Yes, but what about pot brownies?
You have to wonder if they're splitting hairs with the 'smoked' bit:
But that's just one too-narrow distinction they seem to be drawing: what's a 'sound scientific study' in their book, when the goverment blocks scientists from studying its effect?
The Food and Drug Administration said Thursday that "no sound scientific studies" supported the medical use of marijuana, contradicting a 1999 review by a panel of highly regarded scientists.Certainly, smoking grass isn't the only way to consume it, and it seems like a substantial number of people using marijuana for medical puposes will eat it rather than smoking.
[...]
Susan Bro, an agency spokeswoman, said that the statement resulted from a past combined review by federal drug enforcement, regulatory and research agencies that concluded that "smoked marijuana has no currently accepted or proven medical use in the United States and is not an approved medical treatment."
But that's just one too-narrow distinction they seem to be drawing: what's a 'sound scientific study' in their book, when the goverment blocks scientists from studying its effect?
The FDA statement said that state initiatives that legalize marijuana use "are inconsistent with efforts to ensure that medications undergo the rigorous scientific scrutiny of the FDA approval process."Voters approve decriminalization and medical use over and over, but they're trying to move a mountain. It's going take a long, long time, I think.
But scientists studying marijuana said in interviews that the federal government has actively discouraged research into marijuana's benefits. Dr. Lyle Craker, a professor in the division of plant and soil sciences at the University of Massachusetts, said that he submitted an application in 2001 to the DEA to grow a small patch of marijuana to be used for research because the government-approved marijuana, grown in Mississippi, is of poor quality.
In 2004, the drug enforcement agency turned Craker down. He appealed and is awaiting a judge's ruling. "The reason there's no good evidence is that they don't want an honest trial," Craker said.
posted by $!# at 4/21/2006 02:32:00 PM
5 Comments:
Personally, I think that the whole medical marijuana debate just convolutes the real reasons for decriminalizing pot. Yeah. We may have thc receptors in our body. Yeah. It may alleviate eye pressure in some glaucoma patients as much as other drugs. Yeah. It may help cancer patients to eat better. But let's face it; we humans have been toking for generations and from it hasn't emerged a super healthy subgroup of humans protected from all the crap that's killing us. The point is that marijuana being illegal is a load of huey. And maybe trying to lay claims about its health benefits is just not the way to convince the average American of that.
I agree, the medical pot debate is unquestionably a stand-in for the real legalization debate. But it works both ways.
The medical value of it is real, from what I've seen. My friend Andy in SF really believes he wouldn't be able to tolerate the HIV medication which keeps him alive without the pot he grows. Even with the triple-drug cocktail the side-effects are wicked.
My uncle had a brutal case of Crohn's disease: his options for controlling the pain were weed, narcotics or barbituates, and he thought the weed was a way better option. I could go on.
Don't mistake it for something that cures. It doesn't. But neither does most medecine. Insulin doesn't bring back your islet cells. Prozac doesn't make depression go away forever. It's all palliative.
So that's a long winded way of saying I think the exact opposite of what you're saying is true as well: the medical question clouds the legal debate as much as the legal questions cloud the medical debate.
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I guess I'll have to turn on word authentication soon, but I'll see if I can get a few more bots posting first... the extra pageviews motivate me to post.
Saying that the medpot issue hurts to overall legalization issue is absurd. The real issue here is that the FDA approves alcohol, and tobacco but refuses to even consider that marijuana just might have some benefits to it.
The FDA also supplies pot to seven patients under a program that was started years ago under Jimmy Carter. Called the Compassionate Investigational New Drug (IND) program, some of the enrolled individuals have been receiving tins of federally grown and rolled marijuana cigarettes for as long as 23 years. Now if it has no medicinal value whatsoever, why is the FDA supplying these people with it?
You can read all about this on the Patients Out of Time (POT) website. POT is a Virginia-based, non-profit medpot advocacy group, and they’ve recently organized the Fourth National Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics in Santa Barbara, California.
This event was attended by 200 health professionals, medpot activists, and people in the legal profession. Over thirty papers were delivered on the use of therapeutic cannabis in palliative care, in pregnancy, in treating HIV, MS, and cancer patients, and most importantly, in pain management.
As a medpot patient myself, I attended this conference and was totally impressed by the level of scientific inquiry which the presenters exhibited. It was accredited by the American Medical Association, an organization which doesn’t give its accreditation lightly.
I live near Santa Barbara, so it was economical for me to attend. I learned an awful lot and connected with a number of good people. I told them that I was growing my own, since the compassion club in my county was busted.
If you live in a jurisdiction which allows medicinal marijuana use, go to the Advanced Nutrients Medical website and get some invaluable advice on how to grow your own.
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