I don’t think they use it as a painkiller. I believe the point is that it restores their appetite, and allows them to eat. One of the biggest problems with cancer, is that your appetite can disappear. Chemo and radiation treatments are also appetite suppressors. At the same time, it is important for the patient to maintain a healthy diet, so they are strong enough to fight the disease.
Cancer is a painful, insidious disease. Those who face it, deserve every weapon they can get to fight it. If marijuana helps, why not? It isn’t hurting me at all. Do I think any teenager on the street should be allowed to smoke it? No, but we attempt to control distribution of many other drugs, while making them available to the public who need it. Why not make the same attempt for marijuana?
An excellent question.
Because like all the other quackery like coffee enemas, aroma therapy, laetrile and the others, it keeps the patient from getting other, much more effective therapies.
Knew an older gentleman who was playing 18 holes of golf and driving his golf cart with 5 days of his death from bone cancer, which is incredibly painful w/o intervention.