Dr Lowe educates US Congressional Black Caucus on cannabis today
Published:Tuesday | September 11, 2018 | 12:00 AMChristopher Serju/Gleaner Writer
Executive chairman of Medicanja Limited and Jamaican scientist Dr Henry Lowe will today address the 48th annual legislative conference of the US Congressional Black Caucus in Washington, DC, during the session titled 'The Black Experience on Cannabis'.
'The Dream Still Demands Courage, Resilience, Leadership and Legislation' is the theme of this year's conference, which gets under way today and runs until next Tuesday, September 16. Dr Lowe's presentation will inform efforts by the caucus to fuel greater appreciation for continuing education and support for medical cannabis, especially among those influencers in the legislative sector and among experts.
The Congressional Black Caucus is a political organisation made up of African-American members of the United States Congress and states its goals as "positively influencing the course of events pertinent to African-Americans and others of similar experience and situation" and "achieving greater equity for persons of African descent in the design and content of domestic and international programmes and services".
With interest in the cannabis industry at an all-time high, the symposium aims to call attention to the impacts of cannabis, particularly in the black community. This is encouraged through the use of advocacy to initiate change in the perspectives regarding cannabis, especially when considering the plant's enormous medicinal and financial potentials.
Dr Lowe, who has done extensive research and is published widely on medicinal cannabis, with his most recent book being Medicinal Cannabis: The Way Forward for Health Care Practitioners, recently launched a range of cannabis-derived therapeutic products under the Medicanja brand. He is the first black person to receive orphan-drug approval from the Food and Drug Administration in the United States for a drug he and a team of scientists developed from cannabis called Cresorol used for the treatment of acute myeloid leukemia. This achievement has been recognised internationally as a major milestone.
In addition to the Bio-Tech Research and Development Institute located at the University of the West Indies, Mona campus, Dr Lowe has also established a major oncology research and development laboratory, Flavocure Biotech LLC, based in Baltimore, Maryland, which specialises in the research of cannabis for the treatment of a number of cancer-based diseases.