- CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts
-- A new study in the journal Neurology is being hailed as unassailable
proof that marijuana is a valuable medicine. It is a sad commentary on
the state of modern medicine that we still need "proof" of something
that medicine has known for 5,000 years.
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- The study, from the University of California at San Francisco,
found that smoked marijuana was effective at relieving the extreme pain
of a debilitating condition known as peripheral neuropathy.
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- It was a study of HIV patients, but a similar type of
pain caused by damage to nerves afflicts people with many other illnesses
including diabetes and multiple sclerosis.
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- Neuropathic pain is notoriously resistant to treatment
with conventional pain drugs. Even powerful and addictive narcotics like
morphine and OxyContin often provide little relief. This study leaves no
doubt that marijuana can safely ease this type of pain.
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- As all marijuana research in the United States must be,
the new study was conducted with government-supplied marijuana of notoriously
poor quality. So it probably underestimated the potential benefit.
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- This is all good news, but it should not be news at all.
In the 40-odd years I have been studying the medicinal uses of marijuana,
I have learned that the recorded history of this medicine goes back to
ancient times.
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- In the 19th century it became a well-established Western
medicine whose versatility and safety were unquestioned. From 1840 to 1900,
American and European medical journals published over 100 papers on the
therapeutic uses of marijuana, also known as cannabis.
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- Our knowledge has advanced greatly over the years. Scientists
have identified over 60 unique constituents in marijuana, called cannabinoids,
and we have learned much about how they work. We have also learned that
our own bodies produce similar chemicals, called endocannabinoids.
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- The mountain of accumulated anecdotal evidence that pointed
the way to the present and other clinical studies also strongly suggests
there are a number of other devastating disorders and symptoms for which
marijuana has been used for centuries.
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- They deserve the same careful, methodologically sound
research.
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- While few such studies have so far been completed, all
have lent weight to what medicine already knew but had largely forgotten
or ignored: Marijuana is effective at relieving nausea and vomiting, spasticity,
appetite loss, certain types of pain and other debilitating symptoms. And
it is extraordinarily safe - safer than most medicines prescribed every
day.
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- If marijuana were a new discovery rather than a well-known
substance carrying cultural and political baggage, it would be hailed as
a wonder drug.
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- The pharmaceutical industry is scrambling to isolate
cannabinoids and synthesize analogs and to package them in non-smokable
forms. In time, companies will almost certainly come up with products and
delivery systems that are more useful and less expensive than herbal marijuana.
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- However, the analogs they have produced so far are more
expensive than herbal marijuana, and none has shown any improvement over
the plant nature gave us to take orally or to smoke.
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- We live in an antismoking environment. But as a method
of delivering certain medicinal compounds, smoking marijuana has some real
advantages: The effect is almost instantaneous, allowing the patient to
fine-tune his or her dose to get the needed relief without intoxication.
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- Smoked marijuana has never been demonstrated to have
serious pulmonary consequences, but in any case the technology to inhale
these cannabinoids without smoking marijuana already exists as vaporizers
that allow for smoke-free inhalation.
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- Hopefully the UCSF study will add to the pressure on
the U.S. government to rethink its irrational ban on the medicinal use
of marijuana - and its destructive attacks on patients and caregivers in
states that have chosen to allow such use.
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- Rather than admit they have been mistaken all these years,
federal officials can cite "important new data" and start revamping
outdated and destructive policies.
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- Such legislation would bring much-needed relief to millions
suffering from cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, arthritis and other debilitating
illnesses.
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- Lester Grinspoon, an emeritus professor of psychiatry
at Harvard Medical School, is the coauthor of "Marijuana, the Forbidden
Medicine." This article first appeared in The Boston Globe.
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