Medical Marijuana: A Note Of Caution

[Michael Komorn]

 

 

Dr. Lester Grinspoon is associate professor emeritus of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School and the author of Marihuana Reconsidered (Harvard University Press, 1971) and Marijuana: The Forbidden Medicine (with James B. Bakalar, Yale University Press, 1993). This op-ed is a response to an article that appeared in the January 2010 issue of HIGH TIMES, “Rick Simpson’s Hemp-Oil Medicine,” written by Steve Hager, HIGH TIMES creative director.

 

 

Like everyone else who has been working over decades to ensure that marijuana, with all that it has to offer, is allowed to take its proper place in our lives, I have been heartened by the rapidly growing pace at which it is gaining understanding as a safe and versatile medicine. In addition to the relief it offers to so many patients with a large array of symptoms and syndromes (almost invariably at less cost, both in toxicity and money, than the conventional drugs it replaces), it is providing those patients, their caregivers, and the people who are close to them an opportunity to see for themselves how useful and unthreatening its use is. It has been a long and difficult sell, but I think it is now generally believed (except by the United States government) that herbal marijuana as a medicine is here to stay.

 

The evidence which underpins this status as a medicine is, unlike that of almost all other modern medicines, anecdotal. Ever since the mid-1960s, new medicines have been officially approved through large, carefully controlled double-blind studies, the same path that marijuana might have followed had it not been placed in Schedule 1 of the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which has made it impossible to do the kind of studies demanded for approval by the Food and Drug Administration. Anecdotal evidence commands much less attention than it once did, yet it is the source of much of our knowledge of synthetic medicines as well as plant derivatives. Controlled experiments were not needed to recognize the therapeutic potential of chloral hydrate, barbiturates, aspirin, curare, insulin or penicillin. And there are many more recent examples of the value of anecdotal evidence. It was in this way that the use of propranolol for angina and hypertension, of diazepam for status epilepticus (a state of continuous seizure activity), and of imipramine for childhood enuresis (bed-wetting) was discovered, although these drugs were originally approved by regulators for other purposes.

 

http://hightimes.com/legal/ht_admin/6013

[solabeirtan]

Very thoughtfull article from a foremost authority on our favorite subject, he knows what he speaks. Read his 'Mj-reconsidered'. He is a scientist and very objective with the analysis. Cant say anything bad about either one of them, him or RS. The salt of the earth, both. I would be a good case study, I can assure you, as I'm sure LS would too, MMj definetly plays a role in the process. My experience proves that it is extremely therapeutic and beneficial with the healing part of the process. Another interrelated and essential part of the overall recovery process.

Edited March 16, 2013 by solabeirtan