From William Notcutt, Great Yarmouth, Norfolk, UK
I have been involved in cannabis research for about 20 years and I enjoyed Stephanie Pain's description of William Brooke O'Shaughnessy's work on it (5 May, p 42). She concludes: “We are now in a new phase of investigation with a push to develop synthetic cannabis-like drugs.” I disagree. All the current medical activity I am aware of is around developing different plant extracts and then evaluating them in clinical practice. Synthetic cannabis-like drugs are classified as new psychoactive substances and synthesised for a very different purpose.
