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Physician Advocates for Medical Marijuana
Rutland Herald ^ | Feb. 26, 2006

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.


TOPICS: Culture/Society; US: Vermont
KEYWORDS: marijuana; medicalmarijuana; wod; wodlist
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To: binkdeville

Yes, so dangerous that it kills more people each year that cigarettes and alcohol put together.


281 posted on 02/28/2006 9:03:05 PM PST by Supernatural (Lay me doon in the caul caul groon, whaur afore monie mair huv gaun)
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To: Supernatural

Pot ? ...kills more people than booze and cigaretts?


282 posted on 02/28/2006 9:07:28 PM PST by binkdeville
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To: binkdeville

I was being sarcastic, of course. We have been trying to get a reason out of the "warriors" as to why pot is banned since it is completely harmless and there is not one documented death recorded in the history of the world from pot use, while there are 400,000 deaths PER YEAR from legal tobacco and 100,000 deaths PER YEAR from legal alcohol.

No one can come up with a valid reason yet. We are still waiting, but not holding our breath.


283 posted on 02/28/2006 9:11:37 PM PST by Supernatural (Lay me doon in the caul caul groon, whaur afore monie mair huv gaun)
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To: Supernatural

Of course they don't have data on driving under the influence of THC. Unfortunately, those accidents also kill other people. That would seem to be the biggest obstacle in my mind to legalization.


284 posted on 02/28/2006 9:13:35 PM PST by Wiseghy ("You want to break this army? Then break your word to it.")
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To: Supernatural
Just short sighted people I guess. I go visit friends in Amsterdam every year . I don't smoke myself but it legal there and to be honest , most kids don't bother with it .Being that it's legal it doesn't have that mystique about i anymore. The kids think it's an old farts/hippy thing . They have zero problems with it there. If there is a problem it's the English football ,jock heads them come in for the weekend , get blasted drunk and fight anyone they see in the streets.
285 posted on 02/28/2006 9:16:50 PM PST by binkdeville
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To: Wiseghy

Actually, there is some data on the use of pot while driving. Some researchers actually did tests on people driving under the influence of pot and found that some people actually drive better under that influence. There is a link on one of the pot sites, or you can find it by searching the web.

If you can't find it, ask and I shall provide it for you.

Of course, mixing it with alcohol doesn't count for anything. Alcohol all by itself is known to cause traffic accidents.


286 posted on 02/28/2006 9:19:28 PM PST by Supernatural (Lay me doon in the caul caul groon, whaur afore monie mair huv gaun)
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To: binkdeville

Alcohol is involved in much violence. Strange that alcohol is legal and pot is not. The only reason pot is illegal is because the government says it should be. That is not good enough for me nor others who know the truth.


287 posted on 02/28/2006 9:21:19 PM PST by Supernatural (Lay me doon in the caul caul groon, whaur afore monie mair huv gaun)
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To: Wiseghy

Cruising on Cannabis

Cruising on Cannabis: Putting the Breaks on Doped Driving Misconceptions

By Paul Armentano

Moreover, emerging scientific research indicates that cannabis actually has far less impact on the psychomotor skills needed for driving than alcohol does, and is seldom a causal factor in automobile accidents. A pair of international studies released in the spring of 2001 bolsters this argument.

The first, conducted by Britain's Transport Research Laboratory, found that volunteers performed better on a driving simulator under the influence of pot than they did after consuming alcohol. According to the study, marijuana only adversely impacted subjects' ability to maintain a constant speed and control while driving around a figure-eight loop. Reaction time and all other measures of driving performance remained unaffected. Researchers also noted that the subjects who had smoked marijuana - unlike alcohol users - were aware of their impairment and attempted to compensate for it by driving more cautiously.

Similar results were also reported in March by a South Australian team at the Department of Clinical and Experimental Pharmacology at the University of Adelaide. Their epidemiological review of automobile accidents found that alcohol "overwhelmingly plays the greatest role in road crashes ... [and] conversely, ... marijuana has a negligible impact on culpability." The study was a follow up to a 1998 analysis of 2,500 injured drivers that previously determined cannabis to have "no significant effect" on drivers' culpability in motor vehicle accidents.

In fact, most marijuana and driving experiments give pot a relatively clean bill of health, particularly when compared to alcohol. A review of two-decades worth of driving simulator and on-road studies by Alison Smiley for Toronto's Centre for Addiction and Mental Health concluded that although marijuana temporarily impairs driving behavior, "this impairment is mitigated in that subjects under marijuana treatment appear to perceive that they are indeed impaired [and] where they can compensate, they do."

http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=5449

One of several articles about driving high on pot.


288 posted on 02/28/2006 9:36:20 PM PST by Supernatural (Lay me doon in the caul caul groon, whaur afore monie mair huv gaun)
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To: Mojave

"Why can't they grow it themselves?"

Because it is illegal and it's much easier to get caught growing it than it is just smoking it and the penalties are much worse for "manufacturing." Besides, most don't need as much as they'd have if they grew it, and hardly any would want to go to all that trouble anyway, even if it was legal. It's cheaper than beer. Why go to all the trouble of growing it? Most people would rather take the easy way and just pay a few bucks a week or month or whatever for what they smoke, or just smoke their friends' pot, or both.


289 posted on 02/28/2006 9:46:46 PM PST by TKDietz
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To: Supernatural

"Moreover, emerging scientific research indicates that cannabis actually has far less impact on the psychomotor skills needed for driving than alcohol does, and is seldom a causal factor in automobile accidents. A pair of international studies released in the spring of 2001 bolsters this argument. "

Ummm...my recollection of this from high school is somewhat different. It would be hard to describe my driving friends as anything less than impaired.


290 posted on 02/28/2006 10:05:35 PM PST by Wiseghy ("You want to break this army? Then break your word to it.")
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To: Mojave; Nate505
"'A good grow light costs $100 or so.'"

"$100?
LAMPS PLUS Price $7.99"

Actually it's more like $200 or $300 for a 400 or 430 watt high pressure sodium setup good for about an eight square foot growing area. A 1000 watt setup good for about 20 square feet would cost more. Marijuana has high light requirements, especially when flowering. Marijuana growers seem to have pretty much a consensus that about fifty watts of high pressure sodium light per square foot of flowering space provides for optimum growth. That little incandescent bulb you linked us to, Mojave, would not grow pot. Those are best suited for lighting plastic plants. They really shouldn't even sell those because they don't work. That 65 watt light puts out 610 lumens, less than 9.5 lumens per watt. A 400 watt high pressure sodium lamp puts out around 50,000 lumens, about 125 lumens per watt, and a 1000 watt hps puts out around 145,000 lumens, about 145 lumens per watt.

Aside from just having that light for flowering (growing the buds), they're probably going to need to section off their closet for another light or lights for plants still maturing and one for mother plants they take their cuttings from if they want to grow year around and be assured that they'll have female plants that produce the buds they smoke. They have to have timers and temperature gauges and probably humidity gauges and light proof barriers so they can keep their flowering plants in a 12 hour on and 12 hour off lighting regimen to induce flowering while they grow their mother plants and maturing clones under with longer daily light periods to prevent flowering. Then of course they need proper ventilation and fans to provide some wind to strengthen the plants and keep them relatively dry so buds don't mold. And they need all their nutrients and other junk, and if they are using hydroponics they need aerators and pumps and piping and whatever else they need for that junk. And if they really want to get fancy with really lush plants they'll want a CO2 system to keep CO2 levels high to stimulate growth. It can all run into a lot of money.

Here are a couple of grow shops I Googled up for prices:

http://www.grow-light.com/cgi-bin/index.pl

http://bestgrowlights.com/
291 posted on 02/28/2006 10:43:37 PM PST by TKDietz
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To: robertpaulsen

"Almost half the people strongly oppose legalization -- and that's with regulation and taxation."

The number of those who want it regulated and taxed is steadily growing though, and you and I both know public opinion numbers can change by ten or more points in no time. As support for changing the laws grows and more important people come out in favor of it public opinion could totally swing in the opposite direction. It is slowly but surely getting to that point already, even with a concerted and well funded effort on the part of the government to prevent it from happening. Give it time and you'll see better than half the people strongly supporting regulating and taxing the marijuana industry.


292 posted on 02/28/2006 11:03:31 PM PST by TKDietz
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To: Mojave
"California NORML to raise its estimate of the number of legal patients in California to over 150,000 as of November, 2005..."

That's a 150,000 out of how many million pot smokers? California has something like 30,000,000 people and according to SAMHSA's 2003 numbers better than 11% of them will smoke pot in a given year and about 6.5% of Californians will admit to federal government workers who come to their homes to having smoked it in the past thirty days. There are millions of pot smokers in California. That 150,000, if it is anywhere close to accurate, is probably less than 5% of those in California who smoke pot.
293 posted on 02/28/2006 11:23:24 PM PST by TKDietz
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To: Wiseghy

Let me put it to you this way. How many people do you personally know who wrecked while high on pot and only high on pot?

I know of none.


294 posted on 03/01/2006 4:35:10 AM PST by Supernatural (Lay me doon in the caul caul groon, whaur afore monie mair huv gaun)
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To: Mojave
"James Bong."

I like it.

295 posted on 03/01/2006 4:59:55 AM PST by robertpaulsen
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To: TKDietz
"A 1000 watt setup good for about 20 square feet would cost more."

Who are you growing for -- Orange county?

296 posted on 03/01/2006 5:03:29 AM PST by robertpaulsen
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To: TKDietz
That's a 150,000 out of how many million pot smokers?

That's a 150,000.

297 posted on 03/01/2006 6:42:58 AM PST by Mojave
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To: eleni121
If you have poll results from an infallible pollster that contradict Zogby's, let's see them. So far, I've provided evidence and you've provided hot air.
298 posted on 03/01/2006 6:44:15 AM PST by Know your rights (The modern enlightened liberal doesn't care what you believe as long as you don't really believe it.)
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To: TKDietz
Actually it's more like $200 or $300 for a 400 or 430 watt high pressure sodium setup good for about an eight square foot growing area.

Not to mention the meth lab in the kitchen.

299 posted on 03/01/2006 6:44:34 AM PST by Mojave
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To: TKDietz
Because it is illegal and it's much easier to get caught growing it than it is just smoking it

First, there's a 150,000 medical marijuana patients who can grow legally under California law plus however many "caregivers" there might be. Second, if they don't grow it then they aren't "just smoking it", they're probably buying it from a drug dealer.

300 posted on 03/01/2006 6:50:07 AM PST by Mojave
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