Marijuana eyedrops

Press, Volume CXVI, Issue 34156, 18 May 1976, Page 6

Marijuana eyedrops

t'N.Z. Press Assn—Copyright) WASHINGTON.

Marijuana eyedrops effectively relieve symptoms of glaucoma and are ready for tests on people suffering from the eye disease, researchers say. But those taking the drops will have to put up with a side-effect — getting “high”, the Associated Press reports. Dr Keith Green, a researcher at the Medical College of Georgia, said that animal tests show liquid marijuana is as good as or better than any anti-glauc-oma medication currently available.

Glaucoma, a leading cause of blindness, is a condition in which the fluids of the eye do not drain properly, causing a buildup of pressure within the eyeball. This pressure can damage the optic nerve and distort the structures of the eye, leading to loss of vision. Dr Green said he became interested in marijuana as a possible glaucoma drug in 1971 after a report by researchers in Los Angeles who found that volunteers who smoked marijuana showed a drop in pressure within the eye. Dr Green found that a single drop of marijuana’s most active ingredient, called THC, dropped eye pressure in rabbits for five hours. The rabbits also got a marijuana “high”.

Prospects bleak.— A thousand school children in Peterborough, Northamptonshire, are being given lessons to prepare them for the outside world. They are being taught how to sign for the dole. Most school leavers from the area will have to go straight onto social security, the “News of the World" reported.