Jill U. Adams wrote a fantastic article in yesterday's L.A. Times:
Medical marijuana: What does science say?
The truth, these researchers say, is that marijuana has medical benefits -- for chronic-pain syndromes, cancer pain, multiple sclerosis, AIDS wasting syndrome and the nausea that accompanies chemotherapy -- and attempts to understand and harness these are being hampered. Also, they add, science reveals that the risks of marijuana use, which have been thoroughly researched, are real but generally small.
My thanks to Bruce Mirken at Marijuana Policy Project for blogging this to my attention.
Ms. Adams cites research showing positive effects for:
Neuropathic Pain
three pain studies all concluded that smoked marijuana can bring relief to sufferers of neuropathic pain comparable to other analgesic drugs. It is not a cure, Grant says: "It's like other pain medicines, you have to keep taking it."
Multiple Sclerosis
One, presented at an April meeting, had 51 multiple sclerosis patients smoke 0% or 4% THC marijuana cigarettes daily for three days. Intensity of spasms was reduced by 32% and pain ratings by 50% after smoking marijuana, compared with 2% and 22% reductions after placebo cigarettes.
and Nausea
A 2008 review published in the European Journal of Cancer Care analyzed 30 clinical studies using cannabinoid drugs synthesized in the lab and concluded that they were better than standard antinausea drugs in alleviating the nausea and vomiting that accompanies chemotherapy.
She also offers evidence about the harms associated with using marijuana with respect to psychosis and depression. Striving for balance is laudable, but when reading you can see that it is more difficult to support the negative side of the debate, citing ONDCP whose very existence depends on prohibition.
"The FDA has ruled that marijuana has no medical benefits, but its harms are well known and proven," says Tom Riley, a spokesman for the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, referring to an April 2006 statement released by the FDA and several other federal agencies concluding that smoking marijuana was not of medicinal use.
The FDA release to which she refers isn't at all convincing. It puffs up it's chest about how important the FDA is, without saying much of anything about marijuana's efficacy, ignoring the 1999 Institute of Medicine's report
CONCLUSION: Scientific data indicate the potential therapeutic value of cannabinoid drugs, primarily THC, for pain relief, control of nausea and vomiting, and appetite stimulation; smoked marijuana, however, is a crude THC delivery system that also delivers harmful substances.
Ms. Adams quotes Marijuana Policy Project's Bruce Mirken with this common-sense assesment:
he is all for research on the chemical components in marijuana with the goal of making more-purified and perhaps more-targeted drugs that do not deliver a "high," but does not see "criminalizing use of that plant by people who are ill when you are making its main psychoactive ingredient legal in the form of a very expensive pill."
Her mention of the dangers of marijuana to the lungs and respiratory system is particularly interesting when contrasted with tobacco:
But marijuana smokers differ from tobacco smokers in other, potentially more important ways, Tashkin adds. They do not seem to develop more serious consequences of cigarette smoking, namely chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) -- the fourth leading cause of death in the U.S., killing 130,000 people each year -- or lung cancer, the most common cancer in Americans and responsible for an additional 160,000 annual deaths, according to 2005 statistics from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
To study lung cancer, Tashkin looked at more than 600 lung cancer patients and more than 1,000 control patients matched for age, socioeconomic class, family history and other alcohol and drug use (along with many other potential influences).
The results, published in a 2006 paper in Cancer Epidemiology Biomarkers and Prevention, found a large number of regular marijuana smokers were present in both groups, but statistically there were no more in the cancer group than control group, suggesting no association between marijuana use and lung cancer. Tobacco smokers, on the other hand, showed a dose-dependent increase in risk: with a 30%, 800% and 2,100% increased risk of lung cancer in those who smoked less than a pack, one to two packs or more than two packs per day, respectively.
How much longer can Americans be denied something proven to be an effective medicine, while under constant advertising pressures to recreationally smoke or drink things proven to kill us? An article in today's paper debating the drinking age which mentions the number of deaths from alcohol overdose further illustrates the folly of prohibition. We are free to engage in numerous behaviors which are dangerous, even deadly, but we continue to be persecuted and prosecuted regarding the use of marijuana.
Urge your Representative to cosponsor HR 5843, the Personal Use of Marijuana by Responsible Adults Act of 2008 here.