Asia | Halfway high

Elderly Japanese are discovering the benefits of cannabis products

But the government remains hesitant to legalise marijuana

|HADANO

For most of her life Yoshimura Hiroko, an 81-year-old woman in Hadano near Tokyo, had never given a thought to cannabis. But when she started suffering pain and paralysis caused by multiple sclerosis three years ago, Kazuyoshi, her 51-year-old son, stumbled upon cannabidiol (cbd), a non-psychoactive cannabis compound. He started dropping a dose of cbd oil under her tongue each day; a month later the pain had faded.

This article appeared in the Asia section of the print edition under the headline “Halfway high”

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