Massachusetts voters in 2½ weeks will consider becoming the 18th state to legalize the use of marijuana for medical purposes. But there is little research showing whether the drug has therapeutic benefits.
That says more about the difficulty of studying an illegal substance than it does about the inherent medical value of the plant.
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I believe for as long as medicine has been around as a practice, the only important Q&A between doc and patient has been: Doc - "How are you feeling?" Patient - "[better]" or "[worse]" The psychological aspects of better to worse can be debated, but let's stick to the black and white. Patient takes FDA approved pills and feels better, or worse. Patient takes some herbal "remedy" that the FDA can't really quantify as positive, but the patient feels better, not worse. In the patient's realm, that's all that matters. Same with pot; Better or worse. (Same with self-euthanization...but I digress.) This is about government not listening to us as to whether we feel better or worse, or worse than that...*telling us* we feel better or worse. Maybe the pot legalization controversy shows us (again) whether we're at another tipping point of governing ourselves or having people who likely smoke pot themselves now or have in the past, and felt better or worse, but can't admit it, govern us. (That "circular-thinking thing again...) Let the market decide, and let the government reap the benefits via taxed supply and let's get this over with. I'm 58, and guess what I've learned in the majority of those years...liquor is poison, pot is not. What's the difference? Ignorance. Find the patients that smoke pot. Ask them: "Do you feel better?" If they do, that alone may lead to healing, or better healing without the significant counterproductive residue alcohol abuse has revealed alcoholism produces. Basic stuff. Do any law makers get that? The enemy here is us.
It may be less of a poison but it is still a poison.
Human beings are a gestalt, and that means complexity. One can focus on certain aspects (for example, the psychological -- birth order effect, neurosis, psychosis, dream interpretation, the physical -- circulatory system, heart, brain activity, sensing) but that focus is artificial and carries with it the risk of thinking that the understanding of the subsystem in isolation can be carried back to a complete understand of the subsystem in the gestalt.
Sadly, the laws governing marijuana almost entirely a product of the deep ignorance that prevailed in the first half of the twentieth century. When the use of marijuana began to spread out of minority communities into white America, panic was the primary response, and it's still too much of the response.
So, yes, there was "deep ignorance" back in the times when we were young, but now, luckily, we are enlightened. We know know much more about how to scare people (thanks to the thorough research done by the CIA, and by business.) So, today we have much larger portfolio of ways to manipulate people. And luckily, we have discovered that where there is "deep ignorance" the mere supplying of information does not necessarily counteract it if we have successfully degraded the ability to think independently and to learn objectively. We do live in interesting times.
Evidence from European researchers (where there are fewer restrictions on that activity) is that THC and CBD, the two psycho-active compounds in marijuana, have antagonistic actions towards each other, but more significantly, that THC contributes the the paranoia symptoms that some people get, and that THC particularly exacerbates symptoms in psychotic patients. Further, there is no way to demonstrate that what some people feel is a therapeutic effect isn't really just a placebo effect.
Millions of people for thousands of years experiencing placebo effect?
It's a psychoactive compound. That is not a placebo effect, however, the notion that it separately relieves suffering cannot be tested independently of its psychoactive effect. Therefore, its therapeutic status cannot be verified, so no, it cannot be proved that 'feeling better' isn't a secondary placebo effect to having 'gotten high'. Its deleterious effect on psychotic patients, on the other hand, is fairly well documented.
It as my understanding from reading extensively about marijuana in the 60s that there had been lots of research, more than with most drugs that were FDA approved. It don't think it was pain reduction research so much as overall safety of use research. So, to say that "there has not been much research" is untrue.
If all of the most conservative voices in Boston are for outright legalization, much less the legalization of medical marijuana, then who exactly is against this, nanny-state Democrats??!?!?!? Anyone who has had the flu, the REAL flu where the hair on your arm hurts and where you take a tiny sip of water and vomit 20 seconds later, anyone who has had the real flu should understand the benefits to sick people of taking a single puff and being able to eat and drink water for an hour before resuming vomiting. Now imagine a cancer patient. Anyone who has significant back injuries and nerve damage who has found the pain pills are less and less effective over time as they take more and more control of your life should understand the benefits of marijuana over the pain pills! Patients can control the pain and still lead productive lives!! Legalized pot, much less legalized medical pot, should be a non-issue, especially in this state, where self-declared 'liberals' are supposedly so enlightened...
The #5 definition of "liberal" from Webster's is: broad-minded; especially: not bound by authoritarianism, orthodoxy, or traditional forms. Clearly, liberalism today mean something more like "believing in the things liberals stand for". And, guess what, those things are ideologies long ago invented and espoused. They have become orthodoxy and are often imposed through authoritarian rules. So, they are less "liberalism" than they are "provincialism". In effect, casting liberal ideas in stone (thereby freezing them in time), imposing them, and insisting on politically correct non-discussion of the sacred principles has turned them into the very thing they were all about being against. So, "liberals" are often not liberal. Of course, "conservatives" are often not conservative, either (if you don't believe that then you probably believe global warming is a sham, and what this country needs is to produce and burn more coal).
Around 35 years ago my college roommate participated in a Mass General study using a pill containing marijuana to ease nausea from chemotherapy. When she was given the real pill rather than a placebo, the effect was obvious and so helpful that she saved some of the pill for later. After that her husband braved buying illegal marijuana in Harvard Square to provide to his wife, such was the relief offered. It is a shame that this effective medicine is not yet widely available so many years later.
Unfortunately, many cancer patients report vomitting the pill back-up ten seconds later, before it can work... thus the vaporizer and medical pot...
How could she know whether she got the placebo or the real thing? In a properly designed study you get one or the other, not both. The only way she would then be able to claim having received a cannabis-derived pill (Marinol is synthetic THC, while Idrasil is an extract of the entire plant, so it contains at least three different cannabinoids), is if she had previous experience with pot and recognized the sensation of getting high. Further, if the hypothesis is that one or more of the cannabinoids is the therapeutic agent they need to be tested both individually and in combination, along with testing cannabis-derived products containing everything but the cannabinoids.
Legalize already, I have smoked thousands of times and can definitely state I am not or will never be addicted to it. It is 2500 times safer than alcohol and it grows like a weed.
Thousands of times? How do you know you're not addicted to it? How long have you gone without it? How did you derive the number 2500 times safer? Are there any factors that might make it 3000 times safer?