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.

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.

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.

I still believe it boiled down to Hearst & DuPont stuffing politicians pockets. Hemp is a far better quality paper and fiber product. Oh and I've smoked for 30 yrs also. :D

In the early days of our nation, the hemp plant proved a valuable resource for hundreds of years, instrumental in the making of fabric, paper and other necessities. This changed during the Industrial Revolution, which rendered tree-pulp papermaking and synthetic fibers more cost-effective through the rise of assembly line manufacturing methods. A more efficient way of utilizing hemp was a bit slower in coming. It was not until the early 1930's that a new technique for using hemp pulp for papermaking was developed by the Department of Agriculture, in conjunction with the patenting of the hemp decorticator (a machine that revolutionized the harvesting of hemp). These innovations promised to reduce the cost of producing hemp-pulp paper to less than half the cost of tree-pulp paper. Since hemp is an annually renewable source, which requires minimal chemical treatment to process, the advent of hemp pulp paper would allegedly have been better for the environment than the sulfuric acid wood-pulping process. Hemp had many champions, who predicted that its abundance and versatility would soon revitalize the American economy.

William Randolph Hearst, media mogul, billionaire, had different ideas. His aggressive efforts to demonize cannabis were so effective; they continue to color popular opinion today. In the early 1930's, Hearst owned a good deal of timber acreage; one might say that he had the monopoly on this market. The threatened advent of mass hemp production proved a considerable threat to his massive paper-mill holdings -- he stood to lose many, many millions of dollars to the lowly hemp plant. Hearst cleverly utilized his immense national network of newspapers and magazines to spread wildly inaccurate and sensational stories of the evils of cannabis or "marihuana," a phrase brought into the common parlance, in part due to frequent mentions in his publications.

The sheer number of newspapers, tabloids, magazines, and film reels that Hearst controlled enabled him to quickly and to effectively inundate American media with this propaganda. Hearst preyed on existing prejudices by associating cannabis with Mexican workers who threatened to steal American jobs and African-Americans who had long been the subject of white American venom (see accompanying articles). An ironic side-note: much of this racism had already been perpetrated by the propaganda of Hearst, an unabashed racist. The American people had already developed irrational hatred for these racial groups, and so readily accepted the ridiculous stories of their crazed crimes incited by marijuana use.

Hearst was not alone in his scheme to destroy hemp production. The new techniques also made hemp a viable option for fabric and plastics, two areas of manufacturing which together with paper seriously threatened DuPont chemicals, which at this time specialized in the chemical manufacturing of synthetic fiber and plastics, and the process of pulping paper. In fact, Hearst and Lammont DuPont had a multi-million dollar deal in the works for joint papermaking. So these two moguls, together with DuPont's banker, Andrew Mellon, bravely joined forces to stave off the bitter onrush of bankruptcy. They combined Hearst's yellow journalism campaign (so called because the paper developed through his and DuPont's methods aged prematurely) and the appointment of Mellon's nephew-in-law, Harry J. Anslinger, to Commissioner of the newly created Federal Bureau of Narcotics in order to successfully stamp out the threat of hemp

Rep. Robert L. Doughton of North Carolina introduced the Act in Congress on April 14, 1937 to criminalize the recreational use of marijuana through prohibitive taxation. The bill was the brainchild of Commissioner Anslinger who later testified before Congress in support of the bill.

Congress held only two hearings, totaling one hour of testimony, to debate the merits of marijuana prohibition. Federal witness Harry Anslinger testified before the House Ways and Means Committee that "this drug is entirely the monster-Hyde, the harmful effect of which cannot be measured." He was joined by Assistant General Counsel for the Department of the Treasury, Clinton Hester, who affirmed that the drug's eventual effect on the user "is deadly." These statements summarized the federal government's official position and served as the initial justification for criminalizing marijuana smoking.

The American Medical Association (AMA) represented the lone voice against marijuana prohibition before Congress. AMA Legislative Counsel Dr. William C. Woodward testified, "There is no evidence" that marijuana is a dangerous drug. Woodward challenged the propriety of passing legislation based only on newspaper accounts and questioned why no data from the Bureau of Prisons or the Children's Bureau supported the FBN's position. He further argued that the legislation would severely compromise a physician's ability to utilize marijuana's therapeutic potential. Surprisingly, the committee took little interest in Woodward's testimony and told the physician, "If you want to advise us on legislation, you ought to come here with some constructive proposals ... rather than trying to throw obstacles in the way of something that the federal government is trying to do."

After just one hearing, the Ways and Means Committee approved the "Marihuana Tax Act." The House of Representatives followed suit on August 20 after engaging in only 90 seconds of debate. During this abbreviated floor "discussion," only two questions were asked. First, a member of Congress from upstate New York asked Speaker Sam Rayburn to summarize the purpose of the bill. Rayburn replied, "I don't know. It has something to do with a thing called marijuana. I think it is a narcotic of some kind." The same representative then asked, "Mr. Speaker, does the American Medical Association support the bill?" Falsely, a member of the Ways and Means Committee replied, "Their Doctor Wharton (sic) gave this measure his full support ... [as well as] the approval [of] the American Medical Association." Following this brief exchange of inaccurate information, the House approved the federal prohibition of marijuana without a recorded vote.

Doughton's bill sailed though the Senate with the same ease. The Senate held one brief hearing on the bill before overwhelmingly approving the measure. President Franklin Roosevelt promptly signed the legislation into law on August 2, 1937. The "Marihuana Tax Act" took effect on October 1, 1937.

"Well, legalization is a fantasy anyways. Given the country's attitude towards smoking tobacco, I just cannot see the citizenry voting to legalize a youth-popular mind-altering drug that's smoked."

I bet we see it legal in most states and regulated similar to the way alcohol is regulated within twenty years. It's already happening, incrementally, and support for regulating marijuana rather than keeping it banned is growing. More and more people are coming to the realization that we are spinning our wheels trying to prohibit marijuana. As time goes on we'll watch use rates continue to go up and down and the supply remain plentiful despite best efforts to reduce supply and demand, and it will become apparent to more that marijuana use and supply levels are not particularly affected by the laws or enforcement of same. We'll see the old people who still have a heavy hand in running this country but tend to be much more afraid of marijuana because they came of age before it became popular dying off and being replaced by people who in most cases have smoked it themselves. As more baby boomers retire and we have a much greater percentage of old people to take care of we'll become much more vigilant at knocking out ineffective government programs and more people will be interested in possible tax revenues from taxing the multibillion dollar marijuana business. We'll hit some economic hard times and arguments for legalizing marijuana will become much more appealing to more and more people. The percentage of those wanting to legalize it and tax it which today stands at not too far below forty percent will slowly grow over the years until that point, but is likely to jump up ten points or more within a short period as the debate comes to center stage and more important people come out in favor of regulation and taxation rather than outright prohibition. Politicians who today carefully stick to the party line on marijuana will smell the votes and jump on the legalization bandwagon, and what has been long in coming will seem like it happened overnight: marijuana will be legal. It won't take a national vote. It won't take a constitutional amendment. Congress will change the rules, and the president will sign off. States that haven't already more or less legalized through ballot initiatives or legislative process will follow suit.

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