Medicinal Marijuana
...t to conduct, mainly due to political barriers, including limited funding and intimidating federal and state regulations. Despite the challenges, in 1999, the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine reported, “Nausea, appetite loss, pain, and anxiety are all afflictions of wasting, and can be mitigated by marijuana.” To gather this information, the researchers analyzed scientific publications, consulted extensively with biomedical and social scientists, and conducted public scientific workshops. Organizations and individuals were encouraged to express their views on the medical use of marijuana at the public workshops as well as via the Internet, by mail, and by telephone. The National Academy of Sciences Substance Abuse report had similar reports. The problem is, presidents almost always denounce the careful recommendations of the research. (Gerber) Research that was done often times by individuals appointed by the politicians themselves. It just might hurt political careers to accept untimely truths. Another challenge marijuana advocates must over come is that “there are plenty of other drugs on the market that could work for the same symptoms.” This challenge is brought about by federal bureaucrats who in all actuality should be letting the treatment decisions be made in the doctors’ offices. Doctors need to have many therapeutic avenues available to them to treat different types of patients as not every drug works for every situation. Different people respond differently to different types of drugs. What is most effective for Sally might give an adverse reaction to Joe. That is why there are different types of medication available for the same illness. No other drugs had to be the most effective before they became medically available, just effective, as well as safe. Consider over the counter medications such as aspirin, acetaminophen, ibuprofen, etc. We do not determine which is “best” and decide to ban all the rest. Why use a double standard for marijuana. Doctors should have the freedom to decide what will work best for their patient. Some believe that by passing state laws it is undermining the FDA approval process. This is certainly not the case, they have nothing to do with each other. The FDA does not arrest people for using unapproved treatments. In reality, the FDA has long allowed Americans to obtain medicines for their own personal use that are not approved for sale in the United States. These medicines mostly come from overseas. The FDA does not bar Americans from growing, using and possessing a wide variety of medical herbs that have not been approved as legal drugs. Such herbs include Echinacea, St. John’s Wort, and ginseng. State marijuana laws simply protect users from arrest and jail under state law. In no way is this interfering with the FDA. The decision to place marijuana into a Schedule I rating was not a decision made by the Food and Drug Administration. It was yet another political decision made by Congress. It is quite appropriate to use a political process to correct a political mistake. The most heated arguments over medical marijuana do not concern its ability to alleviate patients’ symptoms but rather its potential danger to individual users and to society. The nation’s most vocal drug czar, General Barry McCaffrey, regularly insisted that marijuana is both harmful in itself and acts as a gateway to harder drugs. Consider the facts. It is true that marijuana creates a physical dependence in some but not for all users. Is this any different than alcohol or any other legalized pain killer? According to the National Comorbidity Survery, about twenty percent of all marijuana users become dependent. By comparison, 42 percent of tobacco users, 16 percent of alcohol users, and sixty-nine percent of tranquilizers and other prescription drug users become dependent. (Anthony) Clearly, marijuana use carries a risk of dependence and abuse - a danger that rightfully should be taken into account when determining legalization for medical purposes. For certain patients like those with psychological or social problems, and those with inherited substance abuse problems, marijuana based medications may not be worth the risk. On the other hand, compared with alcohol, tobacco, and several prescription medications, marijuana’s abuse potential appears certainly manageable for patients under the care of a physician. Short-term memory deficiencies in heavy smokers, though reversible, may endure long after smoking marijuana stops. This is not a major concern, for that is only for the heaviest of users. A short-term memory deficiency versus a life of agonizing pain. There is a choice and it should be made in the doctors office, not in the court room. No lasting damage to the brain results even from decades of daily use. Alcohol, tobacco, prescription drugs, and even aspirin cause many times more harm to personal health, safety, and social structure than marijuana. Concentrate on annual causes of deaths in the U.S.: Tobacco: 430,700 Alcohol: 110,640 Adverse reactions to prescription drugs: 32,000 Anti-inflammatory drugs such as aspirin: 7,600 Marijuana: 0 (Time, 22 March 2004, p. 19) If marijuana ever caused a single death, it did a good job at covering its tracks. The alcohol and tobacco industries’ generous donations to both major political parties calm any impulse to criminalize these drugs proportionate to the risks they cause society. This is just another area where politics are blurring the real picture. Doctors are currently allowed to prescribe cocaine, morphine, and methamphetamines. No one can truly say they think these drugs are safer than marijuana. All medicines come with side effects. The criminal justice system is not the body to be determining if the risks outweigh the benefits. By focusing on the good this drug can achieve, it will surely abolish any negative arguments. Despite its illegality, millions of people use marijuana regularly. For the healthy individual, it is important to know the struggle people go through daily to truly understand why we should not be prosecuting these innocent citizens. A 35-year old Florida writer described his fight with AIDS. “Skin rashes, dry mouth, foul metallic aftertaste, numbness of the face, swelling of the limbs, fever spikes, headaches, diziness, anemia, clinical depression, neuropathy so crippling that I could not type, so painful that the bed sheets felt like sandpaper, nausea so sever that I sometimes had to leave the dinner table to vomit, and diarrhea so unpredictable that I dared not leave the house without diapers.” (Mack) All of the symptoms were not actually caused by being HIV positive but by the side effects of the hundreds of medications that were being taken. While many of the medications are necessary to fight off infections, smoking marijuana relieves the side effects, as well as being beneficial in preventing wasting. Every pound that an AIDS patient can maintain, will add days onto their lives. Patients undergoing chemotherapy to cure cancer report that by smoking marijuana, it cures the nausea that goes along with it. Legal anti- nausea drugs are prescribed, however by the second or third treatment the effects wear off. If you ...