A `ground-breaking' trial is coming up at the North Manchester General Hospital and Fairfield General Hospital, Bury --- with cancer patients will be prescribed a new form of pain relief treatment - a spray containing cannabis!

According to experts, the marijuana-based Sativex in spray form will be given to terminally-ill hospital patients; and the medication - which will have to be squirted under the tongue up to ten times a day - will work by numbing the muscles.

Experts also stated that though the medication has been derived from marijuana plants, it will not give the users a high --- rather, it will hopefully help those cancer patients who have thus far not been able to get any satisfactory relief from morphine and such other treatments.

The trial of the new pain relief treatment for cancer sufferers will be a first for UK hospitals - though British-made Sativex has been prescribed for multiple sclerosis since last year, the medication has not yet been used in hospitals.

If the trial - for which eight patients have already signed up for the trial and 32 others will be recruited in the coming two-year period - is successful, Sativex could be passed for use in hospitals across the UK.

Revealing that "patients using the spray do not experience the euphoria associated with illegal recreational use of cannabis," research nurse Sam Jole said: "It has passed strict tests for quality, safety and efficacy and doctors already prescribe it to other patients"!