Perhaps all cannabis should be made legal. I've always thought (and experienced)that it causes less social problems than alcohol. Anyone care to discuss?

If that's the only reason to support Kerry, sound as this one small concept might be, the damage the man would do about everything else would far outweigh that small benefit, to the extreme endangerment of ALL our collective well-being.

Maybe it causes less social problems than alcohol because it's illegal.

Just a thought.

Maybe but the facts are that T.H.C. is much less addictive and much less damaging to the body than ethanol. And from personal experience I've never found cannabis to make anyone aggresive. Alcohol however.......lets just say I'm from Ireland and I know waht I'm talking about.

Okay, what exactly is the benefit from medicianal marijuana? Is it the pain relief? Does it need to be smoked? Ingested? Is it just the THC?

If there is a benefit that can't be replicated in any other way, then I would probably back medicianal marijuana. But it seems unlikely that someone can't extract whatever benefit there is and market it as a legal alternative.

IMO, this is just another way for 'potheads' to circumvent the system.

Just read your schizophrenia post and wanted to share something here. I personally know two individuals who are bi-polar and schizophrenic. One is a family member and one was a family-member-by-marriage. Neither individual ever exhibited behavior that would led an individual to suspect that there were any mental problems.

Since no one had a reason to suspect that either person had any problems, both indviduals did not see a mental health professional until after it became clear that such problems existed. Both disorders became apparent in the individual's late teens after the teens had adopted the reefer lifestyle.

It is definitely a coincidence, but I've wondered for years now if it isn't something more. My personal theory is that both individuals were pre-disposed to develop thier problems, but the mind-influencing effect of marijuana greatly accelerated the problem.

Anyone have any thoughts about this?

The benefits of medical marijuana are different depending on what you have. For those of us with degenerative conditions it helps with the pain. (Specifically I have a cornea which is literally falling apart, cannabis helps cataract and eye sufferers.) With cancer sufferers it helps mediate the body so they aren't made sick from chemo and the like. In my experience, and that of other eye sufferers I have spoken to, the cannabis makes the eye better and also relaxes you. Inotherwords the pain goes away and you stop worrying about it as well. This allows one to continue operating normally. (Trust me you never want to experience the pain of cornea disintergrating. Think ice pick into eye socket. Of course, if my cornea ever tears this will be nothing on it.)

Of course, I believe that cannabis should be legalised. I am not even semi-regular user of the stuff. It is a nonsense to think that the only people keen on either medical cannabis or its full legalisation are stoners. There is a principle involved here...its called the right to self-medicate.

Keeping cannabis from patients in pain is inhumane, vicious and heartless. Surely a natural solution is better than a man-made one?

In my opinion, you are a heartless cretin.

If one bothered to read the linked article, one would know that the New England Journal of Medicine and several other respected medical authorities recommend cannabis' legalization for specific medicinal purposes, precisely because for some conditions there are no better alternatives.

The biggest benefit is to chemotherapy patients. The second biggest is to certain AIDS patients. There are a few other minor conditions.

Of course, anyone who's ever stepped into any decent cancer hospice learns to ignore that certain smell, because it's so common. It needs to be; many of these people cannot eat without it, and die that much sooner as a result.

I am sorry you have such a low opinion of me Andrew. I would hope that many others would have an opinion that I am a compassionate person.

I am certainly not trying to hurt feelings, but am trying to gain an understanding of the arguement. Throwing names around would only alienate someone like me further.

I did use marijuana recreationally as a teen, but decided that the cons outweighed the pros to continue using it. Therefore, I am only looking for answers that would help me come to an understanding of what exactly the benefits of medicinal marijuana is.

Fersboo,

If you used marijuana as a teen then you are probably at little familiar with "the munchies".

My dad died of Cancer a couple years ago. It was a horrific thing to watch. The pain was horrible and the oxycontin didn't do much to help. Besides pain he basically starved to death because he couldn't eat. He couldn't stand the sight or smell of food. It took 5 months for him to succumb.

When he was diagnosed he weighed 220lbs. 5 months later when he died he weighed 136lbs. Marijuana might have helped him eat a little more and made him just a little more comfy.

There are some conditions (aggresive chemotherapy is one) in which the nausea is so severe that the stomach cannot hold an oral anti-emetic down long enough for it to take effect. For such patients the very fact that marijuana can be effective when smoked makes it the obvious choice.

I myself have found it to be without peer for the treatment of Work Related Stress Disorder, but I would be hard-pressed to claim medical need given my ability to function during Lent and other periods of abstention.

Are there any other medicines that are taken by inhaling the smoke? That sounds like something from the middle ages, right next to the leeches.
The drugs my wife takes are measured in dosages down to the milligram. What kind of dosage control would medical marijuana have?

If MM was handled like any other drug you buy at Walgreen's, you'd buy it in pills or liquid form, or maybe a patch.
Now ask yourself: Would MM proponents still be proponents if the MM came as a patch?

Ne neither.

BTW, the Chicago Tribune isn't a good paper anymore. Used to be 10-15 years ago. They turned a corner when Dubya got elected. They started running Molly Ivans and the oped page begame a Bush hate orgy.

Has there been an actual study showing that what helps has to be taken by smoking? That it does not work, or only fractionally as well, orally or intravenously?

If there's actual proof that smoking it is the best, most effective way to help people with cancer, etc., then it needs to be prescribed the same way as any other medication, at the least.

Since I have not only been officially named a heartless cretin, but also a knuckle-dragger by Andrew at Dodgeblogium, it wouldn't hurt to share the following.

Can Marijuana Help?
No. The pain-relieving effects of marijuana are not consistent. Marijuana has been reported to reduce anxiety or control nausea so that the person in pain feels better. But some cancer patients have reported that smoking marijuana increased their pain. At this time, marijuana is not legally available.
Sources: Managing Cancer Pain, Agency for Health Care Policy and Research, AHCPR Publication No. 94-0595, Questions and Answers about Pain Control -- A Guide for People with Cancer and Their Families published by the American Cancer Society and the National Cancer Institute
http://www.cancer.umn.edu/page/patients/pain6.html

Dean,

I question whether this is a "good" reason. Advocating things like medical use of pot & SSM don't strike me as making him worth voting against, as it might some. But I yawn at both topics: they are distractions. Neither effects very many people at a time when we face issues that do.

Now, if he supported decriminalizing drugs, that would be a different story. But basing a vote on medical use of pot is like buying a car because it has a full size spare.

Fersboo,

Can Marijuana Help?
No. The pain-relieving effects of marijuana are not consistent. Marijuana has been reported to reduce anxiety or control nausea so that the person in pain feels better. But some cancer patients have reported that smoking marijuana increased their pain. At this time, marijuana is not legally available.

You can't just say no and make it a fact. It helps many and it doesn't help some. So, those that are given relief should be screwed because there are people that it doesn't help?

There are a lot of drugs on the market that don't help everyone. Darvocet makes me really sick and it doesn't help when I have pain. So should we get rid of it? Should I make a blanket statement like you did?

Many Cancer patients can't eat. Marijuana helps them with nausea and helps patients eat.

So you can't just say is doesn't help because you found a study. A study that clearly says it helps with nausea and appetite. A study that said "some patients" aren't helped.

I'm not suggesting that you are a knuckle dragger but you are painting your arguement with an overly broad brush.

There isn't a single drug on the market that you can't make the exact same argument with...

Rosemary --

Read about you and the teeth. If you're having surgery, make sure you point out to your doctor that Darvaset makes you sick and doesn't work. THEN point out to him those are the obvious symptoms of a general morphine allergy (which also includes Vicadin) and the unobvious symptoms can be elevated blood-pressure (elevated enough to kill you). I'd hate to see you dead just because you live in Michigan where they won't let you have a real drug like Percaset :) Just a thought.

Darvocet and Vicodin are slightly different.

I can take Morphine and Vicodin but not Darvocet.
Dean is allergic to Vicodin and Morphine makes him itch. He can take Darvocet. So there is something that is just a little different between them.

So not to worry. The only thing that sucks is that I have to wait until the 19th to see the damn dentist.

I also have a pretty low blood pressure. 95/65 on average.

There are some problematic factors with referring to "medical" marijuana. As a smoking method, results are inconsistent since the "joint" has not had pharmaceutical control as to dosage and one stash of marijuana I'm told can be less effective than others. Without offering an opinion on its medical use, I do think, if "medical" marijuana becomes officially recognized, it ought be in standardized dosage
formulae; something a little more consistent than sig: smoke one joint as needed. And that means mostly likely non-smoking delivery. Right now it really is voodoo medicine.

Fred: "Are there any other medicines that are taken by inhaling the smoke? That sounds like something from the middle ages, right next to the leeches."

It's funny that you should mention leeches. They are using them more and more to decrease blood congestion in surgically replanted appendages such as fingers. Middle Ages?!

I have yet to hear anyone provide a coherent explanation of what a joint can do medically that THC taken in other forms, such as Marinol, cannot. THC is THC is THC. Smoking a joint may be a lot more fun than taking Marinol, but is it really more therapeutic? If so, why?

I never really bought into the "weed is righteous medicine, dude" argument advanced by "medical" marijuana activists who pushed Prop 215 in 1996. I voted for the initiative anyway, because I favor legalization of marijuana across the board. I will say this, however: whatever purpose the government is trying to accomplish by keeping weed away from kids with their whole lives ahead of them, it seems rather pointless to apply the same policy to one who is dying. At that stage, who cares if he becomes a junkie?

"Are there any other medicines that are taken by inhaling the smoke."

Yes, nasal inhalers for asthma. The inhaler
method is the faster method of delivery
for the medication. The difference with the nasal inhaler is there is a "controlled" dose. This is not so with a joint. A joint has peer pressure acceptance and may be more fun as someone has mentioned.

Personally, if a politican says he is in favor of medical marijuana in its present forms of delivery by joint, I would view that with great skepticism and promptly declare it voter pandering.

A couple of shots of brandy each day kept my most beautiful grandmother Ruby going here on Gods green land for nearly 84 years. I think it was the loss of her millions in the stock market and never finding her true love that did her in tho'! And her dear friend Blue is still here and she is 86 and she has Gin soaked raisins, I do mean, Gin soaked Woah is me, every day! Blue out lived her husky ole' honary husband.

Yes, the liquor can be very bad and so can the merry marijuana. But dear readers if you are seriously ill with the likes of cancer or lupus or aids and the diseases that bring about horrific pain and pain pills have brought about liver damage or about to with a serious increase in the enzymes count or liver panels and with that the side effects of nausea that spins you in a never ending journey aboard a ship going on a cruise going nowhere but your four enclosed walls inside your hospital room or your bedroom, then you sir or mam have no room to judge nor should you be voting on this until you go and talk to a patient suffering.

Marijuana is being tested and it is being administered in different forms and medical doctors, good and very decent doctors with compassionate hearts. Doctors Are behind dispensing marijuana... Carefully Monitoring it as Any Controlled Drug they have to or they would lose their liscense. They have to look at all the facts, the x-rays, the blood lipids, the liver enzymes. The liver is one the tell tell signs. If that is toxic from the chemo, the Methotrexate and many many other horrific other medicines that reak havoc on the liver and the entire digestive system, then the doctor Will Write a prescription FOR Marijuana. Then you ask, what about the lungs? The amount inhaled is not the same as a cigarette and you do not inhale it like a cigarette, and I am not a doctor, so refer to your doctor in the only ten states where it is legal.

A reason to vote for Kerry? Well, take a moment out of your own personal life and think about someone in your family that is seriously ill with a disease, maybe not cancer...maybe a rhumatoid disease that is crippling them and their live is drastically changing and with that disease comes horrible pain and nausea and those pills are destroying their liver and pancreas...

Now decide if you want to close the door to Medical use of Marijuana. Really think about this before you pass judgement or God Bless and may it not happen to you or you need to get the assistance yourself.

fred wrote:
“The drugs my wife takes are measured in dosages down to the milligram. What kind of dosage control would medical marijuana have?”

fred, your wife could probably overdose, perhaps fatally, with her drugs. That’s not possible smoking marijuana.

Fersboo wrote:
“Can Marijuana Help?
No. The pain-relieving effects of marijuana are not consistent. Marijuana has been reported to reduce anxiety or control nausea so that the person in pain feels better. But some cancer patients have reported that smoking marijuana increased their pain. At this time, marijuana is not legally available.”

Fersboo, pain and nausea are subjective experiences. If you feel your pain diminished, then it is. MM users, by significant majorities, report: 1) relief of pain, 2) reduced nausea, 3) improved appetite and 4) better results from smoking cannabis than taking the synthesized active ingredient, THC.

Mark wrote:
“If there's actual proof that smoking it is the best, most effective way to help people with cancer, etc., then it needs to be prescribed the same way as any other medication, at the least.”

Mark, there’s no need, you can grow it in your own back yard (one reason there’s little political support, there's little money to be made) and take as much as you need to feel better.

Cardeblu wrote:
“It's funny that you should mention leeches. They are using them more and more to decrease blood congestion in surgically replanted appendages such as fingers. Middle Ages?!”

For “surgically” removing gangrenous tissue as well.

Inhalation delivers many drugs more quickly to the bloodstream than eating. It kind of makes sense - oxygen is absorbed from breathing more or less directly into the bloodstream almost immediately on the "trunk" arteries, so anything that can "follow" the oxygen will be delivered to the brain almost immediately. Nutrients from food, and thus swallowed pills, absorb much more slowly, in a slightly more remote part of the circulatory system. Injections are more remote but reach the blood quicker. So lungs are faster than injections, which are in turn faster than swallowed drugs. (In general)

This is part of why cocaine is "snorted" - eating it would be almost irrelevant as a high inducer by comparison. Injecting is the preferred method, because dosage can be best controlled that way. I'd guess that THC would be the same. Unfortunately, not everyone can always be in position to deliver a safe injection. Smoking, on the other hand, can be done anywhere there is an outdoors to smoke in.

Obviously "dosage" is a problem now. It is a problem for any illegal drug. With legalization we could control doses, even smoked, much more precisely - "fingerprinted" cannibis leaves, similar to what is done with herbal remedies where the level of "active" ingredients is tested and standardized. Consistent manufacture. Monitored studies to determine all those fun details in your prescription drugs' descriptions. (side effects, overdose dosages, recommended dosage based on weight or gender, etc.) Training to let users learn consistent smoking techniques. The problems with cannibis as a drug come more from its legal status than anything inherent to the THC.

i have severe asthma. i inhale flovent -- and it has an immediate affect on my lungs, just as l-buteryl does for emergency situations.

tobacco has an immediate impact on the user and those who inhale its smoke -- nicotine 'soothes' out blood vessels -- when you're nervous or upset, blood vessels can rapidly constrict and expand -- causing additional issues. it also mellows folks out. it has other effects too -- tobacco --just like wood -- has alot of toxins and carcinogens in it. frankly, while i have severe reactions to both forms of smoke, i would rather deal with the smoke from a tiny cigarette than burning trash, burning wood in someone's fireplace or wood stove -- any day of the week. as wood smoke (see www.burningissues.org) is far more lethal.

marijuana has an immediate impact on cancer patients -- as well as others -- and since i've been treating people with hypnosis for the last 10-12 years,many of them cancer patients, i've noticed those who use MJ happen to do a great deal better. i don't know the science behind it. but my father died from brain and bone cancers which metasticized and quite frankly, he could probably have used alot of this and had a better quality of life.

... however. cannibis sativa has alot of other side effects too. it has a negative impact on both short and long term memory. and as a woody herb, it carries many of the same toxins and carcinogens that tobacco and wood do.

and from my time in law, i remember children who died -- 2 of them drownding in a bathtub -- because their parents were too stoned on marijuana to care properly for their children. others died more horrific deaths. preventable.

it doesn't matter what you use to clog or mellow out your brain, if you're too self absorbed and unable to respond, bad things which you can't reverse can and do occur. so it makes sense to use anything which can alter the mind with common sense and only in situations where bad things can't happen.

The issues with what form THC is delivered in are fairly complex. You see, there are over 20 THC analogs in natural marijuana, and a similar number of structurally related compounds, the CBD's (sp?)

That is a gawd awful complex number of permutations of molecules, and different strains and growing conditions produce different proportions of each.

The effects of each of them have yet to be widely studied, so it is not known which analogs provide which precise benefits. Changing it's status to being legal will allow the research required to be able to formulate targeted, pharmaceutical grade preparations, measured to the milimeter.

This is also why Marinol, which is just straight THC, is not very effective, as that analog only has some relatively minor proportion of the medically positive effects desired. It's effectiveness for nausea, eye pressure control and similar is markedly less than smoking good dope.

Anorexia (but NOT bulemia!) is another condition greatly helped by it. My wife is a fairly nervous borderline anorexic with an awful appetite without it; with it she is an A student.

A very good friend of mine is an artist who has had fairly advanced chronic glaucoma who was advised many years ago by his doctor that, were he to stop smoking it, he would very shortly go completely blind. The amount of pressure exerted in his eye by the glaucoma is greater than the pressure reduction afforded by the best non-marijuana alternative the pharma's have on offer.

And I have seen friends and relatives die of cancer both with and without marijuana to help out with the nasty effects, and regardless of which optiates were involved, those also smoking pot were in MUCH better shape, without exception.

And being a bisexual male, I've met plenty of people suffering from AIDS along the way, and marijuana has made an infinite difference for the better to those who used it.

So whether we got it from God or evolution, I don't really give a rat's ass, it is one of the most medically valuable plants on Earth.

Anyone who claims otherwise is not directly, personally familiar with the facts on the ground.

I don't think people should even be arrested for smoking weed. The only thing that I think should happen is what happens when you get drunk. If some guy on weed is acting weird (like thinks stuff is funny that isn't and is bothering people or gets really paranoid and starts freaking out). But jailing people for having it and having dumb commercials that have ridiculous crap like people getting stoned, having sex and the girl gets pregnant or a driver runs over a kid while stoned is a little much. I've never heard of a stoned driver killing someone (alcohol is responsible for thousands) and more people have sex after getting drunk than they do after getting high. That's why I don't see how weed can be illegal, and I didn't even get into talking about the damage tobacco, another legal substance, causes.

What I meant about getting drunk was when it happens in public and the person is a disturbance in case that was not clear.

What the individual uniquely identified as "Kerry Sucks" is calling for is nothing more than fine tuning of the "public intoxication" ordinance. Sounds okay to me.