Just another anecdote but I’ve got an oncologist friend that designed and ran a study in Australia on the efficacy of MJ against chemo nausea. He was using the synthetic THC capsules.
His findings were that the younger people having chemo loved it. They would pop their capsules, try to talk him out of some extras, fire up their Walkman, and sit down for the chemo. According to the doc, the kids couldn’t wait for their next session.
Older people OTOH, were disoriented and still nauseated.
The doc recommended against using it for nausea as there are so many better things available.
I totally agree. I have a few friends with prescriptions and the process is a joke. I have also been with a couple of friends when they went to get their mj. I sat in the waiting room while they went inside. Everyone in the waiting area are practically smiling and winking at each other.
If the main barrier to medical marijuana research in the US is the inability for researchers to legally obtain marijuana, and there is good commercial potential in selling marijuana as medicine, shouldn’t there be a huge amount of said research being done in the Netherlands or other countries where it’s less of a problem? Is there?
I think many here agree with much of the last paragraph there, but I’m surprised to see you list glaucoma in that context. Your literature doesn’t mention marijuana’s reduction of intraocular pressure? I thought that was among the better-established of its therapeutic effects (though still meriting more research, of course).
How are the other anti-nausea agents you mention delivered? I’ve been given to understand that smoking is easier for many patients than the alternatives.
While the general principle that smoking anything is dangerous is undeniable, I find it a little strange that people make so much of this point in respect to marijuana specifically, when so many standard prescription drugs have long lists of harmful side effects. Most medicines are not perfectly safe. The important thing is identifying when the potential benefits outweigh the risks, and for that we need the best possible information about both sides of the equation.
Pot is a crappy drug for treatment of elevated intra-ocular pressure. It needs to be dosed regularly every 2 to 3 hours, around the clock, to deliver enough lowering of the pressure to reduce the risk of vision loss. There are FAR FAR better ophthalmic drops on the market which are more effective and may be used once or twice a day. And you can drive and operate heavy machinery while using them, too. With less weight gain.
Pills, tablets and films which dissolve quickly and completely on the tongue, liquid drops which are also absorbed via the tongue and gums, suppositories. I oversee the medical care at a hospice, and our patients have not had problems taking these quick-dissolving anti-nausea drugs.
If smoking or eating the marijuana plant is shown to be superior to other modalities for treating a significant condition, I’ll support it. Making a billion dollar industry co-opting physicians into “prescribing” the stuff without such evidence is detrimental to patient health and the medical profession.
It took my doc and I 4 months of weekly appointments and experimentation to find the right drug cocktail to bring my blood pressure down to a reasonable range. It took me 4 hours to manufacture the cannabutter and 3 doses to titrate the amount I need to consume morning and evening for my condition. I can now generally avoid drugs that negatively impact my liver [well and many other organs] unless there is something more serious going on that gives me problems.
And for titration purposes, in California there is at least one lab that tests for chemical content and contaminations for the dispensaries. They send in a batch sample and it gets run. They send back the report. Part of the report is the THC and other cannabinoid levels. Makes it much easier to titrate.
It has the potential to be medicine, but it’s not yet. And medical marijuana laws are the worst possible route to trying to get it to live up to that potential. We need to study it, like all the other medicines that turned out to work, not just deregulate it like “herbal supplements”.
My overall sense is that marijuana is a marginally effective folk remedy that probably is the best treatment for some conditions. But we can’t reliably predict when it would be better than the alternatives for any given person; it’s not the magic bullet its proponents want you to think. I guess it’s not much different than many legal medications in that respect, though.
Honestly, as someone who would be OK with full legalization, I have a beef with the whole medicalization angle. Not a problem with researching the effects… people are going to use it, and we may as well understand it thoroughly. But why do you people want to transfer your civil rights to the medical establishment instead of transferring it directly to the people? Is it because you think a sneaky, half-honest backdoor route is your best shot at legally getting high? Are you working an incremental approach? Or is it also to help mitigate the social stigma? Work for legalization, then you can use it for whatever reason you want. You’ll also have to come up with your own excuses for being high, but that’s just life.
Even those, and I speak from experience here (at least for dronabinol and cannabidiol) are a pain to both synthesize and work with. Actually, cannabidiol is pretty stable, but you still have to make it stereospecifically. Dronabinol is an even worse synthesis and somewhat unstable. And that’s before you get into all the crap of working on a bunch of Schedule I compounds. The paperwork’s a bitch.
I understand the debates about the efficacy of medical marijuana. I simply do not understand why anyone (other than drug companies and illegal drug dealers) wants to fight it.
I have been through two different kinds of cancer and one unrelated operation in the last 7 years. I absolutely detest the narcotics that were administered to me. The anti-nausea medication was reasonably effective, but nothing to write home about. The pain from the catheter (I’ll save you all the TMI description) for two weeks was excruciating and it was damned near impossible to sleep.
I hear people saying that medical marijuana may not be as effective as claimed. Okay. I’ll buy that. But so what?
Montana legalized medical marijuana (after my chemo, unfortunately), and then hordes of people went screaming for repeal. Newly-elected state legislators gutted the law, effectively killing it. Why? How does it affect you or me if someone can get a good night’s sleep by eating a dosage-controlled marijuana brownie? How does it hurt us if someone can keep down food after a chemo treatment by using a marijuana inhaler? How does it help us to turn these people into criminals?
Is there any reason for vehemently opposing medical marijuana except profit motive (if you’re in the drug trade or funded by those who are) or just plain meanness? I truly, honestly don’t get this.
There is more than one path to a paradigm shift, and sometimes it takes all of them to reach the tipping point. That is why, imho, organizations (and at a wider level, movements) will exert pressure in multiple directions. The idea of continuing to deny cancer and AIDS patients access to pot as a legal way to cope with their illness and potentially improve their quality of life doesn’t sit well with a lot of people, and I think that is the narrative that most pro-legalization use of the phrase ‘medical marijuana’ is trying to catalyze. I also don’t think it hurts the movement as a whole.
Exactly my point. What is the difference between tweaking a dose of marijuana and tweaking my cardiac meds, or tweaking pain meds, or tweaking psych meds to get the right effect? Took me 4 months to get my blood pressure stabilized. My endo tweaks my diabetic meds. My cardiologist tweaks my BP meds every 6 months. My PCP tweaks my pain meds. I have discussed my weed use with him, and oddly enough, I still have my prescriptions for pain meds just like before.
Over on grasscity on the medical portion of the boards people discuss the balance in specifically cross breeding sativa and indica for specific effects for their particular problem [and adding in a dollop of the non drug hemp for the speed of growth] just like people on medical boards discuss what they found effective for their conditions using ‘regular’ medical treatments, or over on woo boards discussing their woo treatments. There are discussions over the best recipe to make edibles for specific uses. True there are a bunch of heads discussing the best way to get trashed the fastest, but then again people use their pain meds to get trashed as well [or steal family members meds.]
I have never hidden the fact that back in the day I smoked weed, but gave it up for alcohol because it was legal and I had the need to be employable. Now I am a gimp, I am finding it impossible to find a job, so I have gone back to weed for medical purposes. I have decided that once weed finally gets legalized I am going to become a boutique grower, and grow the best strain of indica I can find, and sell it. I want my brand name to be as noted as a fine Napa valley wine is. I would love to own and operate a small Amsterdam type coffee house, with fine coffees, teas and marijuana products [and snacks] I would love to own a dispensary with an educational function that is the CVS of weed. Weed treated like fine wine and cigars - sold to adults. BATFM. It isn’t impossible to conceive of being legalized and regulated in a sensible manner.
Medicine is much older and broader than the modern pharmaceutical industry. If something is used as medicine, and works as medicine, it’s medicine. Folk remedies that work, even imperfectly, are medicine. Marijuana has been medicine, in some contexts, for thousands of years.
Agreed. As I’ve been saying all along, much more science. That goes for the other herbs, too.
That doesn’t mean it should be kept illegal in the meantime, of course. Marijuana prohibition was never justified, regardless of medical arguments.
Is there any reason for vehemently opposing medical marijuana except profit motive (if you’re in the drug trade or funded by those who are) or just plain meanness? I truly, honestly don’t get this.
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Did you read my posts? “Medical marijuana” as operated in California co-opts the health system into supplying casual users. For every chemo patient whose nausea it helps, there’s thousands of folks getting a script for it for reasons which don’t rise to the level of legitimate medical need or appropriateness of prescription.
Legalize it and take it out of the hands of the medical system, which is not prepared to handle it in a sane and appropriate manner. Then docs can tell chemo patients who aren’t getting benefit from Marinol or other antinauseants that if they want, they could go buy some THC in its original delivery form if they want.
People say marijuana hasn’t be shown to be really effective, yet there are anti-depressants on the market that have to be taken for six weeks to have any effect, that only work for about 1/3 of the people who take them (the rest an take more drugs), and that can make people more suicidal.
Marijuana is effective with the first dose, effects most people who smoke it, and doesn’t make anyone more nauseous. Go figure.
