Posted on 04/25/2006 7:33:08 AM PDT by cryptical
This is the story of two drugs. The first, dexfenfluramine, was the active ingredient in the weight loss drug Redux. Although it was available in the U.S. and Canada for only about 18 months, it killed hundreds of people, and severely injured thousands more.
The second is marijuana. Over the past several decades, tens of millions of people across North America have used this drug regularly. It has, as far as anybody knows, killed no one.
Anyone interested in the politics of science should study the Food and Drug Administration's treatment of these two drugs. Redux was originally rejected for approval by the FDA, because of laboratory studies suggesting it would cause primary pulmonary hypertension - a particularly gruesome and generally fatal disease - in a small number of users.
The FDA panel reviewing the drug considered it too dangerous, given that Redux produced an average of only seven pounds of weight loss when compared to a placebo. This seemed eminently sensible: after all, who could argue that a drug producing so little weight loss was anything other than a cosmetic product? And surely the FDA wouldn't approve a brand of lipstick on the grounds that it was likely to cause just a small percentage of its users to suffer horribly painful deaths.
Yet it turned out that a whole bunch of very well-paid obesity researchers were willing to argue for Redux's approval. Under enormous pressure from the pharmaceutical industry and its academic hirelings, the FDA reversed course in the spring of 1996, and approved the drug for sale.
The results were predictable: reports of primary pulmonary hypertension associated with use of the drug began appearing in the medical literature. In addition, some users were suffering heart valve damage, and needed major surgery. Redux was quickly pulled from the market, but the damage had been done.
Over the last eight years, hundreds of cases of primary pulmonary hypertension have been linked to Redux, while more than 1,200 of the drug's users have undergone major surgery for heart valve damage. Wyeth, the drug's maker, has paid out billions of dollars in damages, and faces possible bankruptcy as more claims are settled and go to trial.
Meanwhile, the FDA has just announced that it will continue to treat marijuana as a Schedule I drug. Drugs are supposed to be placed in this category only if they have a high potential for abuse and no medical value.
Bruce Mirken of the Marijuana Policy Project points out that, under current federal law, doctors are free to treat their patients with cocaine, methamphetamine and morphine. All these drugs are far more dangerous than marijuana - a drug that 11 states, including Colorado, now allow doctors to prescribe to their patients they believe may benefit from it.
"I have friends who are alive today because of medical marijuana," Mirken told me. "These are people who suffered unbearable nausea from chemotherapy or retroviral drugs - nausea that only marijuana was able to bring under control."
I asked Mirken about the FDA's statement.
"The bottom line is that this is another sign that science at the FDA has given way to politics. They just pretend research evidence for the medical value of marijuana doesn't exist. But in fact quite a bit does - even though the federal government has done everything it can to keep this research from being conducted.
"They're terribly afraid of such research, because any serious scientific study of the subject is going to reveal how little basis there is for their claims. Continuing to demonize marijuana is the key to the drug war, and the drug war pays the salaries of a lot of people."
The same thing, of course, could be said about the war on "obesity."
Paul Campos is a professor of law at the University of Colorado. He can be reached at paul.campos@colorado.edu.
The money quote, in my opinion. It's not about safety, it's all about the benjamins.
Does "dexfenfluramine" get you high?
Marijuana has one fundamental purpose, to get you high.
There are probably a few medicinal purposes for marijuana, but the vast majority of pro-marijuana arguments are promoted by people who just want to get high.
Redux doesn't make people feel good...
So what? Lots of legal products "get you high". What's your point? Are we making getting high illegal?
So what?
Sometimes it makes them dead.
Whats your point?
Alcohol has one primary purpose, to give you at least a buzz or get you drunk. We don't make it a schedule 1 drug.
Pot prohibition as mandated by the feds is stupid. It should be a state issue.
Apparently so.
And people getting 'high', is bad because??
Well no one has responded to many of the points on this thread. Have no fear though, the drug warriors will arive in force soon. I admit I do find these war on drugs threads amusing.
Marijuana has one fundamental purpose, to get you high.
There are probably a few medicinal purposes for marijuana, but the vast majority of pro-marijuana arguments are promoted by people who just want to get high.
Oh no! Somewhere, someone is probably enjoying himself.
About half the prescription drugs out there will get you high. That's not the issue. The issue is whether it's medically useful or not.
Tobacco gets you high; it also seems to prevent ulcerative colitis. Perhaps, if I had smoked in the past, I wouldn't have UC now.
Alcohol gets you high; it also seems to have a beneficial effect on heart disease. Seems to affect lifespan in the US.
Marijuana gets you high; it also has a beneficial effect on nausea. If a relative of mine had been willing to smoke marijuana, perhaps she'd still be alive, rather than dying after refusing further cancer treatment.
I have never used any of the above except for a very small amount of alcohol. I just don't get their being illegal or controlled.
I'd tax them, though, but just to the extent that publically funded health care covers the costs of health problems related to their use. If there were no publically funded health care, that wouldn't be an issue.
Don't they remember that there was a " Pot is good" thread just yesterday.
I don't think you'd ever be able to establish a number here that reflects "contribution". How much does alcoholism cost us? How much does tobacco cost us? How much does antihistamine abuse cost us? It would just be more made-up Gov't numbers.
Oh no. Not another WOD thread. All the holier-than-thous line up, once again proving that conservatives can be just as self-important, arrogant and condescending as liberals.
Everyone is equal on the internet.
Even a bad number is better than me paying for it through my taxes.
Sure. We need another way for people to get stoned before they get in their cars.
We need more mothers who get messed up and leave their kids unprotected.
We need more fathers who get stoned and abandon their responsibilities.
Sure. We need more rather than less of all that.
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