cannabisnews.com: Medicinal Pot Critics Fear Reefer Madness





Medicinal Pot Critics Fear Reefer Madness
Posted by FoM on August 06, 2000 at 09:34:18 PT
The Canadian Press
Source: Toronto Star
If there was one drug that relieved the nausea caused by chemotherapy and AIDS-induced wasting as well as the symptoms of glaucoma, arthritis, Tourette's syndrome, Crohn's disease, multiple sclerosis, migraines, irritable bowel syndrome, PMS, asthma, fibromyalgia, epilepsy, and some skin ailments, wouldn't you expect to find it in every medicine cabinet? Experts like Dr. Lester Grinspoon argue that there is such a medicine. But instead of being lauded, it's illegal. 
The drug is marijuana. Critics, like U.S. anti-drug czar Barry McCaffrey, are quick to dispute claims that marijuana has a useful place in modern medicine. They see cannabis as a ''gateway'' drug that leads to the use of serious, addictive substances like cocaine and suggest it may contribute to health problems such as infertility and cancer. ''There's not a shred of scientific evidence that marijuana is a useful medicine,'' McCaffrey has said. Dr. Mark Ware, an epidemiologist at McGill University Health Centre, disagrees. ''This plant has been a good friend to the human race for a long time and we've done it a great disservice over the last 70 and shut it out of our systems,'' Ware argues. While marijuana has been ''the demon weed'' and the cause of ''reefer madness'' for most of our lifetimes, it wasn't always so. People have used marijuana as medicine for thousands of years. In fact, its first recorded medicinal use was in China in 2727 BC. Cannabis was commonly used in the 19th century for treating symptoms of what's now called PMS. Queen Victoria used it for premenstrual symptoms and menstrual cramps. ''When pure and administered carefully it is one of the most valuable medicines we possess,'' her doctor, J. R. Reynolds, wrote in 1890 in The Lancet, the esteemed British medical journal. So who's right? Over the next few years, Canadian researchers hope to answer a lot of questions surrounding medicinal marijuana. Health Canada is in the process of approving studies aimed at finding out whether the anecdotal evidence people like Grinspoon - a doctor and professor at Harvard medical school - have been collecting for years has a basis in science. But Eric Angst doesn't need government-approved studies to convince him marijuana has a role in health care. Angst, 56, suffers from fibromyalgia, a muscle disorder which causes chronic fatigue and pain, as well as rheumatoid and osteoarthritis. He can no longer take the painkillers and anti-inflammatory drugs (such as ibuprofen) that are routine treatment for these conditions. ''My stomach, intestine, liver and kidneys all have damage from these medications,'' explains Angst, who says his stomach starts to bleed even if he takes an Aspirin. So Angst smokes dope. ''Without cannabis, I am a cripple in my bed,'' the Saskatoon resident says. ''My wife has to help me out of bed, to help me to the can. Sometimes she even has to clean up after me because my muscles will not allow me to move that far. ''(After smoking marijuana) my muscles relax. The pain decreases. ''I'm never out of pain. It's not a cure. But it does give me a quality of life far beyond what pharmaceutical medications ever did and far beyond what I can have without it.'' Angst is among a number of people who have gone to court to force Canadian authorities to decriminalize marijuana for medicinal uses. Terry Parker, an epileptic from Toronto, won yet another battle in the war last week when the Ontario Court of Appeal upheld a lower court ruling that the federal ban on marijuana possession was unconstitutional because it did not consider that some people use the drug as a medicine. Parker, 44, says marijuana virtually eliminates the up to 80 seizures he used to suffer weekly. Grinspoon has heard thousands of stories like Parker's and Angst's in the more than 30 years since he started researching cannabis. Now 72 and a professor emeritus, he set out in 1967 to write a paper about the dangers of marijuana. He quickly became a convert - although he did not try the drug personally until after Marihuana Reconsidered was published in 1971 by Harvard University Press. (Marihuana is an alternate spelling of the drug.) In the years since, Grinspoon has become a sort of marijuana guru. With co-author James Bakalar, he published Marihuana - the Forbidden Medicine. His Web sites http://www.rxmarihuana.com/ and http://www.marijuana-uses.com/ contain dozens of accounts from people who say that marijuana has significantly relieved their suffering. ''I think it is not outrageous to consider that one of these days, when our societies come to their senses about this, it will eventually be considered a kind of a wonder medicine,'' he says in an interview from Boston. ''It's going to be a wonder drug in terms of helping people to lower the level of suffering that has to do with these diseases.'' Proponents are quick to note that so far, there is no evidence that marijuana has curative powers, although Ware notes that researchers in Spain reported earlier this year that they were able to shrink brain tumours in mice by injecting the masses with cannabis. They see marijuana as a drug that improves quality of life in certain cases, with few side-effects and virtually no risk of overdose. ''Mind you, that doesn't mean to say that I think cannabis is completely harmless,'' Grinspoon cautions. ''There's no such thing as a harmless substance. But relative to the harm of other medicines or indeed other recreational drugs, this drug is in a class all by itself.'' Those who swear by it use the drug to alleviate the symptoms of diseases or the side-effects of medical treatments, such as the vomiting that is often caused by chemotherapy. People with AIDS and cancer often smoke the drug because it stimulates appetite and helps to combat the dangerous weight reduction associated with both diseases. Many in the palliative care field think marijuana may play a key role in making dying patients more comfortable in their final days. ''Our guess is that it will not be a magic bullet but it may in fact . . . improve the quality of life towards the end of life,'' says Allan Best, a health services researcher at Vancouver General Hospital. The use of cannabis might have a two-fold benefit, he suggests. In addition to alleviating pain and nausea, it may reduce the need for some other pain killers and analgesics that ''typically have very uncomfortable side-effects associated with them.'' According to anecdotal evidence, it ameliorates conditions that feature spasticity and tremors. People with multiple sclerosis and Tourette's report that it helps them. Although smoking is considered an irritant for asthma, some asthmatics report that marijuana helps their condition. Why? Grinspoon says the cannabinoids - the chemicals that make up cannabis - in marijuana dilate the bronchial tubes that constrict during an asthma attack. Cannabis has been reported to lower the eye pressure of glaucoma and help stave off the crippling pain of an attack of Crohn's disease. People who suffer bipolar disorder - often called manic depressives - say it moderates their giddy highs and lifts their crushing lows. ''I learn of a new indication almost daily,'' says Ware, who calls the range of the drug's potential use ``absolutely stunning. ''I'm continually amazed at what the potential uses for cannabis are.'' How does one drug help with so many - and such different - ailments? No one is really sure. Cannabis has been illegal for the last 70 years or so, which has seriously limited research into its workings and potential applications. There have been no double-blind studies, where some subjects are given marijuana and others a placebo to test whether the benefit is real or imagined. What is known is humans have receptors that bind to cannabinoids, which in turn have an impact on the central nervous system. In addition, it has been discovered that we manufacture our own cannabinoid, which the body uses in pain control, much like the endorphins that are stimulated by exercise. Our natural cannabinoid is called anandamine, based the Sanskrit word ananda, which means bliss. Proponents of medicinal marijuana believe the coming wave of new research may completely change thinking about the drug, predicting that it will follow the path from pariah to important tool that morphine took several decades ago. ''Prof. Patrick Wall, who's one of the world's greatest pain researchers in London, told me that with cannabis, we are basically where we were with morphine 20 to 30 years ago,'' Ware says. ''We're going through the same kinds of processes. You know: Are people going to get addicted to it? What are the problems? What are the risks? If we make it a medicine are we going to suddenly see a massive increase in the number of people using it recreationally? Are we going to get a nation of morphine addicts? ''It didn't happen. Morphine came, became registered, became a good drug.'' Contact: lettertoed thestar.com Forum: http://www.thestar.com/editorial/disc_board/Published: August 6, 2000 Copyright* 1996-2000 Toronto Star Newspapers Limited. Related Articles & Web Site:Marijuana The Forbidden Medicinehttp://www.rxmarihuana.com/Health Canadahttp://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/english/CannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archives:http://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml
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Comment #1 posted by CD1 on August 08, 2000 at 09:04:46 PT
REEFER MADNESS
General McCaffrey, There is not a shred of scientific evidence that marijuana is a "gateway drug". A 1998 study sponsored by your own agency stated that the opposite was true.
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