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.
I've been illicit for many years, never really considered it a problem.
My wife of 22 years, my college attending daughter, my son the sports nut and the people I've worked for for 16 years, always found it a endearing quality.
Someday, I hope to achieve sanctimonious.
Why should best be the enemy of the good? Would you settle for good if you could get best?
You want best? Go for it. You'll settle for good? No problem. Good is what you'll get.
Translation: We will soon be using Your money to fund a have a$sed study where we will define a new syndrome by pulling it from our rears.
We will then institute policies where by every $100 ticket issued for possesion is followed up by court mandated therapy.
This therapy will be provided to you through court sponsored programs, usually managed by the Judges wife or extended family at costs to be determined by them.
Will do ... in two stages.
Don't limit yourself -- do it like the BAC level. Change it every year in search of "best".
If my fellow citizens agree, why not? Are those who oppose most abortions but support, say, parental notification laws to be condemned for "incrementalism"?
Nope, that would be blind allegiance to Big Gov't lies.
You have been asked to provide proof of your claims. The Web is your oyster. Get started.
That's the outcome I favor. Thanks for your encouraging words.
This will all be very clear to you and me, but the "warriors" won't get it. They will put their blinders on and claim it is false.
Here's part of the story about using a constitutional amendment to ban alcohol, WHICH THE SUPREME COURT REQUIRED IN ORDER TO ENFORCE IT. Link to the whole story is provided.
Anxious not to drive boozers to switch to narcotics, Congress modified the Harrison Act within days to close loopholes, and this time the SUPREME COURT agreed. Less than three years earlier, the court had said Congress could never have intended to make criminals out of any American who happened to possess some form of opium. SINCE IT (the Supreme Court) HAD JUST REQUIRED A CONSTITUTIONAL AMENDMENT TO BAN ALCOHOL, you might imagine the court would tell Congress to go get another amendment if it wanted to ban something else. But now it gave the opium user short shrift in handing down twin 5-4 decisions on March 3rd, 1919.[14] First the court answered a complaint out of Memphis that the tax was not really a tax but was a prohibition, which was unconstitutional. It was decided the Harrison Act was a tax, which was constitutional, even though it had other purposes than raising revenue. In the other case a doctor had been charged with prescribing opiates to an addict with no intention of curing him. The justices now said prescribing maintenance doses of morphine was "so plain a perversion of meaning that no discussion of the subject is required."
important part: the tax was not really a tax but was a PROHIBITION, WHICH WAS UNCONSTITUTIONAL. It was decided the Harrison Act was a tax, which was constitutional,
http://www.dpft.org/history.html
The commerce clause.
To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
Idiots see total and unlimited power here. "among the several states" should be a clue. If something never leaves a state, this clause does not apply. Like growing your own ANYTHING! Feds have no power there, it becomes up to the states to regulate it, like the 11 states that have passed a medicinal marijuana law. The feds have no right to interfer with this law in those states, UNLESS THOSE STATES ARE GETTING THEIR MEDICAL MARIJUANA FROM ANOTHER STATE!
The "warriors" embrace all encroachments on our rights. Any excuse. "The courts said so". Even if the court ruling is in direct violation of the Constitution.
They are consistant, if nothing else.
Your inputs and others are great and keep me busy with follow-up
There's the usual slams about MJ being deadly, more potent, produces frog babies etc.
After its all been refuted it just keeps coming back to the Commmerce Clause and did the Feds. have the "Right" to do what they have done. Not the "ability".
I just never seem to be able to get my mind around the fact that growing a weed for consumption affects interstate commerce
It's inconcievable to me that the founders could have possibly intended for it to be used this way.
When read in its entirety, the very spirit of the document screams the illegitmacy of the heavy handed Fed.
Anyways, keep up the good work.
Thanks. It is refreshing to know that others care about freedom too. The effort it takes to post the truth is not too bad, since it is easily available on the web.
Ghandi said something like this: "One can tell a thousand lies, but the truth is still the truth".
There's a reason tomoatoes aren't $10 a piece. They are legal.
You have it backwards...I do not have to prove anything to you or any other weed puffer----laws have been established at the pleasure and approval of the people. It's YOUR job - to change the laws if you disagree with them. You - the weed smokers - have done so in the netherlands---those poor Euroweenies have caved in to lots of trash ----but you do not seem to be getting anyone on your side in the US.
Then there is always Jamaica - with the rasta - but Jamaicans I know can't stand them either.
So are diamonds, and they're not cheap.
If anyone can by any amount of any kind of pot for $2./oz., yes, I agree, people will not grow their own.
Change any of those parameters, and you might as well break out the grow lights.
Why not? You propose a law you can pass now knowing full well you're going to amend it later to more of your liking?
Why not? Because it's dishonest and deceitful, that's why not. Oops. Those are moral concepts -- you don't understand those, do you?
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