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.
Are caffine, nicotine and alcohol drugs Paulsen?, So much for "every other drug" huh? Oh yeah, and I will be interested in seeing your response to telling the difference between decaf coffee and regular coffee by smell.
You can talk about all the studies you want to FRiend, but I am telling you, as a person with extensive nerve troubles, that a couple one hits does have a positive effect. Indeed, a positive effect without all the side effects from well over a dozen other pill form drugs I have been thru since the start of this century.
I would like to know why just becasue YOU say it doesn't work, due to sources you supposedly trust saying it doesn't work, trumps my choice in my life's personal experience with positive results? Could you explain that to me?
Is it for everyone? No, just like other methods, it isn't but why would you seek to remove access to something that helps me the better than any other FDA drug tried? What gives you that right?
So the only difference was THC? They why wasn't the study done with Marinol and a placebo?
The study is a joke.
> What is wrong with that?
That's what researchers have been asking the DEA and their jackbooted cronies in the federal alphabet soup since at least the 1970s.
The answer seems to be that the authorities strongly opposed it.
Paulsen, was the study about Marinol? Was this study about pill form productivity or smokable productivity? You usually put up a much better fight than this, what's the matter?
A losing battle in a losing war. This is your position.
When you're finished arguing both sides I'll jump in.
Yet you demand that it be approved for everyone because it "works" for you. As far as we both know, the effects you're experiencing could be purely psychological.
"What gives you that right?"
Me? Am I in charge?
There's a reason for the FDA and the drug approval process. If marijuana cured cancer, I could see bypassing the process and making it immediately available.
But marijuana cures nothing. And whatever it does do, there are 10 existing FDA approved drugs that do it better.
It's obvious you can get marijuana for what ails you. What's your problem? Smoke your dope and let us be.
It wouldn't be as interesting, to be sure. It's been done.
Oh, Dr. Donald Abrams has long been associated with the movement to legalize drugs.
Assumes facts not in evidence, unless you're implying that the following is an association in the movement to legalized drugs.
"Dr. Kenneth P. Mackie, a professor of anesthesiology at the University of Washington, has devoted 15 years to studying the brain's response to cannabinoids through specialized brain receptors called CB1 and CB2. "There's a whole bunch of theoretical reasons suggesting there would be a benefit for marijuana on a variety of conditions relating to pain and neuroinflammation," Dr. Mackie said. "But the clinical studies just aren't there."
A quick Google search only brings up an anti-drug shill site that claims that he's a legalization advocate.
I'd say this article is proof that you're wrong. There have been over 20,000 studies on marijuana published.
If the home-grown or street marijuana contains bacteria or fungi, smoking it could kill an immunosupressed patient -- like one with AIDS or on chemotherapy.
It took 15 years to get this study done, after much struggle. For something as medically useless as some folks assert, there sure is a lot of resistance to doing the science that'll prove it once and for all.
Making a true factual statement is arguing both sides? Nice dodge there Paulsen. You know as well as I do that many FDA drugs are not for all people, this one is just the same.
As far as the effects go, they are positive, you seeking to derive how is simply beside the point and indeed another dodge.
Oh yeah there is a reason all right, it's called control.
Name the ten drugs that 'do it better' and I will name you the ones I have taken that didn't. Keep in mind that a handfull of doctors gave up trying to come up with what youjust claimed you could.
By golly I think you are finally coming around. You say "Smoke your dope and let us be"......you should know that is all that is being asked for.....let us be. There is hope for you yet!
If that's true, then why not do the study with Marinol vs. a placebo?
> I'd say this article is proof that you're wrong
That one guy managed to jump through all the hoops after 40+ years of obstruction and obfuscation is not evidence that the government is AT ALL interested in studying the effects, medicinal or otherwise, of marijuana in human subjects.
There's a better case to be made that Bush supports embryonic stem cell research.
> There have been over 20,000 studies on marijuana published.
And how many of them were government approved US-based studies of smoked marijuana?
In its position paper, "Use of Marijuana as a 'Medicine,'" the
California Narcotics Officers Association refers to "10,000 studies...
documenting the harmful physical and psychological effects of smoking
marijuana." This myth has been effectively debunked in a letter to Dr.
Lester Grinspoon from NIDA's marijuana research librarian at the U. of
Mississippi, Beverly Urbanek, who writes, "We are totally in the dark as to
where the statement that there are 10,000 studies showing the negative
impact of marijuana could have originated." She explains that while her
library has some 12,000 citations on cannabis, they cover a broad spectrum
of economic, legal, horticultural, enforcement, and other non-health
issues, and are not categorized by negative or positive effects.
http://www.marijuana.org/DalesReport.html
Your intellectual honesty is breathtaking. Freedom from harassment would seem to be fundamental right for any other personal activity that didn't harm any others. What harm is it to you if marijuana were legal?
And more importantly cui bono in this war on drugs? As far as I can tell your argument rests on letting the bureaucracy decide what is good for us. Except that the bureaucracy makes its living on harassing the smoker, hardly an objective source.
I can tell your wearing down, RP. I'm still waiting to see the master debater portrayed so pretentiously on your homepage.
Why is marijuana so special that we're expected to make an exception for it and not treat it as we would any other drug? Study it. Trial it. Publish peer-reviewed reports. List drug interactions, dosages, frequency. Get FDA approval. Have a physician prescribe it through a pharmacy. AS WE DO WITH EVERY OTHER DRUG. What is wrong with that? I'd really like to know.
Great idea. Now get the federal government to allow those studies, and permit researchers to obtain marijuana to use for those studies. One neurologist in California who specializes in MS told me he was visited by federal agents in his clinic. They warned him that despite the California law, if he prescribed marijuana for any of his MS patients, he'd be arrested. Good climate to do clinical studies, huh?
This whole thing strikes me as ridiculous. I agree with you - treat marijuana as any other regulated drug, do the investigations, and use it for appropriate indications. I find it very wrong to deny effective treatment to patients because someone associates marijuana with an undesirable lifestyle.
I call bullshiite. Citation please? You wouldn't want anyone to think you pulled this out yer @ss?
There you go. And your proof that he's not can be found ... where?
"The earth has shifted," announced MAPS President and NORML board member Rick Doblin, whose organization donated $5,000 for the preparation of Abrams' application. "Celebration is in order."
20,000 studies don't give you what you're looking for so you insist the American taxpayer funds study number 20,001. Then 20,002. When is enough enough?
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