Coverage by BBSNews

BBSNews - 2003-07-22 -- When assessing the merits of medical marijuana, society and often medical professionals themselves overlook one of the most important points in the debate. Arrest and incarceration. In addition to the symptoms from the condition the patient was trying to alleviate in the first place. There are ongoing debates about many other herbs that are widely available. St. Johns Wort (Hypericum perforatum) is gaining wide acceptance as an antidepressive. A quick search on Medline revealed 578 results about this valuable herbal medicine. Where's the difference? Can you spot it? Yes, exactly. No one is being arrested and having their property seized because they grew and used St. Johns Wort. The list of other plant medicines that are arrest free is nearly endless from Ginseng to Willow bark (aspirin).

One physician recently made such a comparison in the Los Angeles Times when purportedly trying to shed some light on the medical marijuana issue. Dr. Andrea Barthwell wrote "Every American is familiar with aspirin, and some know that it was first found in willow bark, from which the therapeutic agent acetylsalicylic acid was eventually synthesized. Surely no one today would chew willow bark, much less smoke a piece of tree, to cure a headache."

Dr. Barthwell like many others sidesteps the issue of arrest and incarceration. I am aware of no one in the United States who has been arrested for using Willow bark in any way shape or form for trying to get relief.

She goes on to dismissively mention the 1999 Institute of Medicine report writing "Marijuana advocates often cite the 1999 National Academy of Science's Institute of Medicine report as justifying the drug's medical use. But, in fact, the verdict of that report was "marijuana is not a modern medicine." The institute was particularly troubled by the notion that crude marijuana might be smoked by patients, which it termed "a harmful drug-delivery system."

Dr. Barthwells' rendered opinion about "the verdict" hardly makes it so. The report actually recommended that patients get whole marijuana immediately:

"Until a nonsmoked rapid-onset cannabinoid drug delivery system becomes available, we acknowledge that there is no clear alternative for people suffering from chronic conditions that might be relieved by smoking marijuana, such as pain or AIDS wasting. One possible approach is to treat patients as n-of-1 clinical trials, in which patients are fully informed of their status as experimental subjects using a harmful drug delivery system and in which their condition is closely monitored and documented under medical supervision, thereby increasing the knowledge base of the risks and benefits of marijuana use under such conditions. We recommend these n-of-1 clinical trials using the same oversight mechanism as that proposed in the above recommendations."

This report is so popular on the internet that one simply has to type in "iom report" into Google and it is the first result. I hope that most who read the entire report take away more than just parts that bolster their own personal biases. The most important conclusion of the report is that it validates the notion that marijuana is a medicine. Of course, I know of no one who believes that smoked marijuana is the best way to get therapeutic effects. Unfortunately, the climate enforced by articles such as Dr. Barthwells' decreases the chance of meaningful research because of an already reached conclusion. Seemingly that smoking marijuana is the same as smoking tobacco so it simply cannot be accepted.

Guess what? To my knowledge there are no men women or children in the United States who have had their property seized or are currently serving time behind bars for tobacco smoking. It is well accepted that there are between 100,000-430,000 deaths each year from tobacco related causes but there are none from marijuana.

When a physician falls back to "first do no harm" does the thought of handcuffing a severely ill woman to a bed after screaming obscenities at her to get up come to mind? Does the medical profession believe that terrorizing patients by gun-wielding federal agents is sound medical policy? Should this same policy be used against tobacco smokers? Recently "partially paralyzed from post-polio syndrome and wheelchair-bound" Suzanne Pfiel having been mentioned above tried to give a letter to the soon to be head of the DEA Karen Tandy. Tandy also suffers from missing the point about enforcing medicine at the point of a gun. She finally took the letter without saying anything. The story brought to mind images of British public servants prior to the American Revolution. Not deigning to even talk to the lowly wheel-chair bound law breaker.

And Tandy claimed to not even be aware of the Institute of Medicine report. Or the DEA's own former Senior Administrative Law Judge Francis Young's 1988 conclusion after a huge research effort that "marijuana is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." She is already making policy pronouncements based upon poor, false or non-existant intelligence.

We hear that marijuana is a public health hazard and this is the reason we must fight against it. Circular logic prevails, marijuana is harmful because it is illegal and it is illegal because it is harmful. Studies into it's medical effectiveness are thwarted at every turn. Do American physicians want some other help with their patients from the federal government? How about sunscreens? A quick call to the sunscreen hotline and the sunbather using baby oil will be carted off to prison for their own good. To prevent them from getting skin cancer and being a drain upon the Republican economy. Good diet? Exercise?

The Lancet, not once but twice opined that legal considerations about marijuana should be based upon some other construct besides harm to health, having found pretty much as every other piece of research designed to find harm from marijuana has found, "3 years ago, a Lancet editorial began, "The smoking of cannabis, even long term, is not harmful to health" (Nov 11, 1995); an assertion criticised by many readers as encouraging an indulgence that is illegal in many countries...

...We will qualify our opinion of 3 years ago and say that, on the medical evidence available, moderate indulgence in cannabis has little ill-effect on health, and that decisions to ban or to legalise cannabis should be based on other considerations." [Dangerous Habits: The Lancet Volume 352, Number 9140 14 November 1998].

Will any American physician please go on record with BBSNews in support of handcuffing and arresting seriously ill medical patients to stop them from using medical marijuana?

Or will they stop short of that and "first do no harm" kicks in?

Michael Hess is the Editor of BBSNews in Charlotte, NC. Write to the editor here. Not all submissions are published. Or visit the completely new BBSNews Blog and Forum on our front page - Please Participate in BBSNews!