Phillip Alden, a writer living in Redwood City, Calif., told me that marijuana was a godsend for him in dealing with the effects of AIDS. He said it eased excruciating pains in his fingertips, controlled nausea and enabled him to avoid the wasting syndrome that afflicts AIDS patients who are unable to eat enough food.
But Mr. Alden said only some kinds of marijuana worked - not the weak variety provided by the federal government, which he smoked during a research study.
"It was awful stuff," he said. "They started out with a very low-grade plant, rolled it up with stems and seeds, and then freeze-dried it so that they probably ruined any of the THC crystals. All it did was give me headaches and bronchitis. The bronchitis got so bad I had to drop out of the study."
Mr. Alden was scheduled to testify at this week's hearing, but he told me he had to withdraw because the D.E.A. refused to give him legal immunity if he admitted using marijuana not from the government. It's a shame the judge will be making a decision without hearing him, but I can understand Mr. Alden's hesitancy.
It's one thing to be against marijuana, quite another to be against scientific research.
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13 comments:
The government can't even deal good pot. Typical... US Postal, Amtrak, weak and dry pot.
I agree the government should -- at the least -- allow scientific research on it. They should've stayed out period, but Gonzales v. Raich makes that unlikely for a while.
I sense a bit of irony that, while I know many on the right -- myself included -- would favor some type of relaxation of pot laws -- a lot of the warriors of this issue are on the left and the very big government we have is partly the result of their fights on other social issues. And now that very big government is against them.
Sad that those with AIDS, cancer, etc. are foreclosed from a medicine that might at least ease their suffering. Not surprising that the avenue to that easement is blocked by pencil pushers in a dense bureaucracy of a federal government that doesn't trust the states or the people to make these decisions.
I know nothing of the science except what I read, but according to this clinical consulting pharmacist marijuana is not an analgesic.
But research should be done for medical benefits. And I'm a religious conservative.
Art, This has nothing to do with George W. Bush. Clinton, all the way back through LBJ offficially pushed the Prohibition model. I am criticizing trhe government -- I'm a lifelong politically Southern Baptist -- many of us consider decrim or legalization of pot -- the "official" Southern Baptist COnvention does not.
This is about government power. The DEA is an executive agency no doubt, but the COntrolled Substances Act was passed by a Dem Congress in the 1970s. The Boggs Act in the 1950s didn't help and it's part of encroaching federal power all the way back to the Harrison Act before WWI. I refer you to a (very bad) movie from the mid 1930s "Reefer Madness" for the alliance of schools, gov't, etc. to demonize pot
The gov't -- whether Dem or Rep has an institutional bias against pot. They don't seem to care what the potential science is -- you're just not going to have access to any pot.
Too bad, because I'm sure we could all take about 5 minutes and score pounds of the stuff in our respective localities -- and better quality than the gov't would give in the 1st place since they keep the crap and incinerate the rest (at least according to my experience with Texas gov't). No one has held the science as worth years in the federal or state pen.
gs... Good grief. The anti-pot government stance was here deacdes before Bush and it will be here decades after absent a fundamental polical shift by the people. Eventually voters will tire of the war on pot.
Bush is not anti-science -- the government is not either per se -- they've just got a hard on against pot.
Let's reverse your last staement... Do Hillary Clinton "get" religion and morality? I'm not at all sure. The consequences could be significant for the USA'competition with China and Europe for decades.
That's right -- it sounds stupid and insulting. Ditto. Argue the point -- not drag down some caricature of religious people -- the very people responsible for the beginnings and continuance of higher education in this country.
""Anti-marijuana, anti-science." It brings to mind Bush's supportive remark about teaching intelligent design in schools. Bush and stem cells. Bush and the Schiavo issue."
It seems to me COMPLETELY different from these things. These things involve Bush trying to blend science with moral reasoning and religious understanding. The DEA's refusal to allow scientists to get the raw material they need to do their research is an attempt to prevent science from operating within its own system. Let the scientists do their work and produce their results. Then if you still want to deny people access to drugs for moral reasons you will be doing it weighing morality against science. There's no moral argument for using bad marijuana instead of good marijuana to do the research!
As I understand it, the law concerning mj has it in the section "of no medical use" rather than one of the "controlled substance" sections, because it has not been updated for a long time. This is patently false, since there are several medicines based on the "active ingredient" TCH, but our congresscritters are not motivated to change it.
As to studies, MJ itself is hard to study because it varies in potency even in leaves from the same plant. So most studies are with purified extracts, even when indications are that something is lost since patients who smoke the plant report better effects than those who smoke (or otherwise ingest) the extract[s].
More studies should be done, but it might need a change in the law (I am not sure the NIH could license the whole state of California as a study director), and patients have even less political organization and clout than those of us who smoke tobacco.
Would it serve any purpose to wonder if Mr. Alden acquired AIDS with the aid of marijuana...prossibly not. Then again, one wonders just where his mind has been since 1985.
If you are interested in medical proof of mj, I would refer you to a book by Susan Weed, titled,"Wise Woman's Herbal for the Childbearing Year." And this article at www.cannabisculture.com/articles/4295.html.(Sorry, I dont know how to link yet.)
GS: There is a moral objection to experimenting with the stem cells. The experimentation on what is viewed as human is itself viewed as wrong. There's no equivalent moral problem with the marijuana experiments by scientists. There is a moral objection to marijuana use, and a desire to suppress discovery of things that would make the marijuana moralists lose in the political process. Completely different.
Why is it that when libertarians talk about this issue it so often sounds like they are not really interested in cancer sufferers, they are just eager to get their hands on a good stash for recreational use? The public can be forgiven for concluding that they are, as in the California case (Gonzales-Raich), eagerly jumping on whatever train will get them there.
There is no drug in existence that does not have unintended consequences (just ask any COX-II inhibitor manufacturer, or chemotherapy patient, about side effects). And MJ, like another very effective drug, thalidomide, has a nasty reputation. But, just because a drug is capable of being misused does not mean that its therapeutic effects should be denied to sick people for whom its use is indicated.
However, the problem here is not the FDA, the DEA, or any other bureaucracy- bureaucrats do nothing more than what all bureaucrats do, that is, go with the flow and offer the policy proposals favored by those who provide the money. The issue is with Congress, where there are few serious policy people willing to play this issue when there are more camera-friendly dragons to assault.
The reason that Congress won't change? There are two. First, there are those who are anti-recreational-drug and pretty much enthralled with the memories of Reefer Madness, just as there are those who want to kill vaccines and thalidomide. Second, the California gang that gave us the very dumb Raich law is the perfect illustration of how to kill any progress, by letting the overage '60's hippies get near the issue.
Raich, as written, was not a medical marijuana bill, it was an ill-disguised Trojan Horse for unfettered home cultivation by the most intemperate of recreational users. If you are trying to get some relaxation against a Schedule I drug on scientific grounds, you don't pass a law changing the drug all the way out to Schedule III instead of II, and then eliminate the requirement that it be prescribed (what sane person would only require a doctor to "recommend" use of MJ). That philosophy of treating marijuana as being less problematic than Allegra and Viagra may reflect what the hemp enthusiasts truly believe, but it is no way to change either minds or laws.
The smart way for California to have handled this, before poisoning the well as they now have, would have been for a UCLA team to set up a carefully controlled double-blinded study using high quality extracted THC in suppository form, with a patient population that was clearly compassionate use- late stage cancer patients, hospice AIDS patients, etc. That gets away from the emotion and treats the alternate route administration drug as a drug.
Then, if the results are as expected- patients get relief from nausea, you publicize the outcomes broadly, expose the inevitable blue-haired Priscilla Goodbody opponents for the anti-science bluenoses they are, and move to the next stage, inhalation.
In the end, if you are right about the drug, you have the true clinical data to support a compassionate use application for Schedule II prescription in two different alternate administration forms. But MJ should be usable like any other drug, and controlled- by DEA prescription reporting, if appropriate, like any other abusable drug to prevent the wrong people from getting it or overdoing it. And I say that as a conservative evangelical who doesn't even like wine, myself (I wish I did- red wine has very real health benefits).
Of course, if the real agenda is to make it easy for spaced out refugees from Haight-Ashbury 1968 to grow their own stuff, that strategy wouldn't be terribly helpful in the short run.
(I cross-posted this at my own diatribe corner, mnkurmudge.blogspot.com)
There is an interesting documentary about marijuana that I stumbled across when surfing the channels. It is called "In Pot we Trust" you can find it on google video (make sure you have safesearch off). It has a ton of marijuana info both on the legal level and on the medical level.
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