Posted on 02/16/2007 3:23:59 PM PST by cryptical
The cannabis plant has been used as a medicine for thousands of years. In the United States, doctors could prescribe marijuana cigarettes to patients for a variety of conditions until the 1940s, when it was banned. Marijuana's status as an illegal drug has removed it from the official medical arsenal, but its therapeutic power is still attracting attention, especially its pain-killing properties.
About 30 percent of HIV patients develop painful nerves during the course of their illness, and this neuropathy is extremely difficult to treat with standard pain medications. Dr. Donald Abrams, of the University of California at San Francisco, studied the use of marijuana for relief of their discomfort. "We've known for along time that cannabinoids, the active ingredients in marijuana, can be involved in modulation of pain and the response to pain," he explains, adding that the body has its own cannabinoid system. "We make natural substances called endo-cannabinoids and it's felt that one of the main roles of these endo-cannabinoids is in our processing of painful stimuli." Abrams studied 50 patients who had suffered nerve pain for an average of 7 years. He gave half actual marijuana cigarettes to smoke three times a day, the other half smoked placebo cigarettes. He found the patients smoking the marijuana had significantly greater pain relief, and it was almost immediate. "After smoking the first cigarette on the first day," he recalls, "we asked patients what had happened to their pain. Those smoking the actual marijuana cigarette, their pain reduced 75 percent; where those smoking the placebo, their pain reduced less than 20 percent." These results were consistent throughout the study.
Abrams says there is a pill on the market containing the most active ingredient of marijuana, called tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC. But he says smoking the actual plant works better than taking the pill, because THC is only one of the components present in the plant. "The plant has over 400 chemical compounds, many of which also have medicinal value. Many of those compounds in the plant also offer a balance to the side effects of the THC alone. So when you take a pill that's just THC, some people have more adverse effects than actually smoking THC as part of marijuana."
The research appears in the February 13th issue of Neurology, the scientific journal of the American Academy of Neurology.
Abstinence PREVENTS aids.
Your girlfriend has given up trying to school me...
You're completely ignorant of the literature as I've demonstrated above ...
You confuse my defense of the "sick and dying pawns"...
A defense handed to me by your girlfriend ...
I might add ...
with advocacy of mj use ...
Clarification for you ...
delusional people... and mailmen ...
should not smoke marijuana ...
Further clarification for you ...
I'll continue responding ...
just as long as you keep displaying that rapier-like twit
Uh...
I meant 'wit'...
Hmmmmmm. maybe that will work...
twit then ...
First, that should have been Chronic.
Guns don't contribute to behavior? So there is no feeling of invulnerability when a young thug is packing? This feeling doesn't lead to trigger pulling? C'mon now.
Both are inanimate objects and both influence behavior in people using them in various ways.
Try acupuncture, then you can "keep off the grass"!
Cost is a fair point to address, none of it is cheap.
Just like those pills didn't have the desired effect on you, I would imagine that buds don't have a positive affect on some people either.
In turn those pills do help some people, just like buds do.
Seems to me that each side could be happy for the other that they have found something that works for them.
I guess I just don't understand why that is so hard to accomplish.
To fool them into thinking, just for awhile, that they have a 'superior capacity for happiness'. ;)
I agree! If someone is hurting like hell and pot helps them, no legislator or judge should stand in their way of getting it just because its use offends the morals of some people. What I don't understand is you have medicines like Morphine, OxyContin, among many others that are legal and are FAR more potent and addictive than marijuana, yet marijuana is illegal for anyone to possess. I don't understand why all of those who believe pot should remain illegal don't protest the legality of all the strong narcotics that are being used by prescription. It really is crazy.
You smoke a lot of dope, don't you?
Only by your "reasoning".
Over the centuries, its uses have included the treatment of pain, asthma and dysentery, the promotion of sleep, the suppression of nausea and vomiting and the abolition of convulsions and spasms (Mechoulam, 1986). [emphasis mine natch, take that Mojave]
By that "reasoning", smoking opium should be legalized as well.
Only by what passes for logic with you.
What major medical organization endorses smoking pot for "treating disease or illness"?
Dope enthusiasts and other leftists constantly equate drug use and the right to keep and bear arms. They can't help themselves.
So do the bureaucrats who "want it all". They just take a detour through "interstate commerce" to get there.
A good bit of modern pharmacology was built on research that started with studies done on peole who were "smoking opium".
Stop smoking crack and come back to the real world.
Quote, please.
I said it. You can quote me on that.
So you want opium smoking legalized?
But you claimed that "bureacrats" did it. Are you now claiming to be a bureacrat?
Loaded question. Tagged, bagged, and done with it.
Yes. No.
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