I recently came across the fact that the US Govt. holds a> patent on the medicinal use of cannabis (patent #6,630,507) for the> prevention and treatment of a wide variety of diseases including> stroke, trauma, auto-immune disorder, HIV dementia, Parkinson's and> Alzheimer's. It was based on research done at the NIH, and the assignee> is the US Dept. of Health and Human Services. This patent, awarded, not> by, but TO the US Government completely contradicts the official stance> that cannabis has no current medical applications.. Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to> NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids> useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation> associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and> autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular> application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological> damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the> treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease,> Parkinson's disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such> as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid> toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses> useful in the method of the present invention. A particular disclosed> class of cannabinoids useful as neuroprotective antioxidants is formula> (I) wherein the R group is independently selected from the group> consisting...>> Patent number: 6630507> Filing date: Feb 2, 2001> Issue date: Oct 7, 2003> Inventors: Aidan J. Hampson, Julius Axelrod, Maurizio Grimaldi> Assignee: The United States of America as represented by the Department of> Health and Human Services> Primary Examiner: Kevin E. Weddington> Attorneys: Klarquist Sparkman, LLP> Application number: 9/674,028>> U.S. Classification> 514/454>> International Classification> A61K 3135