (with particular reference to neurogenic pain) in which NSAIDS or corticosteroids or opioid drugs were ineffective;
• anticinetosic and antiemetic effect against nausea and vomiting, caused by chemotherapy, radiotherapy, therapy for HIV, that cannot be obtained with traditional treatments;
• the appetite stimulating effect in cachexia, anorexia, or loss of appetite in cancer patients or AIDS patients, that cannot be obtained with standard treatments;
• the hypotensive effect in glaucoma resistant to conventional therapies;
• the reduction of involuntary movement of the body or face in Tourette’s syndrome, that cannot be obtained with standard treatments.

The guide can be found here.