cannabisnews.com: Study: Marijuana Helps Fight Pain! 





Study: Marijuana Helps Fight Pain! 
Posted by FoM on March 17, 1999 at 09:23:21 PT

WASHINGTON The active ingredients in marijuana can help fight pain and nausea and thus deserve to be tested in scientific trials, an advisory panel to the federal government said today in a report sure to reignite the debate over whether marijuana is a helpful or harmful drug. 
The Institute of Medicine also said there was no conclusive evidence that marijuana use leads to harder drugs. In the past few years, voters in Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, Oregon and Washington have approved measures in support of medical marijuana, even though critics say such measures send the wrong message to kids. Congress has taken a hard line on the issue, with the House last fall adopting by 310-93 vote a resolution that said marijuana was a dangerous and addictive drug and should not be legalized for medical use. Asked to examine the issue by the White House drug policy office, the institute said that because the chemicals in marijuana ease anxiety, stimulate the appetite, ease pain and reduce nausea and vomiting, they can be helpful for people undergoing chemotherapy and people with AIDS. The institute, an affiliate of the National Academy of Sciences, provides the federal government with independent scientific advice and receives no federal money. But the panel warned that smoking marijuana can cause respiratory disease and called for the development of standardized forms of the drugs, called cannabinoids, that can be taken, for example, by inhaler. ``Marijuana has potential as medicine, but it is undermined by the fact that patients must inhale harmful smoke,'' said Stanley Watson of the Mental Health Research Institute at the University of Michigan, one of the study's principal investigators. Even so, the panel said, there may be cases where patients could in the meantime get relief from smoked marijuana, especially since it might take years to develop an inhaler. The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said it would carefully study the recommendations. ``We note in the report's conclusion that the future of cannabinoid drugs lies not in smoked marijuana, but in chemically defined drugs'' delivered by other means, the office headed by retired Gen. Barry McCaffrey said in a statement. One patient called the findings long overdue. ``It's taken a long time, but I feel like now, people will stand up and listen,'' said Irvin Rosenfeld, a Boca Raton, Fla., stockbroker who has smoked marijuana supplied by the federal government for 27 years because of a rare medical condition. ``When you have a devastating disease, all you care about is getting the right medicine ... and not having to worry about being made a criminal,'' said Rosenfeld. He suffers from tumors that press into the muscles at the end of long bones. The marijuana relaxes those muscles, keeping them from being torn by the tumors and allowing him to move with less pain. Rosenfeld is one of just eight people in the country receiving marijuana from the government because of unusual diseases. The panel urged clinical trials to determine the usefulness of marijuana in treating muscle spasms. While it also has been promoted as a treatment for glaucoma, the panel said smoked marijuana only temporarily reduces some of the eye pressure associated with that disease. Daniel Zingale of AIDS Action said he is ``pleased that the study validates the benefits of medicinal marijuana.'' Chuck Thomas of the Marijuana Policy Project said the report ``shoots down'' claims that marijuana has no medical benefits. Opponents of allowing medical use of marijuana long have claimed that it is a ``gateway'' drug, giving people a start on the road to more dangerous drugs such as heroin and cocaine. But the report concludes there is ``no conclusive evidence that the drug effects of marijuana are causally linked to subsequent abuse of other illicit drugs.'' In fact, the report concludes, most drug users did not begin with marijuana but rather started by using tobacco and alcohol while they were underage. The New England Journal of Medicine has editorialized in favor of medical marijuana and the American Medical Association has urged the federal National Institutes of Health to support more research on the subject. An expert panel formed by NIH found in 1997 that existing research showed some patients could be helped by the drug, principally to relieve nausea after cancer chemotherapy or to increase AIDS patients' appetites. The drug also has helped some patients control glaucoma, that panel found. http://search.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/WAPO/19990317/V000156-031799-idx.htmlİ Copyright 1999 The Associated Press
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