Pros and Cons of Medical Marijuana
The Los Angeles Times has a feature article on the pros and cons of medical marijuana.
DEPENDING ON whom you ask, marijuana is a dangerous drug that should be kept illegal alongside heroin and PCP, or it’s a miracle herb with a trove of medical benefits that the government is seeking to deny the public — or something in between: a plant with medical uses and drawbacks, worth exploring.
As the political debates over medical marijuana drag on, a small cadre of researchers continues to test inhaled marijuana for the treatment of pain, nausea and muscle spasms.
See our previous post on the marijuana industry in California.
dunbar smyth
Long-term use of today’s marijuana worsens all of the conditions it is being used to medicate (e.g. Cancer Research 2004: 1943-50). How could the August 2007 evidence out of Harvard Medical School concerning links from even low dose THC to risk for Kaposi’s Sarcoma in immune-compromised individuals not have led to some truth-telling on this side of The Atlantic?
Association between HIV/AIDS progression and marijuana involvement has been around for two decades, but it is only in the last two years that the evidence suggesting a causal relationship has mounted. We get endless media coverage of short-term studies by Dr. Donald Abrams assuring us there are no viral or immune risks in use of marijuana for these conditions, but of course the long-term effects of all addictive drugs shift and reverse. DBut don’t people leading AIDS societies know the results of long-term studies show devastating impacts for immune conditions i.e. Manel A. Eid. 2004)? If the work of Guy Cabral on marijuana’s links to rising brain infections in AIDS patients was the mirror opposite, would the media not have reported it?
The evidence that daily marijuana use — “recreational” or “therapeutic” — significantly increases fibrosis risk, and fatty liver in individuals with Hepatitis C has been mounting over the past 8 years. It can be found now on legal liability web sites, but there are no public health warnings. Consider the harm public policies related to blood scandals have had for victims of this disease. Yet, we still can’t do the right thing here.
Depression arising from use of today’s high-strength stimulant marijuana is now understood in terms of its depletion of serotonin (e.g. McGill University. 2007); Journals like AIDS have covered its impacts on people with HIV/AIDS (2008); similarly, depression has been recently identified in MS victims using this ‘magic cure’.
While considerable focus has been given to psychosis risk in western Europe of late, suicide risk is clearly a much greater looming issue, with wide implications for public liability.
“My aunt uses it for her MS, but she’s always worse the next day” (high school senior speaking to the present writer, 2004). If a high schooler can get the biphasic effects of this drug, how is it that our public scientists cannot consider the impact of constantly loosening and tightening body tension with the “good stuff” day in, day out? I have seen it in home visits to bud-involved young adults for years. How can the MS society not have something to say about this? When a young adult long involved with Middle Eastern hashish called me days before his marriage to ask: “Could hash have anything to do with MS? My doctor wants me to have a test in Buffalo”, I dissembled. But nine days later came the message: “The test came up positive”. Only the government of Ireland has told the truth about marijuana’s mimicing the effects of MS (2006 - Claire Collins and colleagues working in a tiny state also grasp the true impacts of marijuana on epilepsy). Accordingly, evidence from Amsterdam (Killestein, 2003) and elsewhere not funded by big pharma has found that marijuana has pro-inflammatory effects which is what one would expect of today’s powerful stimulant varieties. Yet even research on the sedative cannabinoid CBD (not found in today’s drug-rich strains) have led to warnings about use of any cannabinoid for inflammatory conditions ( Sacerdote. 2005).
One would have at least expected that public health warnings around stroke risk (Pediatrics. 2004 for autopsy results; Stroke 1991 for compelling evidence of harm of continuing use,post-stroke, and benefits of quitting) would have been provided, given that most “marijuana therapy” patients are high-dosing (e.g. Health Canada. 2008) and confidently exceed doses seen in stroke victims elswhere (UK: 2003, 2006, Spain 2005.) North of the 49th paralle, their doctors aren’t having anything to do with under-the-radar warnings.
Ultimately, this is about the collapse of medical ethics and integrity in the research world — something we look at knowingly and with disdain in past societies like Weimar Germany. (And public policy in the western world on both tobacco and marijuana has a lot to do with the underclass for whom we now have no role in a global, oligarch-driven world. Soros is a complex man indeed).
August 19th, 2008 at 9:05 pmdun smyth, M.A., M.Phil. August 20, 2008.
Ms. Amber Murphy
What harm can weed/marijuana can do? I’m looking around through websites to find the “Pros and Cons of weed/marijuana.” What can it do to a person reguardless if they’re healthy or not and within the age of 25 to 40 yrs of age?
Can you please send me an e-mail reply?
November 2nd, 2008 at 9:40 pm