Posted on 02/26/2006 7:55:05 AM PST by Wolfie
Physician Advocates for Medical Marijuana
Vermont -- As he opened his remarks about medical marijuana, Dr. Joseph McSherry said he couldn't be as informative as he would like to be.
"I asked a very good friend, who happens to be a medical marijuana patient, what I should tell you today," McSherry said. "He said to tell you not to ask a doctor. Doctors don't know (expletive) about medical marijuana."
McSherry, a neurophysiologist and PhD associated with Fletcher Allen Medical Center and the University of Vermont, said his friend is largely correct: There have been few scientific studies on the effects of marijuana as a medicine, and even less research has been conducted on its medical effects in humans.
"You'll probably be more educated than your doctor by the time we get through," McSherry told his audience at the Godnick Center in Rutland on Friday.
He walked the audience through the limited medical data on cannabis and the properties of the chemicals in marijuana other than THC that can have beneficial effects.
Canabanoids, McSherry said, can boost the effectiveness of other painkillers, inhibit the growth of tumors and alleviate wet macular degeneration, which causes blindness in some cases.
"We're just beginning to scratch the surface of this iceberg," he said.
McSherry said that inhaled marijuana can be very effective at treating sudden swift pains, while many other painkillers, including marinol — a legal prescription drug that is a capsule of THC in sesame oil — can take too long to take effect.
"I don't approve of smoking for anybody," he said. "There's got to be a better way of doing it, but the U.S. government hasn't been interested in doing any research.
"If you eat it, the chemicals peak in two to four hours. Eating it is probably the worst way of intaking THC," he said. "If you inhale it, THC levels peak in a few minutes and it actually goes away in the first hour."
He noted that researchers in other countries are trying to develop different types of medical cannabis for patients.
Two members of the audience who said they use the drug for medicinal purposes offered compelling testimony about its benefits. Neither identified themselves.
The first patient said that at one point he had been on 17 different medications to treat his multiple sclerosis — some to counteract the side effects of other medications.
"Now I think I'm on four medications now," he said. "I'm not on medications for the side effects of medication. I'm not drugged out or high. From 17 meds, down to four."
A second patient said he had lost more than 50 pounds while undergoing chemotherapy before using marijuana to counteract the nausea.
"I went from 236 pounds down to 176," he said. "Part of the problem was the sickness of chemo. I couldn't hold down food, and marinol did not work for me. Cannabis did work."
Members of the audience had many questions about medical marijuana, from its chemical properties to the intricacies of growing plants to use for medicine.
"If you have a seed that has a known history of consistent product, you will get a consistent product medically," McSherry said. "That's why I think patients ought to be able to grow their own."
One audience member wondered how patients who don't grow it can access medical marijuana.
"Where does the pot come from if you're not a green thumb person?" she asked.
McSherry said "compassionate clubs" have formed in California that allow medical marijuana patients to bring in prescriptions to be filled with marijuana of a known quality rather than forcing patients to rely on what they can find on the black market, he said.
"In Vermont, if you have a friend or a grandson … you can make a provision to register with the state that you're a registered patient and they're a registered grower," he said, adding that Vermont's medical marijuana law does not shield users or growers from federal prosecution.
McSherry sees access to the drug as an uphill battle. He said many doctors are resistant to the notion of medical marijuana.
"There are very definitely a lot of doctors who are very adamant it's not a medicine," he said. "There are doctors that believe if it were a medicine, the FDA would approve it and pharmaceutical companies would make cannabis that you can take as a product.
"But patients' definition of a medicine is a different thing," he added.
The History of Medical Marijuana
2727 BC First recorded use of cannabis as medicine in Chinese pharmacopoeia. In every part of the world mankind has used cannabis for a wide variety of health problems.
1937 Cannabis withdrawn from the American public against the advice of the medical community. Hemp excluded from "Class II" drugs (having demonstrated medical value) by Nixon administration in 1970. Dispite all evidence to the contrary, hemp was retained as Class I by the Bush administration in 1989.
http://paranoia.lycaeum.org/marijuana/medical/timeline
...In 1762, "Virginia awarded bounties for hempculture and
manufacture, and imposed penalties upon those who did not
produse it."
George Washington was growing hemp at Mount Vernon three years later--presumably for its fiber, though it has been argued that Washington was also concerned to increase the medicinal or intoxicating potency of his marijuana plants.*
The asterisk footnote:* The quality or quantity of marijuana resin (hashish) is enhanced if the male and female plants are separated *before* the females are pollinated. There can be no doubt that Washington separated the males and the females. Two entries in his diary supply the evidence:
May 12-13 1765: "Sowed Hemp at Muddy hole by Swamp."
August 7, 1765: "--began to seperate (sic) the Male from the Female Hemp at Do--rather too late."
The Book of Grass: An Anthology of Indian Hemp_ (1967), says that Washington's August 7 diary entry "clearly indiactes that he was cultivating the plant for medicinal purposes as well for its fiber." [7] He might have separated the males from the females to get better fiber--his phrase "rather too late" suggests that he wanted to complete the separation *before the female plants were fertilized*--and this was a practice related to drug potency rather that to fiber culture.
http://www.erowid.org/plants/cannabis/cannabis_history2.shtml
I'd expect to see in his financial papers sale of hashish or cannabis leaf, or a mention where he explicitly says that hemp grown one way is more medically strong than another way. There also is no evidence he or his household used hemp medicinally- it was uncommon at the time.
Merely separating the plants is not evidence that he even considered the potential to use it to get high. Separating males from females prevents monoectic plants, as described below. Also, male stalks were used for one purpose, and females for another, so Washington separated the two for this reason.
http://www.innvista.com/health/foods/hemp/hempbiol.htm
Fiber Types
Total fiber content is approximately 25-35% of the stem dry matter, depending on the variety.
* Primary bast fiber – long and low in lignin
* Secondary bast fiber – intermediate and high in lignin
* Libriform – short and high in lignin
According to Dr. Ivan Bocsa, industrial fiber varieties can be classified into two basic sexual types: monoecious and dioecious. Monoecious varieties have both male and female flowers on each plant, while Dioecious varieties have entirely separate male or female plants.
The dioecious trait is the natural condition for hemp while monoecism occurs infrequently in hemp populations. The incorporation and stabilization of monoecism in fiber hemp call for the skills of a competent plant breeder. It was a Russian hemp breeder who first recognized the utility of monoecism in solving two of the plant’s critical problems: low seed yield and uneven maturation of the sexes.
Monoecious hemp varieties require yearly selection to prevent the increasing return of separate male and female plants (dioecism) over successive generations of open-pollinated seed production. Also, because seed from successive reproductions gives progressively lower seed yield in the dual-purpose (fiber and seed) monoecious crop, it is customary to label monoecious hemp seed according to the number of generations that have been grown since a new supply of seed was obtained from the breeding source.
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Stalks
Hemp stalks are dependent upon two things: the sex of the hemp plant and how closely they are planted together. Male stalks are generally 10-15% taller than female stalks, even though the female vegetative period is 6-7 weeks longer. Stalks planted in close proximity to each other average 4-8 inches and increases as available area increases. Male plants also have thinner stalks while female stalks are shorter and thicker.
Historically, farmers pulled up male plants on their small plots separately from the female plants and used the male plant fibers for fine linens (bedding, hand towels, and clothing). The female plant fibers were used to make coarser fabrics (bags and tarp). Today, precise tests reveal that male plants surpass female ones in all qualitative parameters except tensile strength. Common fiber hemp in a mixed plot takes a median position between both sexes. In terms of quality, its fibers are closer to male fibers than female fibers.
When separated from the roots and leaves, the stalk constitutes about 65-70% of the total mass of a fully grown plant. If fiber hemp is densely sown, the leaves fall off during the developmental phase and tiny calluses form at these points. The crop loses most of its leaves, and fiber hemp does not have many branches. However, the area available for one plant to expand is two square feet; meaning roughly five plants per square meter or a 3-foot square plot.
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If medical cannabis is to become accepted by the voter, a better argument than "George Washington and the Chinese used it to get high" should be used, don't you think?
Doctors and hospital administrations must be convinced it's a good idea, then they can lean on the politicians.
An interesting side note- what becomes possible when three quarters of the States all pass medical marijuana laws? So working to get good people in the House is important.
The Chinese don't allow cannabis as medicine now- why did they stop? What did these wise people learn?
They also, with the help of Great Britain, used lots and lots of opium. That does not make it a good idea now, just because they used to do it.
Yup, people die from opium withdrawal. And cannabis, like DDT, has never killed anyone (except perhaps for momentary lapses of reason leading to accident or mishap, but ethanol, salvia, and LSD can lead to that too).
People keep bring up other drugs. Let's stick to MJ, OK? Not opium, not LSD, not cocaine, not heroin. Unless you want to compare how deadly they are as compared to MJ.
DDT was banned because it was having an effect on the amphibian population and the bird population. That was being passed up along the food chain.
Heck, water has killed people and I don't mean by drowning. From drinking too much of it. It is rare but it has happened.
No one ever died from using marijuana. That's the bottom line. If it is that safe, why is it illegal? That is the big question. Many substances that actually are very dangerous are legal. What is the criteria to make a substance legal and other substances illegal? Their potential lethality? What?
Why should such a benign substance be illegal? Inquiring minds want to know. Just because the government says so is not a good enough reason for many people, including me.
I agree. But why isn't marijuana in the pharmacopeia, where it resided happily, if minimally uselful, for lo those many centuries?
My vote? Make it a prescription drug. It certainly cannot be any more or less useless than many other prescription drugs. You know the drill: "Do not operate heavy machinery, etc. etc."
Politics, keeping the constituency happy by showing them there is a war against drugs. Sick, isn't it?
That sounds like a really good plan forward!
Maybe it is a bad idea... but why is that any concern of yours? Why should it not belong in the hands of the patient and his doctor? Or just the patient, for that matter? Where do YOU get off telling another American what he or she is allowed to put into his or her own body? Please explain that. Then explain just EXACTLY where in the Constitution for the United States such authority was ever granted to the Federal government. Remember the Ninth and Tenth amendments, when you are doing this.
And if you really are a judge (and not just playing one on FR) you should be IMMEDIATELY removed from the bench if you hold that attitude in real life.
No. She left you because you turned into a bat.
Yeah, they grew hemp. They also owned slaves. What's your point?
Are you suggesting we use slaves to grow dope, just because Washington and Jefferson did? I don't think that would be constitutional. (Though the way you read the constitution, it may be.)
George Andrews has argued, in _The Book of Grass: An Anthology of Indian Hemp_ (1967), that Washington's August 7 diary entry "clearly indiactes that he was cultivating the plant for medicinal purposes as well for its fiber."
George Washington didn't grow India hemp (not Indian hemp) until the 1790's. Prior to that he grew English hemp which couldn't be smoked no matter how many times you separated the males.
"Began to separate the Male from the Female hemp at Muddy hole ¾ rather too late... [7 Aug.]"
"The English Hemp i.e. the Hemp from the English seed was picked at Muddy hole this day 7 was ripe. Began to separate Hemp in the Neck... [15 Aug.]
Washington was referring to a hempseed soup stock made in Silesia (an area between Germany and Poland).
Not "sinse", not "hashish".
Yeah, they grew hemp. They also owned slaves. What's your point?
Are you suggesting we use slaves to grow dope, just because Washington and Jefferson did? I don't think that would be constitutional. (Though the way you read the constitution, it may be.)
You are a very, very lucky man. Luckier than you will ever know. Color yourself lucky.
No one ever died from using marijuana. That's the bottom line. If it is that safe, why is it illegal? That is the big question. Many substances that actually are very dangerous are legal. What is the criteria to make a substance legal and other substances illegal? Their potential lethality? What?
Why should such a benign substance be illegal? Inquiring minds want to know. Just because the government says so is not a good enough reason for many people, including me.
QUESTION: Do you think adults should be allowed to grow and smoke marijuana for medical purposes if they visit a certain doctor complaining of some kind of pain and that doctor recommends it, or do you think they should be thrown out of the doctor's office and told to go out and find a job?
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