Tyrone hopes to regain a little dignity

Tyrone, who also has MS, needs two carers and a winch to help him get up in the morning.

He was diagnosed with the disease in 1980 and has now almost completely lost the use of his limbs .

He hopes the trial will give him back a little dignity and allow him to feed himself properly.

Improvement

The third MS sufferer Panorama followed was Sandra from Banbury who has had the disease for 25 years and hopes that cannabis will help with tremors in her hands.

Sandra, a mother of two, underwent a risky brain operation called a thalamotomy which helped restore normal movement in one hand.

The trial involves the use of three sprays containing differing strengths of cannabis, as well as a placebo.

All three guinea-pigs reported an improvement, and for Sandra the change was dramatic.

Sandra rides a horse for the first time since 1993

She tells Panorama that the trial has meant "a whole new outlook on life".

She adds: "Having a good night's sleep, painfree - and being able to feed myself breakfast, feed myself lunch, feed myself dinner, it makes me feel normal, which is all I'm asking.

"Please, please give me the cannabis and let me feel normal."

Dr Philip Robson, from GW Pharmaceuticals who ran the trial, says: "I think Sandra's very typical in the sense that all the patients have been very severely handicapped by the symptoms of their disorder which is usually multiple sclerosis.

"And it's been striking that most people have had a positive response."

"Wonder drug"

Professor Lester Grinspoon from Harvard Medical School says: "I think that cannabis is very likely eventually to be seen as a wonder drug of the twenty-first century."

But people with conditions like schizophrenia or heart problems may be put at risk by using cannabis. Tyrone had high blood pressure that delayed his start on the trials.

The Oxford pharmacologist, Baroness Susan Greenfield, sounds a note of caution.

She tells Panorama: "My concerns are not so much for the patients because if they are having help and it's working, that's marvellous and I would hope that no one would stop that happening.

"My concerns are how those data are interpreted. If people think this is giving them a green light to just go and get high indiscriminately.

"I hope that enough floor space is given to actually ventilate the scientific arguments for and against so that we really draw a clear distinction between a medicine and a drug of abuse."

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