cannabisnews.com: Cannabis Controversy





Cannabis Controversy
Posted by FoM on May 08, 2001 at 12:15:13 PT
By Susan Ferraro, Daily News Staff Writer
Source: New York Daily News 
Spunky and cheerful at 64, Dorlene W. is a grandmother, a retired secretary and now — driven by her own crippling arthritis and the suffering of others — a marijuana user and dealer who visits New York every month to buy the best weed."I do not use the street dealers with dirty stuff; I come to the city for the clean, medical kind," says Dorlene, who lives in upstate Elmira and says that, though the drug has eased her pain, she still can't walk "really well." 
The others in her buyers' club in Elmira have cancer, AIDS, severe depression and chronic back pain. She is unable to use prescription painkillers and was hurting so much she grew suicidal. Now she and her group rely on marijuana. But getting it is a risky business."I live alone on $567 a month disability, in a federally funded housing project," says Dorlene. She sells her New York stash for cost plus expenses, and stays with a friend in the Bronx to keep prices low. The law is on to her: She had a lawyer talk, privately, to local officials before she started. "They can arrest me and could evict me," she says. But she believes "they will not bother me as long as I keep it decent, don't sit on the porch or drive down the street smoking, and don't have kids in and out — which I don't."Armed with a doctor's letter saying she needs pain relief, Dorlene gets enough pot in New York to smoke daily. The 14 members of her buyers' club also have letters attesting to their medical need."But if they legalized medical marijuana, my life would be so much easier and simpler," she says. "Oh heavens, yes, I would be safe from arrest."Decades after advocates began campaigning for medical marijuana, said to ease a host of illnesses, the drug is pushing itself past political and scientific opponents and straight into the national medicine chest.Science may come to the rescue of Dorlene and others like her with new formulations and delivery systems that remove marijuana's euphoric high but retain its medical benefits — making it more politically and medically acceptable.Atlantic Technology Ventures Inc., located in the Empire State Building, is working with a lab-made marijuana derivative, CT-3, the brainchild of biochemist Sumner Burstein at the University of Massachusetts.It provides "no psychotropic activity," says Atlantic's Michael Ferrari. Lab studies show CT-3 may work for chronic pain and inflammation; the company has finished Phase 1 human trials that test safety.New Delivery Systems:In Oxford, Miss., Dr. Mahmoud ElSohly, who thinks inhaled pot smoke poses a health hazard, is working on a THC suppository made from twice-purified derivatives of plants grown for authorized federal trials.The suppository effectively treats nausea and is politically acceptable, though ElSohly's aim was to devise a delivery method that meets industry standards and delivers a consistent, effective dose without side effects.Eight states have medical marijuana laws carefully worded to circumvent federal prohibitions, and similar ones are pending elsewhere — including a New York bill sponsored by Assemblyman Richard Gottfried (D-Manhattan).The People Say Yes:The Supreme Court now has before it a federal challenge to California's medical marijuana law, but even if the Court rules against the defendant, the Oakland Cannabis Buyers' Cooperative, advocates say the law will remain on the books subject to local enforcement and sympathies.Minnesota Gov. Jesse Ventura endorsed medical marijuana use this month after his mother died. "If you can get some relief by smoking marijuana, why not?" he told reporters. Activists marched nationally for legalization last weekend.Many doctors approve patients' use in extreme need. Richard Brookhiser, a politically conservative Manhattan columnist, smoked marijuana — in the men's room at New York Hospital, with the discreet knowledge of his doctors — to quell severe nausea during chemotherapy treatments in 1992.Brookhiser says "the stubbornness and cowardice of the political class" resists medical marijuana, though "referendums always pass by wide margins." He also thinks support may come from unexpected quarters."Maybe George Bush has more freedom, because he did not begin his political life on the national stage with an idiotic lie about pot use," Brookhiser says, citing former President Bill Clinton's 1992 claim that he never "inhaled."For now, the prohibition against medical use is "political correctness gone berserk," says Gottfried. "Morphine, Valium and steroids are prescribed legitimately thousands of times a day. It doesn't undercut our drug efforts."Among those who oppose medical marijuana use, some believe it's a dangerous gateway drug to more lethal narcotics. Others who may battle drug addiction feel it leads to relapse.Yet pot use among teens fell in California after a medical marijuana law passed in 1996, says Chuck Thomas at the Marijuana Policy Project in Washington, D.C.: "It seems to send the right message, that marijuana is a medicine and these are people taking it because they are very sick."Though doctors like those attending Brookhiser and Dorlene privately voice no objections to medical marijuana, some scientists argue that it wreaks molecular havoc. "All these positive claims over the past 25 years have proven illusory," says Dr. Gabriel Nahas at the NYU School of Medicine. His studies show pot impairs DNA in sperm and immune cells.Cannabis stays in the system a long time, can contribute to car accidents and foster cognitive problems, critics point out. Some users get high; others crash. Plants vary; there's no way to meter or control dosages.Dr. Roger Waltzman, a cancer doctor at Mount Sinai Hospital in Manhattan, says THC is a "very effective" anti-nausea drug and appetite stimulant, but is already available in the FDA-approved Marinol, a synthetic THC.Pot smoke is different, he says. "There is a potential for bacteria and fungi on the leaf, rolled up with who knows what else, which is particularly worrisome for people with cancer or HIV whose immune systems are compromised."Proponents of natural marijuana insist that Marinol is too concentrated and, as a pill taken by mouth, ill suits a patient beset by wrenching nausea. They also say the other compounds in pot besides THC are beneficial.Safe and Effective:"Marijuana is the safest therapeutically active substance known to man," says Tracy Blevins, Ph.D., who specialized in pharmacology at the University of Texas and dresses as Medical Marijuana Barbie (to make the issue seem less "threatening," she says). Also, other chemicals in the plant — such as cannabidiol, said to ease inflammation — have medical potential, Blevins says.Patients don't argue. As a cancer survivor, Brookhiser, now 46, isn't worried about side effects."Lots of medicines have side effects and complications," he says. "Chemotherapy itself is a poison." He's glad, he says, that he lives in New York and that when his treatments "got rough" his wife was easily able to find marijuana for him. "It seems like everyone is a dealer when you get in a situation like this," he says."But suppose my parents were in this situation — they are in Rochester — or my aunts, in Johnstown, N.Y.? They wouldn't know what to do. They would have a harder time."They might, like Dorlene W., make a pact with the local police and start dealing.Chemical Properties:Marijuana, or cannabis, contains hundreds of chemical compounds. Tetrahydrocannabinol — or THC — is the best known. It's also the source of the marijuana high and seems to have the most medical uses. Activists like Dana Beal at Cures Not Wars in New York say marijuana — the whole plant, not just THC — is harmless and can ease serious maladies like depression, muscle spasms, pain and anxiety when nothing else seems to help.Among the most compelling claims for the plant:It reduces violent nausea caused by chemotherapy, a side effect that can make patients so sick they may quit treatment or grow dangerously frail. It's an appetite stimulant that counters severe anemia and anorexia in HIV and AIDS patients. It quiets uncontrollable tremors in patients with multiple sclerosis, and also assists their voluntary movement. It eases glaucoma, decreasing inner eye pressure — though it may also decrease inner eye fluid and needs to be taken almost constantly; Arizona researchers are studying its potential use for the disease. In 1999, a stunning report by the Institute of Medicine in Washington, D.C., urged scientists to explore THC and other cannabis chemicals, pursue new delivery systems and test the drug for both harm and benefits. Today, the National Institute of Drug Addiction is conducting limited studies.But the IOM report warned that smoke from the plant can make lungs more vulnerable to respiratory disease and, perhaps most ominously, cause cellular changes that can lead to cancer.Note: Medical marijuana pits politicians vs. scientists — with patients in the middle.Source: New York Daily News (NY)Author: Susan Ferraro, Daily News Staff WriterPublished: May 08, 2001Copyright: 2001 Daily News, L.P. Website: http://www.nydailynews.com/Contact: voicers edit.nydailynews.com Related Articles & Web Sites:Marijuana Policy Projecthttp://www.mpp.org/Cures Not Warshttp://www.cures-not-wars.org/CannabisNews Medical Marijuana Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/medical.shtml
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Comment #2 posted by Kevin Hebert on May 09, 2001 at 09:33:31 PT:
My response to the NY Daily News
Dear Editor:Thank you for Susan Ferraro's "Cannabis Controversy" article. While nothing should be controversial about using a plant with virtually zero harmful long-term side effects as medicine, there are certain people determined to find something -- anything -- bad to say about cannabis in order to justify its continued illegality.One of those people is Gabriel Nahas, who you quoted in the article saying "All these positive claims [about the efficacy of marijuana as medicine] over the past 25 years have proven illusory". This is false. Dr. Nahas conducted a series of studies claiming to show the dangers of marijuanause at Columbia University, using a variety of ill-conceivedexperiments. Columbia later distanced itself from Nahas' research because his methods were so fundamentally flawed.The fact is, there is no safer therapeutic medicine in the world than marijuana. It has no lethal dose in humans, and it can be used to treat glaucoma, wasting diseases associated with cancer treatment and AIDS, depression, migraines, and many other health problems. The fact that itmakes you "high" should not preclude it from being used as medicine.Sick people are dying in severe pain because of our ill-conceived prohibition of marijuana. We need to change that immediately, if we are truly a compassionate people.
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Comment #1 posted by FoM on May 08, 2001 at 13:08:07 PT
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