Big Pharma Brands Afraid of Social Media due to Loss of Control & Threat of Class-Action Law Suits

November 14, 2009 – It’s no surprise that pharma brands have been reluctant to enter the social media sphere. Indeed, it’s been repeated over and over at this week’s Food and Drug Administration hearing on pharma marketing online.

Pharma marketers are intimidated by social media for several reasons: lack of control over brand messages, fear of violating the FDA’s cloudy regulations, and the threat of class-action lawsuits brought as a result of consumers using social tools to report adverse drug effects.

These marketers are struggling to determine how to monitor social media — in part to report adverse effects of their drugs and products as required by the FDA. However, their hesitance to acknowledge social conversations by monitoring them, creating Twitter accounts, or responding to consumer comments in forums, also is hampering their desire to buy online advertising and other online marketing services.

That’s led an array of online media firms, ad agencies, and marketing services firms to Washington, DC, in the past two days to participate in a discussion hosted by the FDA intended to assist the agency in crafting clear rules for this highly-regulated advertiser sector.

“Most pharma and medical device companies are unwilling to advertise” in social media sites alongside user generated content, said Christopher Schroeder, CEO of health site HealthCentral.

According to the Interactive Advertising Bureau and PricewaterhouseCoopers, pharma and healthcare advertisers spent the smallest amount on Web ads in 2007 and 2008 compared to other advertiser verticals, accounting for 4 percent of online ad revenues in both years. In contrast, pharmaceutical marketers represented the second largest ad vertical across all media based on ad expenditures in 2007 and 2008, according to Nielsen. Automotive is the largest.

In addition to simply running ads adjacent to online conversations, pharma marketers also worry about the time and effort it takes to monitor user generated media to watch for mentions of their brand names and reports of negative side effects of their drugs. They also question how often they’ll need to revisit Web sites where they’ve spotted relevant postings.

In 2008, Nielsen’s BuzzMetrics measured 500 randomly selected healthcare messages online. According to hearing speaker Melissa Davies, research director, healthcare, at Nielsen’s Online division, only four messages — less than 1 percent — mentioned an adverse event. Clearly it’s in Nielsen’s best interest to promote its BuzzMetrics social media monitoring service, along with its finding that pharma brands don’t have a lot to worry about if they do start monitoring social media.

Google and Yahoo stopped by the hearing yesterday. Both firms suggested that search ads for pharmaceutical products have become less transparent since the FDA sent warning letters to 14 pharma companies in April accusing them of failure to include drug risk information in online ads. Many advertisers, as a result, have been running sponsored search listings with generic messages that do not mention drug brands by name. Google reported lower click-through rates on pharma ads since the FDA letters were sent.

It’s clear media and marketing services firms are pushing for the FDA to establish clear guidance on how pharma brands should handle online advertising and social media because they expect to benefit from more pharma dollars moving online. Now, as expressed by many hearing speakers, it’s up to the FDA to move quickly to develop regulations that are relevant to the evolving technologies and cultures of the Internet.
Source. By Kate Kaye.

 

The Ultimate Herbal Remedy: Can Cannabis Improve Autism?

November 5, 2009 – The debate over its risks has split political and scientific opinion. But American mother Marie Myung-Ok Lee says cannabis isn’t only safe enough for her autistic son – it’s dramatically improved his condition.

My son, J, has autism. He’s also had two serious operations for a spinal cord tumour and has an inflammatory bowel condition, all of which may be causing him pain, if he could tell us. He can say words, but many of them – “duck in the water, duck in the water”, for instance – don’t convey what he means. For a time, anti-inflammatory medication seemed to control his pain. But in the last year, it stopped working. He began to bite and to smack the glasses off my face. If you were in that much pain, you’d probably want to hit someone, too.

J’s school called my husband and me in for a meeting about J’s tantrums, which were affecting his ability to learn. The teachers were wearing Tae Kwon Do arm pads to protect themselves against his biting. Their solution was to hand us a list of child psychiatrists. As autistic children can’t exactly do talk therapy, this meant using sedating, antipsychotic drugs like Risperdal.

Last year, Risperdal was prescribed for more than 389,000 children in the US – 240,000 of them under the age of 12 – for bipolar disorder, ADHD, autism and other disorders. Yet the drug has never been tested for long-term safety in children and carries a severe warning of side-effects. From 2000 to 2004, Risperdal, or one of five other popular drugs also classified as “atypical antipsychotics”, was the “primary suspect” in 45 paediatric deaths, according to a review of US Food and Drug Administration (FDA) data by USA Today. When I canvassed parents of autistic children who take Risperdal, I didn’t hear a single story of an improvement that seemed worth the risks. A 2002 study on the use of Risperdal for autism, in The New England Journal of Medicine, showed moderate improvements in “autistic irritation” – but the study followed only 49 children over eight weeks, which limits the inferences that can be drawn from it.

We met with J’s doctor, who’d read the studies and agreed: No Risperdal or its kin. The school called us in again. What were we going to do, they asked. As an occasional health writer and blogger, I was intrigued when a homeopath suggested medical marijuana. Cannabis has long-documented effects as an analgesic and an anxiety modulator. Best of all, it is safe. The homeopath referred me to a publication by the Autism Research Institute describing cases of reduced aggression, with no permanent side- effects. Rats given 40 times the psychoactive level merely fall sleep. Dr Lester Grinspoon, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School who has been researching cannabis for 40 years, says he has yet to encounter a case of marijuana causing a death, even from lung cancer.

A prescription drug called Marinol, which contains a synthetic cannabinoid, seemed mainstream enough to bring up with J’s doctor. I cannot say that with a few little pills everything turned around. But after about a week of fiddling with the dosage, J began garnering a few glowing school reports: “J was a pleasure have in speech class,” instead of “J had 300 aggressions today.”

But J tends to build tolerance to synthetics, and in a few months we could see the aggressive behaviour coming back. One night, I went to the meeting of a medical marijuana patient advocacy group on the campus of the college where I teach. The patients told me that Marinol couldn’t compare to marijuana, the plant, which has at least 60 cannabinoids to Marinol’s one.

***

Rhode Island, where we live, is one of 13 states where the use of medical marijuana is legal. But I was resistant. My late father was an anaesthesiologist, and compared with the precise drugs he worked with, I know he would think marijuana to be ridiculously imprecise and unscientific. I looked at my son’s tie-dye socks (his avowed favourite). At his school, I was already the weirdo mom who packed lunches with organic kale and kimchi and wouldn’t let him eat any “fun” foods with artificial dyes. Now, I’d be the mom who shunned the standard operating procedure and gave her kid pot instead.

I thought back to when J was 18 months old. We were vacationing on the Cape, and, although he just had the slightest hitch in his gait, I was sure there was something wrong. His paediatrician laughed. I called back repeatedly until a different doctor agreed to see us. J was taken in for emergency surgery, to remove a tumour that was on the verge of inflicting irreparable damage. Sometimes, you just have to go with your gut.

And yet, I still hesitated. The Marinol had been disorienting enough – no protocol to follow, just trying varying numbers of pills and hoping for the best. Now we were dealing with an illegal drug, one for which few evidence-based scientific studies existed, precisely because it is an illegal drug. But when I sent J’s doctor the physician’s form that is mandatory for medical marijuana licensing, it came back signed. We underwent a background check with the Rhode Island Bureau of Criminal Identification, and J became the state’s youngest licensee.

Having a licence, however, is different from having access to marijuana. While California has a network of “compassion centres,” basically pharmacy-like storefronts that provide quality product from registered growers, Rhode Island’s Republican governor has consistently vetoed that idea, despite the local stories of frail patients being mugged in downtown Providence as they go in search of pot. We weren’t about to purchase street marijuana, which could be contaminated with other drugs, so we looked into growing the pot ourselves. But by law, medical marijuana must be grown indoors, and it requires a separate room with a complex system of hydroponics, fans and precise lighting schedules. (This made me wonder how much THC, the main psychoactive substance found in cannabis, was actually in the spindly plants the high school goofballs I knew grew in their closets).

The coordinator of our patient group introduced us to a licensed grower. A recent horticulture school graduate, he’d figured out how to cultivate marijuana using a custom organic soil mix. His e-mail signature even quoted Rudolf Steiner. The grower arrived at our house with a knapsack containing jars of herbs. We opened the jars to sniff the different strains of “bud” – Blueberry, which did smell fleetingly of wild blueberries, and Sour Diesel, which had a rich, winey scent. The grower had also cured some leaves for tea, and he brought a glycerine tincture, a marijuana distillate in olive oil (yes, organic), cookies (ditto), and a strange machine that looked, fittingly, like a lava lamp. Basically an almost-bong, this vaporiser heated the cannabis without producing carcinogenic smoke.

For most adults, the vaporiser is the delivery method of choice, as it allows the patient to feel the effects immediately and adjust the dose precisely. J gamely put his mouth on the valve and let us squeeze a little smoke into him. It shot right back out of his nose. He looked like Puff the Magic Dragon. The grower left us with a month’s worth of marijuana tea, glycerine, and olive oil – and a cookie recipe. No buds. We paid $80 (£50).

We made the cookies with the marijuana olive oil, starting J off with half a small cookie, eaten after dinner. J normally goes to bed around 7.30pm; by 6.30 he declared he was tired and conked out. We checked on him hourly. As we anxiously peeked in, half-expecting some red-eyed ogre from Reefer Madness to come leaping out at us, we saw instead that he was sleeping peacefully. Usually, his sleep is shallow and restless. J also woke up happy.

But in a few days, J decided he didn’t like the cookie anymore and smashed it with his fist. We brewed him the tea, which smelled funky and grassy. He slurped it down, but it didn’t seem to do much. Many of the psychoactive compounds in marijuana are fat soluble, so I added a dropperful of the oil that we used in the cookies. That made him sleepy-looking but still aggressive. It became clear that when J ingested pot orally, it took two hours to see the results, and by then there wasn’t much we could do to dial the dose up or down. The grower visited us again to give J another try at the bong, but with little success.

Perhaps J needed a little time to get off the Marinol. After two weeks, we noticed a slight but consistent lessening of aggression. And he wasn’t nervously chewing holes in his shirts.

***

A month or so into the treatment, it was still too early to know if we could find a dose and mode of delivery that would give us consistent results. Even if J could learn to use the vaporiser, it costs $600 and would leave the house reeking of pot. And we didn’t want to get too dependent, because of the inherent limitations. Though we’d love to calm J with pot so that he can visit his grandmother in Minnesota, bringing a controlled substance on the plane isn’t the best idea.

But since we started him on his “special tea,” J’s little face, which is sometimes a mask of pain, has softened. He’s smiled more. For most of the last year, his individual education plan at his special-needs school was full of blanks, recording “no progress” because he spent his whole day an irritated, frustrated mess. But soon after starting on the tea, his reports began to show real progress, including “two community outings with the absence of aggressions”.

My husband and I are both academics and writers (me, novelist and essayist; he, historian), given to close observation and note taking. It was these habits that finally helped us see our son’s allergic sensitivity to certain foods and seek advice from a gastroenterologist for his behaviours – aggression and chronic diarrhoea – instead of the recommended psychiatrist. (Gut pain and digestive problems, coined as “autistic entercolitis”, are now considered a common biological affliction of many autistic children).

At first we weren’t sure if we were seeing results from the cannabis, but after about three months, which included weekly consultations with our grower as we experimented with different strains, we observed a much happier and outgoing child – who did not act or appear “stoned” in any way. Four months in, J came home from school and I noticed something different. Pre-pot, J ate the collars of his shirts, teasing his clothes apart and swallowing the threads. There’s a name for this disorder – pica (pregnant women sometimes chew on chalk). It got so bad he ate his pyjamas and we had to start dressing him in organic cotton shirts. Then one day he came home from school wearing a whole shirt.

J’s school reports improved too. At one parent meeting, his teacher produced the latest “aggression” chart, showing attempts or instances of hitting, kicking biting or pinching other people. For a year he had scored an average of 30 to 50 aggressions a day, with a high of 300. The latest data showed days, sometimes consecutive, with zero aggressions. And on the school bus, J has transformed from a child who has hit the driver in the face and bitten people into a sparkly eyed boy who says hi and quietly takes his seat.

***

There’s a twist to this happy story, though. The aggression has eased but J’s autism has become more distinct. His vocal outbursts – screams, barks, yips of happiness – still happen and while our home is no longer full of thrown food, broken dishes and scratched faces, we still see people in the local area react to a family that remains different – and not always to their liking. There’s a father on the next street who stops playing ball with his son when we approach. A mother won’t make eye contact and ignored a party invitation. Most people responded well to J but sometimes we feel we’re being shunned.

Marijuana isn’t a miracle cure for autism. But in our son’s case it eases his pain and inflammation so dramatically that he can participate in life and learning again. It also protects him from the sometimes dangerous side-effects of pharmaceutical drugs. We have settled on a good strain (White Russian, a favourite pain-reliever for end-stage cancer patients) and a good dose. And now he’s not in pain, J can go to school instead of a children’s psychiatric hospital, where all too many of his peers end up as a result of violent behaviour.

When I think of the embarrassment I may feel if my colleagues see this article, or teachers or parents at J’s school, or his less open-minded doctors, I pause. Although I occasionally smoked pot as a teenager (believe me, in northern Minnesota, there was not much else to do), now that I’m a law-abiding adult, all the scary anti-drug messages are flashing in my brain. But when I researched cannabis the way I did conventional drugs, it seemed clear that marijuana wouldn’t harm J, and might help. It’s strange that the virtues of such a useful and harmless botanical have been so clouded by stigma. Even the limited studies that have been done suggest marijuana’s potential as an adjunctive therapy for cancer. Marijuana, you need some re-branding. Maybe a cool new name.

One of the biggest tests for J through this journey was a visit from Grandma. The last time she came, over Christmas, J hit her during a tantrum. This time, we gave him his tea, mixing it with goji berries to mask any odour, although it occurs to me that my mother, a Korean immigrant, probably doesn’t even know what pot smells like (it actually smells a lot like ssuk, a Korean medicinal herb). She remarked that J seemed calmer. As we were preparing for a trip to the park, J disappeared, and we wondered if he was going to throw one of his tantrums. Instead, he returned with Grandma’s shoes, laying them in front of her, even carefully adjusting them so that they were parallel and easy to step into. He looked into her face, and smiled.

What are the downsides to this experiment?

By Jeremy Laurance, Health Editor

The first reaction of most parents to Marie Myung-Ok Lee’s story is likely to be one of surprise, shock, even horror. What is she doing turning her nine-year-old son into a pot-head? Has she not heard of the dangers of cannabis smoking to the mental health of adolescents, never mind the disorienting effects of an intoxicating substance on one so young?

Possibly this will be their second and third reactions, too. Ms Myung-Ok Lee was giving her son, J, cannabis to relieve pain (from his spinal tumour and inflamed gut), not just to treat his autism. Even so, the stigma that surrounds illegal drugs is so deeply entrenched, just because they are illegal, that many people are simply not prepared to weigh up their benefits and harms.

We have seen in the row this week over the sacking of the UK Government’s chief drugs adviser, Professor David Nutt, how the debate over drugs is driven more by fear, emotion and political calculation than by scientific evidence. The Labour Government, facing possible annihilation at the next election, is anxious to be seen to be tough on drugs – so the outspoken Professor Nutt had to go.

As an academic, Ms Myung-Ok Lee is perhaps better placed than many to resist the voices of unreason and take a cool look at the evidence. Cannabis, as she points out, is already prescribed as a pain killer, as an anti-nausea agent for cancer sufferers and as a treatment for multiple sclerosis. In all these areas it has been shown to be effective, though there is debate about just how effective. In the UK, it is available as Sativex, a spray taken under the tongue, which contains a cannabis extract. More than 1,200 patients in the UK have received it for relief of symptoms associated with multiple sclerosis. It is not, however, prescribed to nine-year-olds (or anyone under 18).

Ms Myung-Ok Lee started her son on medicinal cannabis, and then went a step further by giving him the herbal kind, as a tincture or baked in a cookie. This, too, is not without precedent – among adults. There have been frequent reports of patients smoking cannabis and gaining relief from pain or the spasticity associated with multiple sclerosis, and in the UK when they have been prosecuted for possession of a controlled drug, the courts have shown leniency.

But in trying herbal cannabis on her son, Ms Myung-Ok Lee and her doctor have stepped beyond even the anecdotal evidence, into the unknown. J became Rhode Island’s youngest ever patient licensed to use marijuana for medical reasons.

She acknowledges it is an experiment, but she reasons that as cannabis has low toxicity and is safer than most other drugs, the risks are low. Any parent, confronted with a screaming, suffering child who is so distressed that he smashes things, hits people and tears at his clothing with his teeth, must feel sympathy for her. In that situation, which of us would not try anything to ease our child’s pain? Moreover, the experiment appears to have worked – at least for the first few months.

The difficult questions are: will the effect last? Will there be a downside to using the drug in one so young? Is the effect real? The last question is the trickiest. Children grow and change and those with autism are no different from the rest. The changes his parents have noticed in J might have happened anyway, as part of his natural development. The cannabis could turn out to be a coincidental factor, with zero impact on his condition. It was coincidence that led to the scare over MMR and autism – because the first symptoms of the condition typically occur around 14 months which is the age at which babies receive their first MMR jab.

It would be a disaster if cannabis came to be seen as a panacea for children in the same situation, on the basis of this anecdotal report. As always in science, we need more evidence.

 

Local Research, Testimonies Document The Medicinal Properties of Cannabis

October 6, 2009 – Montana – Deni Llovet, a family nurse practitioner, organized River City Family Health’s first medical marijuana clinic after a patient with chronic back pain committed suicide.

“Two and a half years ago, I had a client who was really suffering,” Llovet said. “We had tried everything and finally I said, ‘You know, I hear that marijuana could help.’” When the patient asked if it was legal, Llovet said no. She did not know about the state’s exemption.

“She bought cannabis from her 27-year-old son and it worked wonders,” Llovet said. “But her family did not approve, so she killed herself because her pain was so great.

“I should have known it was legal. That’s when I realized that I was missing the beat.”

Nearly 700 medical studies of cannabis and its derivatives are published each year that confirm their useful medical properties, said Tom Daubert, who led the campaign to establish the Montana law and later founded the patient support group Patients and Families United.

In 2002, adjunct University of Montana professor and local neurologist Dr. Ethan Russo researched the long-term effects, positive and negative, of smoking marijuana as a medical treatment.

Russo’s team, which included a UM grad student, evaluated four remaining members of the FDA’s Compassionate Investigational New Drug program. Though the program no longer accepts new patients, the remaining four are provided with four to eight ounces of government-grown, cured marijuana each week as treatment for serious illnesses such as glaucoma and multiple sclerosis.

“The Missoula Study,” as it was nicknamed, concluded the medical use of marijuana relieved pain, muscle spasms and intra-eye pressure. The researchers recommended that the program be reopened or that states develop laws to accommodate patients in serious need.

“While some 13 American states allow medicinal use of cannabis for
 certain conditions, it remains illegal under federal law,” Russo said. “One possible
 solution to this situation would be FDA approval of a cannabis-based 
medicine so that it could be prescribed. Because of the side effects of smoking and variability in herbal
 cannabis without standardization, it is extremely unlikely that it could
 attain FDA approval.”

Most recent research delves into the relationship of phytocannabinoids found in marijuana plants, such as THC, and endocannabinoids, their counterparts produced in the human body. When a medical marijuana patient takes a dose, most of the phytocannabinoids engage with cells of the nervous system in conjunction with the endocannabinoids already present to produce a variety of effects, including pain relief.

Russo continued to research and synthesize these cannabinoids as senior medical adviser for GW Pharmaceuticals to help develop a cannabis-based oral spray. The product, called Sativex, is approved in Canada to treat cancer pain and multiple sclerosis.

But until it is approved in the U.S. or the cost of similar cannabis-derivatives decreases, physicians such as Llovet say they will continue to recommend the leafier medical counterpart.

Llovet said she prefers to recommend marijuana over opiate painkillers because it does not have the side effects, physical addictions or overdoses commonly seen among patients prescribed morphine or Oxycontin, for example.

“If you wanted to kill yourself with cannabis, you would have to smother yourself under bales of it,” Llovet said. “Overdose is easy with prescription pain killers.” Using medical marijuana or its pharmaceutical derivatives in conjunction with other painkillers can provide superior relief and reduce the risk of developing a tolerance to opiate prescriptions, Russo said.

Sitting at Food For Thought, Llovet was wrapped up in her excitement. Her coffee grew cold as she talked about the clinics where she works with others to identify the best treatments, sometimes including medical marijuana.

Contrary to what she expected, Llovet said the clinics don’t see recreational users looking for a loophole.

“We see the little old ladies, the old man living out in the woods and once we went out to a car to help a quadriplegic. We are seeing people who haven’t seen a health care practitioner in 30 years,” Llovet said. “We really are providing a public service. Our job is to make sure they really do qualify, and we want to give them suggestions on how to improve their health, whether that includes medical marijuana or not.”

At River City Family Health, visiting the clinic costs $200 for the patient, who must also register for an appointment and submit medical records in advance, though qualifying individuals without records are also allowed to attend.

When a prospective patient arrives at the clinic, a nurse gives him a physical before passing the chart to Llovet, who speaks with each individual for at least 15 minutes about his medical history and suggests all possible treatments. The person and chart then move to the final stage for a consultation with Dr. Michael Geci, who may sign a physician’s recommendation for medical marijuana if he believes the patient legally qualifies and the treatment seems appropriate.

After receiving a physician’s recommendation, the person applies for a patient registry card with the state Department of Public Health and Human Services and can designate one person as a caregiver. Each patient is allowed to grow six plants for their medicine and possess one ounce of usable marijuana, and if they name a caregiver, that person can tend six plants and hold one ounce for each patient they assist.

“We are not affiliated with caregivers,” Llovet said. “We do recommend you enter into a relationship with a caregiver you trust.”

Daubert said many people designate a spouse or close friend as a caregiver, but often it is difficult initially because most people do not have experience growing cannabis.

“These are the only patients in the world growing their own medicine,” Daubert said. “Contrary to what a lot of people think, growing medical marijuana is not so simple. It takes months to grow a plant.”

In February, Daubert led a group of patients, caregivers, and activists to the state capitol, where they sought to improve the law’s functionality through Senate Bill No. 326, which died in a House committee after passing Senate.

“The House legislature was evenly divided (between parties) and a lot of bills couldn’t make it out of committee,” Daubert said. “It’s some part political fluke and partly because it was brand new information to many of the representatives. We got more support than I’d expected, however.”

The bill, created by Daubert and other PFU associates, sought to expand the law’s list of qualifying illnesses, allowing patients to obtain medicine from any registered caregiver, establish inventory audits under certain conditions, increase the amount of medical marijuana a patient and caregiver can possess and alter the definition of a mature plant to make it easier for patients to maintain a steady flow of medicine.

“We’ve likened our law to being allowed to have six tomato plants, but only one tomato and needing one in the fridge tomorrow to guarantee your medicine,” Daubert said. “Let me see you grow the plants and follow that rule. That’s what we are asking them to do.”

And for people who choose not to grow themselves, or who need larger amounts for relief, they rely on their caregivers to provide consistently as they, too, abide by the tomato rule.

Sometimes, an even flow of medicine cannot be maintained for other reasons.

Daubert said there is one con artist who travels the state persuading people to fund a large grow operation that he promises will yield large profits, then walks off with the money. He’s also heard complaints about caregivers who charge exorbitant prices or don’t deliver the medicine to patients as promised.

Because the law does not include provisions for punishing negligent caregivers or reasonable oversight that would limit the opportunities of con artists, one anonymous Missoula cardholder said many patients like himself are left without a legal source of medicine and no guarantee of justice.

“There are a lot of people taking advantage of new patients,” he said. “There is no database of reliable caregivers.” Source.

 

Medical marijuana: Just what the doctor ordered for North Carolina?

July 5, 2009 – 10:52 PM – Prescription painkillers made her retch. Muscle relaxants ravaged her liver. So Jean Marlowe put down her pills and rolled a joint.

“I tried marijuana, and in five minutes, my stomach stopped shaking for the first time in five years,” said Marlowe, who has used marijuana as medicine since a doctor recommended the drug in 1990. “It really does work.”

The founder and executive director of the North Carolina Cannabis Patients’ Network, Marlowe is asking state lawmakers to pass a bill legalizing medical marijuana use. The bill is currently in the House of Representatives’ Health Committee, and two of Gaston County’s three House delegates who serve on the committee have indicated they would likely vote against it.

House Bill 1380, the N.C. Medical Marijuana Act, would allow patients access to medical-grade cannabis with a signed statement from a physician. Growers and dispensaries would be licensed and regulated by the state Department of Health and Human Services.

“All of these people who have been kindly, caringly, lovingly sticking their necks out to grow a little bit of high-quality medication for patients could actually come forward and get a license and be legal,” Marlowe said.

North Carolina would become the 15th state to legalize medical marijuana and would see estimated annual tax revenues of $60 million within four years of the bill’s passage.

No local support

Reps. Wil Neumann and Pearl Burris Floyd said the U.S. Food and Drug Administration would have to approve marijuana for medical use before they would consider writing an exception into the state’s cannabis ban.

“The FDA needs to make the determination of whether it has medical benefits or not,” Neumann said. “I would not favor it until the FDA comes out and wants it properly cultivated and harvested for medicinal properties.”

Marijuana faces a political minefield in the fight for federal recognition. The FDA discounted its potential medical application in a 2006 review, contradicting a 1999 study from the National Academy of Sciences’ Institute of Medicine that found it “moderately well suited” for treating certain conditions.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration calls marijuana the nation’s most abused illicit drug and classifies it as a Schedule I controlled substance, indicating “no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States.”

Floyd challenges those who support medical marijuana to seek FDA approval.

“It would be nearly impossible to regulate an illegal recreational drug even with a good doctor’s prescription,” she said in an e-mail. “If it is such a great idea and an untapped source of revenue, then it would meet the rigors of the FDA approval process.”

Rep. William A. Current said he is “skeptical” of medical marijuana but has not studied the issue enough to have an informed opinion.

“I just haven’t heard enough to reach any kind of decision on it, but from what I know, I would be hesitant to open this door unless we had really tight controls,” he said.

Current, a private-practice dentist, said he would rely more on medical and scientific evidence than personal feelings when deciding which way to vote.

“I think the medical community is going to have to step up on this issue and help make this decision,” he said. “People in political realms are not equipped to make these decisions without their guidance.”

Marijuana as medicine

Marijuana is “moderately well-suited for particular conditions” including nausea and vomiting from cancer patients’ chemotherapy and the rapid loss of body weight known as “wasting” in AIDS patients, according to the 1999 Institute of Medicine study, “Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base.”

Long lists of side effects accompany many prescription drugs, and overdosing can be fatal. Advocates say by comparison, cannabis offers a safe alternative to pharmaceuticals.

“There are no side effects that are harmful,” Marlowe said. “There has been over 5,000 years of documented medical use of cannabis, and not a single death has ever occurred.”

Marlowe said a user would have to smoke 1,500 pounds of marijuana in 15 minutes – a physical impossibility – to ingest a toxic dose.

“There is no such thing as a lethal dose,” she said.

Muscle relaxants can weaken patients by gnawing away at their muscle tissue, Marlowe said, but cannabis allows them to maintain their strength.

“Almost every one of the muscle relaxers helps with muscle spasms, but they also atrophy the muscle over a period of time,” she said. “One unique property of cannabis is it can stop smooth muscle spasms while maintaining the muscle mass.”

Marijuana increases users’ heart rates and may decrease blood pressure, according to a 2001 American Medical Association report. It can impair short-term memory, motor skills, reaction time and information processing skills. Chronic users can experience withdrawal symptoms, but doctors conclude that cannabis is less addictive than alcohol and tobacco products.

“Although some marijuana users develop dependence, they appear to be less likely to do so than users of alcohol and nicotine, and the abstinence syndrome is less severe,” the AMA states in Report Six of the Council on Scientific Affairs.

In the 2001 report, AMA doctors encouraged researchers to develop a smoke-free inhaled delivery system for delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the primary psychoactive substance in marijuana.

“Like tobacco, chronic marijuana smoking is associated with lung damage, increased symptoms of chronic bronchitis, and possibly increased risk of lung cancer,” the report states.

Marlowe refutes the belief that marijuana is a gateway drug that leads users to try more harmful substances. She points to members of the N.C. Cannabis Patients’ Network who were formerly prescribed heavy-duty painkillers.

“Not only have none of them gone to hard drugs, they’ve all come off of narcotics,” she said. “Marijuana is not a gateway drug. The most recognizable, easiest gateway drug that most people run into is tobacco.”

A continuing crusade

An institute in North Carolina’s Research Triangle Park processes and distributes medical marijuana to select participants in a nationwide federal study, according to the text of HB 1380. Meanwhile, the 386 patients of the N.C. Cannabis Patients’ Network cannot legally obtain the drug themselves.

“Our oldest patient is an 86-year-old World War II veteran who suffered nerve damage to his feet from the heavy packs he carried during the war,” Marlowe said. “Now he’s suffering, and he has to be considered a criminal.”

Marlowe, too, has been considered a criminal for her medical use of marijuana. The Mill Spring resident said she uses the drug to treat her numerous medical conditions, including muscular dystrophy, rheumatoid arthritis and degenerative disc disease.

She was arrested in 1998 when U.S. Customs agents intercepted a package of cannabis she ordered from a farm in Switzerland.

A judge sentenced her to six months on house arrest and two years of probation, but Marlowe was soon convicted of a probation violation because of her continued marijuana use.

She spent 10 months in a federal prison camp in West Virginia.

“It’s been a battle,” she said. “I’ve been doing this for 17 years.”

HB 1380′s future is uncertain. Health Committee members did not vote on the bill after a June 18 hearing, which included testimony from Marlowe and other NCCPN patients.

The bill’s primary sponsor, Rep. Earl Jones (D-Guilford), said he will seek a vote to move the bill out of committee without prejudice. The Health Committee would not vote on the bill’s merits, but majority approval would allow it to proceed to the House Finance Committee.

“It’s just one step closer to a full debate on the floor, and that’s what I really desire more than anything,” Jones said. “Every time the public hears more about this, many myths are dispelled, and we see an increase in support.”

Jones also filed a companion bill, HB 1383, which proposes a referendum on medical marijuana. The mechanism for licensing growers and dispensaries is identical to the one proposed in HB 1380.

“There are those who continue to feel some trepidation about it because it’s a political liability,” he said. “One option would be to allow the citizens of the state of North Carolina to vote on it.”

You can reach Corey Friedman at 704-869-1828.

MAKING INROADS

Since 1996, 14 states have passed laws allowing medical use of marijuana:

- Alaska
- California
- Colorado
- Hawaii
- Maine
- Maryland
- Michigan
- Montana
- Nevada
- New Mexico
- Oregon
- Rhode Island
- Vermont
- Washington

SOURCE: National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws

By Corey Friedman. Source.

 

Congress Introduces HR 2835, The Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act

Bill would reschedule marijuana for medical use, end federal interference in state laws

WASHINGTON – June 12 – In another effort to change federal policy on medical marijuana, Congressional Representative Barney Frank (D-MA) introduced the “Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act,” HR 2835, late yesterday. The bill, which was co-sponsored by 13 bipartisan Members of Congress at the time of introduction, would change federal policy on medical marijuana in a number of ways. Specifically, the Act would change marijuana from a Schedule I drug, classified as having no medical value, to a Schedule II drug, which would recognize marijuana’s medical efficacy and create a regulatory framework for the FDA to begin a drug approval process for marijuana. The act would also prevent interference by the federal government in any local or state run medical marijuana program.

Although similar versions of the Act have been introduced in previous Congressional terms, the Obama Administration’s willingness to change federal policy on medical marijuana creates a new political context and may facilitate passage of this important legislation. “We are encouraged by the federal government’s willingness to address this issue and to bring about a more sensible and humane policy on medical marijuana,” said Caren Woodson, Government Affairs Director with Americans for Safe Access (ASA), a nationwide advocacy group working with the Obama Administration, Representative Frank and other Members of Congress to change federal policy. “It’s time to recognize marijuana’s medical efficacy, and to develop a comprehensive plan that will provide access to medical marijuana and protection for the hundreds of thousands of sick Americans that benefit from its use.”

In addition to rescheduling marijuana under the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), HR 2835 would provide protection from the CSA and the federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FDCA) for qualified patients and caregivers in states that have legalized the use of medical marijuana. Specifically, the act prevents the CSA and FDCA from prohibiting or restricting: (1) a physician from prescribing or recommending marijuana for medical use, (2) an individual from obtaining, possessing, transporting within their state, manufacturing, or using marijuana in accordance with their state law, (3) an individual authorized under State law from obtaining, possessing, transporting within their state, or manufacturing marijuana on behalf of an authorized patient, or (4) an entity authorized under local or State law to distribute medical marijuana to authorized patients from obtaining, possessing, or distributing marijuana to such authorized patients.

The Obama Administration has made repeated statements that it intends to end federal enforcement against medical marijuana, but has yet to provide a detailed plan of implementation. A lack of clarity on this policy change has prompted Congress to take action. In addition to the introduction of Frank’s bill yesterday, Representative Maurice Hinchey (D-NY) introduced language Tuesday within the Commerce, Justice and Science Departments (CJS) Appropriations bill seeking clarification on the Administration’s policy. “It’s imperative that the federal government respect states’ rights and stay out of the way of patients with debilitating diseases such as cancer who are using medical marijuana in accordance with state law to alleviate their pain,” said Hinchey in a press release issued Tuesday.

Further information:
At the time of release the Medical Marijuana Patient Protection Act, HR 2835, was not yet published by the Government Printing Office (GPO), but contains identical language of Rep. Frank’s bill introduced last year (HR 5842): http://safeaccessnow.org/downloads/HR5842.pdf

HR 2835 can be reviewed at the following site once it’s published: http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c111:H.R.2835:

 

Mother of child patient says “Decriminalize marijuana in the US”

June 8th, 2009 – I’m on the phone getting a recipe for hashish butter. Not from my dealer but from Lester Grinspoon, a physician and emeritus professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School. And not for a party but for my 9-year-old son, who has autism, anxiety and digestive problems, all of which are helped by the analgesic and psychoactive properties of marijuana. I wouldn’t be giving it to my child if I didn’t think it was safe.

I came to marijuana while searching for a safer alternative to the powerful antipsychotic drugs, such as Risperdal, that are typically prescribed for children with autism and other behavioral disorders. There have been few studies on the long-term effects of these drugs on a growing child’s brain, and in particular autism, a disorder whose biochemical mechanisms are poorly understood. But there is much documentation of the risks, which has caused the Food and Drug Administration to require the highest-level “black box” warnings of possible side effects that include permanent Parkinson’s disease-like tremors, metabolic disorders and death. A panel of federal drug experts in 2008 urged physicians to use caution when prescribing these medicines to children, as they are the most susceptible to side effects.
We live in Rhode Island, one of more than a dozen states — including California — with medical marijuana laws. That makes giving our son cannabis for a medical condition legal. But we are limited in its use. We cannot take it on a plane on a visit to his grandmother in Minnesota.

Even though we are not breaking the law, I still wonder what my neighbors would think if they knew we were giving our son what most people only think of as an illegal “recreational” drug. Marijuana has always carried that illicit tang of danger — “reefer madness” and foreign drug cartels. But in 1988, Drug Enforcement Administration Judge Francis L. Young, after two years of hearings, deemed marijuana “one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. … In strict medical terms, marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume.”

Beyond helping people like my son, the reasons to legalize cannabis on a federal level are manifold. Anecdotal evidence from patients already attests to its pain-relieving properties, and the benefits in quelling chemotherapy-induced nausea and wasting syndrome are well documented. Future studies may find even more important medical uses.

Including marijuana in the war on drugs has only proved foolhardy — and costly. By keeping marijuana illegal and prices high, illicit drug money from the U.S. sustains the murderous narco-traffickers in Mexico and elsewhere. In fact, after seeing how proximity to marijuana growers affected the small Mexican village of Alamos, where my husband spent much of his childhood, I was adamant about never entering into that economy of violence.

Because Rhode Island has no California-like medical marijuana dispensaries, the patient must apply for a medical marijuana license and then find a way to procure the cannabis. We floundered on our own until we finally connected with a local horticultural school graduate who agreed to provide our son’s organic marijuana. But given the seedy underbelly of the illegal drug trade, combined with the current economic collapse, even our grower has to be mindful of not exposing himself to robbery.

Legalizing marijuana not only removes the incentives for this underground economy, it would allow for regulation and taxation of the product, just like cigarettes and alcohol. The potential for abuse is there, as it is with any substance, but toxicology studies have not even been able to establish a lethal dose at typical-use levels. In fact, in 1988, Young of the DEA further stated that “it is estimated that … a smoker would theoretically have to consume … nearly 1,500 pounds of marijuana within about 15 minutes to induce a lethal response.” Nor is it physically addicting, unlike your daily Starbucks, as anyone who has suffered from a caffeine withdrawal headache can attest.

Although it has been demonized for years, marijuana hasn’t been illegal in the U.S. for that long. The cannabis plant became criminalized on a federal level in 1937, largely because of the efforts of one man, Harry Anslinger, commissioner of the then newly formed Bureau of Narcotics, largely through sensationalistic stories of murder and mayhem conducted supposedly under the influence of cannabis. Cannabis was still listed in the U.S. Pharmacopeia, or USP, until 1941 as a household drug useful for treating headaches, depression, menstrual cramps and toothaches, and drug companies worked to develop a stronger strain.

In 1938, a skeptical Fiorello LaGuardia, mayor of New York, appointed a committee to conduct the first in-depth study of marijuana’s actual effects. It found that, despite the government’s fervent claims, marijuana did not cause insanity or act as a gateway drug. It also found no scientific reason for its criminalization. In 1972, President Nixon’s Shafer Commission similarly concluded that cannabis should be re-legalized.

Both recommendations were ignored, and since then billions of dollars have been spent enforcing the ban. Public policy analyst Jon Gettman, author of the 2007 report, “Lost Revenues and Other Costs of Marijuana Laws,” estimated marijuana-related annual costs of law enforcement at $10.7 billion.

I was heartened to hear California Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s recent call for the U.S. to at least look at other nations’ experiences with legalizing marijuana — and to open a debate. And given the real security threats the nation faces, U.S. Atty. Gen. Eric H. Holder Jr.’s announcement that the federal government would no longer conduct raids on legal medicinal marijuana dispensaries was a prudent move. Decriminalizing marijuana is the logical next step.

Marie Myung-Ok Lee teaches at Brown University and is working on a novel about medical malpractice. Source.

 

Marijuana: Taboo medicine

May 26, 2009

“It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance” -DEA Judge Francis Young

Many in this country are in an uproar over the recent arrest and prosecution, though delayed, of Charles C. Lynch, who provided patients with safe access to medical marijuana. They have every reason to be; in fact it is a pity that more media professionals are not alongside them in this outrage, rather than tarnishing a man’s reputation by calling him a “drug trafficker and money launderer”. Then again, politicians should also not be overturning the medical community’s discoveries about the medicinal benefits of marijuana simply to further their own agendas. Perhaps we should allow doctors and health professional’s reign over medicine, rather than leave it to political analysts, advisors and speech-writers.

However, this is not the first time that something like this has occurred. We need look no further than our own backyard to see examples of those who use medical marijuana to alleviate their pain being preyed upon by the state. Consider, for example, last year in Seattle, when the police seized the records of nearly 600 medical marijuana patients. The raid of the headquarters of a patient support group, where these records were located, occurred because a bicycle police officer claimed to have “smelled marijuana” coming from the building. There were no marijuana plants growing there, however the police seized 12 ounces of medical marijuana, along with patient files. Attorney Douglas Hiatt was quoted by the Seattle Times as reminding us of something the authorities really ought to know; “Those records are protected under federal privacy laws. If you’re a medical marijuana patient, you don’t want the police to know who you are or where you live, and this is why – because you don’t get treated very well.” Yet the state seemed to have no qualms in taking these protected private records. In their defense, marijuana was made illegal because it is a very dangerous drug, wasn’t it?

In order to understand why marijuana is illegal, one must go a little further back than last year. Back to a time before medical marijuana patients were being harassed, before doctors trying to help their patients were being arrested, before states voted to legalize marijuana in certain instances, before congress outlawed it at all, back to the 1930s. During this decade marijuana was still legal and unregulated, that was until a man by the name of William Randolph Hearst went before congress to testify about the “evils” of marijuana, stating that it made people insane and caused them to become cannibals. As most laypeople did not know what marijuana did and did not do, congress decided to air on the side of caution and make the plant illegal due to these ridiculous, yet effectively terrifying, claims.

Just who was William Randolph Hearst and why did he start this campaign of fear against cannabis? The answer is simple, and unfortunately not at all uncommon in politics, he was a man enlisting politicians to help him further his corporate agenda of greed. Hearst had a large financial stake in the timber industry. At the time, many paper manufacturers were thinking of switching from the use of timber for their products to something that was cheaper, easier to grow and better for the environment; hemp. Now, had this happened, Hearst and others in the timber industry stood to lose millions of dollars. So, in 1937, he used his influence and money, as well as the country’s ignorance about the properties of marijuana, in order to stop this from happening. It’s as simple as that, marijuana is illegal because one industry did not want to adhere to our free-market society, and preferred instead to perform an act of corporate sabotage.

As time went on, many doctors and scientists debunked Hearst’s crazy myths. They also found many benefits to the medicinal use of marijuana. Not only can it alleviate the ongoing pain of cancer patients and those suffering other ailments by treating their nausea and assisting them in holding down food, it has also been proven to stop the pressure glaucoma patients feel behind their eyes, slow the spreading of Alzheimer’s disease, and cure migraines. Marijuana having such value was by no means a recent discovery; in fact, doctors had been using it to help patients long before Hearst’s 1930s anti-cannabis campaign. As far back as 1860, doctors prescribed the drug for its antiseptic and analgesic effects to treat burns and aid in pain relief.

Let us put aside for a moment the fact that federal legalization of marijuana and other drugs would benefit the environment, by way of providing a cheap alternative to timber; benefit the economy, as the state could tax marijuana sales the same way they tax alcohol and tobacco sales and stop tax payer spending being put towards the millions incarcerated for drug charges and violent crimes which occur because use and possession of marijuana (and other barred substances) is illegal; decrease crime rates, not only because those who smoke marijuana will not be locked up, but also because criminal organizations and gangs would not exist without the money provided them by way of illegal drug sales. Forget the fact that countries which have decriminalized or legalized marijuana and other narcotics have seen a marked decrease in not only their crime rates, but also the usage of the drugs and the deaths and injuries related to that usage. Forget that by decriminalizing drugs the government and FDA can regulate them and properly advise people how to use them by detailing which combinations and doses will be lethal or dangerous. Forget the fact that our deadliest and most addictive drugs (alcohol and tobacco) are legal and fairly unregulated and still more destructive drugs (such as oxycontin and oxymorphone) are legal and prescribed. Forget also the fact that in a free society, one should at the very least have freedom over one’s own body and what one chooses to put into it, especially as drugs affect perception, and you should most certainly have freedom over your own mind and thoughts.

The bottom line is that marijuana is beneficial to patients who suffer from various ailments, including cancer, Alzheimer’s disease, glaucoma, tetanus, convulsions from rabies, epilepsy, depression, anxiety and bulimia to name but a few. Who are politicians to trump trained medical professionals in deciding whether or not medication, which has been proven effective, can be prescribed? Is an MD part of police academy training now, or for that matter part of political science class requirements? Politicians and courts should leave medical decisions to the medical community. They should not be punishing a California doctor for helping his patients, nor should they be bucking privacy laws in order to harass patients here. Washington, like California, allows for the recommendation by doctors of medical marijuana. Federally, it is still, for no particular reason other than a “tough on crime” façade employed by politicians in office, illegal. But this is America, at least pretend to allow voters the courtesy of having their vote count for something. In states, such as this one, where we have voted that medical professionals are allowed to recommend marijuana use, let patients take heed of those recommendations. Let our voices count for something and let doctor’s do their jobs. By Alexandra de Scheel
Source.

 

Medical Evidence on Marijuana Blows Both Ways

May 25th, 2009 – Legalization debate is waging in America once again, but what does the research say?

Sparked anew by Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger’s call for the state to study the legalization of marijuana, both sides in the smoldering pot debate point to research to bolster their positions.

Such recitation of conflicting marijuana studies can be manipulated and selected buffet-style to serve whatever political and health agenda is being touted.

Even governmental findings can be contradictory. In 1999, for instance, the Office of National Drug Control Policy asked the Institute of Medicine to review evidence. The institute found that, “except for the harms associated with smoking, the adverse effects of marijuana use are within the range of effects tolerated for other medications.”

Yet in 2006, the Food and Drug Administration ruled that marijuana has no health benefits and has known and proven harms. It is classified a Schedule 1 drug – the highest risk of addiction – in the Controlled Substances Act.

Wading through the medical literature, though, makes those conclusions less cut and dried.

“When I was a resident in Kaiser in San Francisco in 1978, I gave a lecture to physicians on marijuana, and I remember my conclusion at that time was that you can find in the literature whatever you were looking for,” says Dr. Donald Abrams, a University of California, San Francisco, oncologist and leading medical marijuana researcher. “‘Marijuana is good for asthma.”Marijuana’s bad for asthma.”Marijuana causes schizophrenia.”Marijuana (decreases) schizophrenia.’ And, the evidence is still like that.”

There are many factors, of course. As noted by UCLA pulmonologist Dr. Donald Tashkin, who has studied marijuana’s effects on the lungs for three decades, “That’s just the nature of medical science. You have to deal with variability. The population studied may be different or the methods used to study may differ.”

Yet when the arguments for legalization of marijuana, both for medicinal and recreational use, are put forth, solid medical science often gets clouded in an ideological haze.

“Although we like to say we separate politics from science, with medical marijuana, that’s really difficult,” Abrams says. “It depends on who does the study, where it’s published and their agenda.”

Bearing in mind those caveats, here is a look at the research on marijuana’s effect in areas critical to health.

Lungs

UCLA’s Tashkin studied heavy marijuana smokers to determine whether the use led to increased risk of lung cancer and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, or COPD. He hypothesized that there would be a definitive link between cancer and marijuana smoking, but the results proved otherwise.

“What we found instead was no association and even a suggestion of some protective effect,” says Tashkin, whose research was the largest case-control study ever conducted. The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health.

Tobacco smokers in the study had as much as a 21-fold increase in lung cancer risk. Cigarette smokers, too, developed COPD more often in the study, and researchers found that marijuana did not impair lung function.

Tashkin, supported by other research, concluded that the active ingredient tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, has an “anti-tumoral effect” in which “cells die earlier before they age enough to develop mutations that might lead to lung cancer.”

However, the smoke from marijuana did swell the airways and lead to a greater risk of chronic bronchitis.

“Early on, when our research appeared as if there would be a negative impact on lung health, I was opposed to legalization because I thought it would lead to increased use and that would lead to increased health effects,” Tashkin says. “But at this point, I’d be in favor of legalization. I wouldn’t encourage anybody to smoke any substances. But I don’t think it should be stigmatized as an illegal substance. Tobacco smoking causes far more harm. And in terms of an intoxicant, alcohol causes far more harm.”

Cognitive function

A 2006 study in the journal Neurology found that speed of thinking, attention and verbal fluency were affected as much as 70 percent by long-term heavy use (four or more joints per week).

But a 2003 review of literature in the Journal of the International Neuropsychological Society found that marijuana smoking had a “small effect” on memory in longtime users.

However, users had no lasting effects in reaction time, attention or verbal function. “Surprisingly, we saw very little evidence of deleterious effects,” Dr. Igor Grant, researcher at the University of California, San Diego, School of Medicine, said in a statement.

A 2002 study in the Journal of the American Medical Association found that heavy users did worse on recall memory tests. A 2006 study in Greece showed users had slower mental-processing speed than the control group. Then again, a 2007 study at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland, published in Archives of Pediatrics & Adolescent Medicine, found that students who smoked marijuana had better grades than those who used only tobacco or those who did not smoke any substance.

In terms of brain development, a 2000 study in the Journal of Addictive Diseases found changes in brain structure in those who started using marijuana before age 17 but not in those who started at an older age. A 2009 Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia study used brain imaging to show that heavy adolescent users are more likely to have disrupted brain development in regions involving memory, attention, decision making and language. But a 2008 Ohio State University study found that marijuana can reduce brain inflammation and perhaps reduce memory impairment that could delay Alzheimer’s disease.

Psychosis

Yes, there is an increased risk in psychotic behavior and long-term risk of mental illness from marijuana use, according to a 2007 review of literature commissioned by Great Britain’s Department of Health and published in the Lancet.

But the risk is small, because the risk of developing psychosis in the general population is 3 percent over a lifetime and rises to 5 percent for marijuana users, lead researcher Stanley Zammit told the Los Angeles Times. “So 95 percent of the people are not going to get psychotic, even if they smoke on a daily basis,” he told the paper.

In 2005, New Zealand researchers studied a group of people with a gene variant the researchers believe predisposes that group to developing psychosis. Those in the group who smoked marijuana as teens had a tenfold increase in risk of psychosis than those who abstained.

Depression

A study published in 2001 in the American Journal of Psychiatry followed nearly 2,000 adults over 15 years. It found that marijuana users who had no symptoms of depression at the start were four times more likely than non-users of developing symptoms during that time frame.

In 2008, the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy stated that early marijuana use could increase the likelihood of mental illness by as much as 40 percent later in life.

However, researchers at McGill University in Montreal in 2007 reported in the Journal of Neuroscience that THC in low doses actually serves as an antidepressant similar to Prozac, producing serotonin. But at higher doses, they found it could lead ]to depression an\d psychotic episodes.

By Sam McManis Source.

 

A quiet victory for medical marijuana patients

May 20th, 2009 – Sen. Tom Coburn (R-Okla.) introduced legislation in the U.S. Senate today that sought to undermine the 13 state medical marijuana laws. Coburn’s legislation was defeated in committee (13-10) on a party-line vote.

Offered as an amendment to the Family Smoking and Tobacco Control Act, Coburn’s legislation would have placed state medical marijuana laws under the regulatory control of the FDA – not necessarily a bad thing on its own. But Coburn’s intentions become apparent when you realize that FDA approval requires specific, FDA-approved research into marijuana’s risks and benefits as a medicine, something the federal government has blocked for decades. Without the research, MPP feared that the FDA would shut down medical marijuana access nationwide.

The fact that medical marijuana opponents are going on the offensive (and failing) speaks volumes to the success we’ve had in recent months. The Supreme Court recently affirmed California’s medical marijuana law, and the new administration has stated a policy of non-interference with state medical marijuana laws – and both points were raised during the committee debate. Even Sen. Coburn conceded, “It is not an illegal product in 13 states.”

It is possible that Sen. Coburn will continue his attack on medical marijuana, but given the opposition he faced today, it’s unlikely he’ll succeed. Source.