Pot does nothing to reduce pain.
As a matter of fact, the health and mental consequences from pot use far out weights any imaginary benefits.
I don't think anyone claims it does. The medical claims are that it reduces nausea and increases appetite. Both of these claims seem to be true.
I used to agree with you 100% about this.
However, after “research”, I have to disagree with you. Here’s why:
Pot exists in hundreds, if not thousands, of differant strains. Back when I used to smoke regularly in my youth, I had a really bad injury, and I thought I’d try to smoke to see if it would help the pain diminish. It had the exact *opposite* effect - it seems like I was very much in touch with my body, and the pain was actually amplified!
At that point right there, I said “ok, this whole thing about medicenal pot is bullcrap”, and thought that it was all just a bunch of crap to try to get pot legalized from people who want to party it up (and I still think that’s a driving force for legalization, btw.)
However! Not so long ago, I had been complaining to a friend of mine about how sore I get after working out at the gym... I’ve been lifting kind of heavy and when the day ends, I’m so sore that I literally have trouble getting up a flight of stairs. My buddy said, “here, try *this*, this is what they use for pain control in Europe.”
I was very skepticial from my previous experiance, but I said, Ok, sure, I’ll try it.
I’ll be damned if the pain wasn’t totally gone in about ten minutes. So I told my buddy about this and he was the one that told me that differant strains of the plant have differant properties. Some of the strains are great for pain management, he tells me, and some of them are great for other things. There is one strain that supposedly gives people with MS a great degree of relief. Some strains make you insanely hungry... and some strains actually dull your appitite.
Bottom line is, I used to agree with you and think that “pot” is more or less all the same, and that this whole “medical pot” thing is bullcrap to try to get people to legalize a narcotic. But I honestly really feel that there is something to pot having certain medicinal effects depending on the strain.
The problem, the way that I see it, is that suddenly you will see a HUGE influx of kids in thier late teens and early 20s suddenly running to the doctor with “sudden depression” or whatever ailment that they can fake to get a script for the government dope. I honestly can’t think of a way to get around that, and that’s one of the reasons that I’m still on the fence about whether legalization is good or not.
There are certain forms of ailments that are TREMENDOUSLY benefited from pot! MS, epilepsy, and there is argueably no better treatment for nausea. It is, in my eyes, no differant then smoking tobacco or drinking alcohol. Legalizing it, however, might pave the way for the legalization of harder drugs, and I feel that legalizing things like cocaine or heroin is just about the stupidest thing that a society can do to itself.
...The many beneficial aspects of cannabis are not a new discovery—the plant has a long tradition in medicine that originated in oriental and Middle Eastern countries. The Chinese documented its medicinal value more than 4,000 years ago, using seeds, leaves and sap as sedatives or painkillers and to treat fevers, nausea and ulcers. Ancient herbalists made unguents for burns and other wounds from its roots. Galen, and other physicians of the classical and Hellenistic eras, also noted cannabis as a remedy, and the Arabs started using the plant as early as the mid-1200s. Although there is evidence of cannabis use in Europe from the thirteenth century, after Marco Polo returned from his journey to the east in 1297, its medical use became more popular in the nineteenth century, when the British physician William B. O'Shaugnessy brought back an account of the remarkable effects of this plant from India. Even Queen Victoria is said to have sipped marijuana tea prescribed by her court physician to treat menstrual cramps. Such anecdotal claims of the healing properties of cannabis are now supported by modern research on the metabolism of cannabinoids—the active components of the plant—and their potential use in medicine. The plant contains more than 60 active compounds, of which the most psychoactive ingredient is Δ9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), which was first identified in the 1940s and first synthesized in 1965. THC mainly recognizes a receptor of the central nervous system called CB1, the cannabinoid receptor, which is involved in the regulation of synaptic transmission of excitatory and inhibitory neural circuits. Dronabinol, a synthetic form of THC, was approved by the US Food and Drug Administration to stimulate the appetite of AIDS patients and to treat their anorexia and associated weight loss. The same drug has been indicated for the treatment of nausea and vomiting associated with cancer chemotherapy. Cannabis also helps in the treatment of patients suffering from glaucoma, one of the most common causes of blindness, by reducing fluid pressure in the eye.Does marijuana have a future in pharmacopoeia?
Enter (marijuana or THC) and pain into the query box at PubMed.
Find out for yourself when the link is working. It's not now.
Numerous studies show that marijuana is quite effective for treating neuropathic pain.