New study: Marijuana useful for treating pain

dlorde said:
.... cannabis tended to result in slower, more cautious driving..
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That rings a bell :)

"Whoa babe, there's a traffic light up there. I'd better, like, slow down."

"It's half a mile away, and if you drive any slower we'll be going backwards"
 
geni said:
Well yes I admit a pro legalisation bais. I find some of the attempts at legalisation by the back door to be problematical.

The industial hemp approach for example results in people running around overstateing the advantages of hemp as a crop. This kind of misinformation spreading to be a worring mirror of the tactics used by the anti recreational drugs loby. It's particularly irritating in the UK where industrial hemp can and is legaly grown (although france grows far more).

The medical one though is has the potential to have far more serious consequences. It encorages people to spread false information about medical benifits (which unquestionably exist. arsenic has medical benifits) which risks in people abandoning more effective treatment.

The medical one is also mildly insulting. Are you seriosly suggesting that we can't isolate the active ingredients and thus provide far better dosage control?

So argue for the legalisation of recreational cannabis (heh even the victorians mostly viewed it as harmless) but please do so dirrectly.
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You know, I have to agree with this. I don't smoke pot at all, (don't even know where to get it! :) ) and I agree it should be legal. However, getting pot legal through medical means seems counter productive to me.

I really don't see why people who are pro-legalization just come out and be honest and say what has been said here: you can't overdose on pot, it's safer than alcohol, etc, and have it treated exactly like alcohol is regulated.

Seems far more honest to me and far easier for the government to tax it.
 
JFrankA said:
You know, I have to agree with this. I don't smoke pot at all, (don't even know where to get it! :) ) and I agree it should be legal. However, getting pot legal through medical means seems counter productive to me.

I really don't see why people who are pro-legalization just come out and be honest and say what has been said here: you can't overdose on pot, it's safer than alcohol, etc, and have it treated exactly like alcohol is regulated.

Seems far more honest to me and far easier for the government to tax it.
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I don't disagree but you have to admit that legalization got nowhere until they started trying to backdoor it. It's the wedge strategy ;)
 
NewtonTrino said:
I don't disagree but you have to admit that legalization got nowhere until they started trying to backdoor it. It's the wedge strategy ;)
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I do understand that strategy, :) but I didn't realize it's already been tried through the "front door". It saddens me to know that because there's so much believed misinformation about pot, it can only get legal if it's "wedged" in.
 
Think about the amount of time that the government has been hammering us with propoganda about pot. They literally have school programs to indoctrinate children in it's evils. Of course it's going to be hard for a politician to get behind legalization!

IMHO this is only going to happen through initiatives initially (at least in the US).
 
luchog said:
Nope. So far there is not one country where cannabis is fully legal, although there are several where it is decriminalized or the laws aren't sufficiently enforced. Most of these, however, are developing or Third World nations like Afghanistan. The only place it's even remotely close to legal is The Netherlands; and even there it is still technically illegal, there is simply a government policy of non-enforcement of possession (although trafficking can still be prosecuted).
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Weird, could have sworn there were studies being done in western European countries on cannabis.
 
luchog said:
Nope. So far there is not one country where cannabis is fully legal, although there are several where it is decriminalized or the laws aren't sufficiently enforced. Most of these, however, are developing or Third World nations like Afghanistan. The only place it's even remotely close to legal is The Netherlands; and even there it is still technically illegal, there is simply a government policy of non-enforcement of possession (although trafficking can still be prosecuted).
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Although a number of countries have now decriminalised illegal drugs, of the European nations, I think Portugal is the most useful example - see Drugs in Portugal: Did Decriminalization Work?
 
luchog said:
Nope. So far there is not one country where cannabis is fully legal, although there are several where it is decriminalized or the laws aren't sufficiently enforced. Most of these, however, are developing or Third World nations like Afghanistan. The only place it's even remotely close to legal is The Netherlands; and even there it is still technically illegal, there is simply a government policy of non-enforcement of possession (although trafficking can still be prosecuted).
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It is decriminalized in several Australian states, or at least it was when I lived there 10 years ago. Although not legal, my experience of living in Perth in the 90s was that police rarely bothered to issue fines for personal possession, as long as no problems were being caused.
I had several friends who used to smoke it regularly at the local pub and grow it as a pot plant (no pun intended) in their front windows without problems. My friend's landlady, who was in her 50s and a staunch Catholic, used to bake marijuana cakes for the church fete and was famous for the amount she raised.
 
Barsdamian said:
On a personal level, there are a couple of activities in my life where being high definitely improves my performance, so I'm willing to allow that driving while high may not be as bad as it seems. I'd like to see some evidence either way.
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In the past, I used to play some first person shooter (FPS) video games. Sometimes I played the games sober. Sometimes I played the games high. Sometimes I played the games drunk. Now, yes, I know we're talking about driving right now, and I know there's a big difference between playing a video game and driving a car, but honestly, the video game is far more demanding of reaction time and hand eye coordination. Anyway, I always recorded the games, and I would keep a log of my mental condition. Months later, I would randomly watch the games to see if I could tell the difference between my ability to play the game while sober, high or drunk.

Generally, it was pretty obvious when I was drunk. My aim was terrible. I would occasionally run into walls. My reflexes were slow. It wasn't good. The difference between my play while high and sober, however, was not quite so obvious. In fact, in some cases, some of my most spectacular shooting would occur while I was high. Otherwise, there was little difference in performance and reaction. But there was one major key indicator: I'd often forget for which team I was playing. And that wasn't good. Killing your own team is generally not good. I'd also often forget where I was, which would lead to me being easily caught off guard and killed.

From this very limited, non-scientific experience, I would expect that driving while high ought be quite different than driving while drunk. Indeed, my reaction times were always fine. I didn't have difficulties controlling my character. I does not appear to me that getting high should affect the physical ability to drive. This is a big difference between getting high, and getting drunk. I would expect, however, significant increased hazard from failings of short term memory. This would be bad. I'm sure that these hazards depend on the level of intoxication, which is something that I didn't really record, so I can't speculate on whether any safe limit exists.

Mostly, I wanted to write this response because I really enjoyed getting high and playing first person shooter video games. I rarely get to do this anymore. But I do think that the experience is relevant to this discussion, and I do think that it adds a bit of qualitative evidence. I think the "common sense" approach is the best route until data can suggest otherwise. I think it's certainly possible that increased hazards may not arise until some limit of intoxication is exceeded, but that doesn't mean I think we should allow stoned folk to drive vehicles. We need data, and until we have data, we need to bet safely. But, I do think it's just as important that we not automatically assume that stoned driving is just like drunk driving.

All that being said, if I were to bet, I'd bet that stoned driving is never safe. Period. Even if just a little stoned. The increased risk of short term memory failure cannot be a good thing while operating a vehicle.

ETA: I posted this post prior to reading the entire thread. I read the rest of this thread, and some have posted data that indicate decreased driving skills while high. Interesting stuff.
 
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geni said:
Depends how it performs against other drugs. For example there are real benefits to medical Heroin. Doesn't mean it is lightly prescribed.
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So you would agree that if it preforms as well or better than other drugs it should be prescribed? I say as well because not all drugs work for all people.
 
luchog said:
Nope.
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"Influence of the N-1 alkyl chain length of cannabimimetic indoles upon CB1 and CB2 receptor binding"

Name of a paper. Cannabis may not be legal to study, but the folks that wrote that paper got the THC compound to work with from the National Institute on Drug Abuse. :P
 
I can't drive stoned. I've tried a few times, and I get so cautious that I'm paranoid that I'm driving so slow, that I'll get rear-ended. Plus, I tend to watch the rear-view mirror too much.

Still, marijuana is quite useful for getting stoned. A certain % of humans have an urge to alter their state, and they will do it, one way or the other. Pot is about the most benign avenue thus far. The medical issue is beside the point.

The worst part of the equation, imho, is the way that it stays in the system and causes failed drug tests. Lots of factory workers eschew it for worse substitutes that don't show up in a piss test.
 
geni said:
The medical one is also mildly insulting. Are you seriosly suggesting that we can't isolate the active ingredients and thus provide far better dosage control?
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This is already done. I've given thousands of doses of marijuana extract in my career. The trade name is Marinol, and it's available by prescription, usually for control of nausea and discomfort in nasty end stage cancers. It's a gel cap filled with hash oil, basically. I used to work at an oncology ward where we kept them in the fridge to make absolutely sure none of that volatile goodness evaporated.

By the way, this shows the lie inherent in medical marijuana legalization. It's been available for a long time, just not in a formulation designed to hit you all at once (inhaled vapors hit almost as fast as IV injections), and the faster it hits, the more it'll produce a high, and the faster it'll be gone. Cancer patients who wanted to use the natural weed ate it in brownies. Gives a nice slow onset, and a long duration, which is what you need if you're ACTUALLY in pain, and not trying to get high.

A
 
NewtonTrino said:
I have no idea why but the ingested high and the smoked high (and the vape high) are all different. If someone could make you a pill that work make you "smoking high" I would be impressed.
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It's actually very easy to do. My father in law was known to do so for his chemotherapy patients. It's just a matter of processing the cannabis at the right temperature to produce the desired components. Vaporizing is a much lower temperature process than burning. This releases more THC, and less of the other components like CBD and CBG which both alter the effect of THC, and induce effects of their own (CBD on it's own is currently being investigated as an anti-depressant and anti-spasmodic).
 
Andrew Wiggin said:
This is already done. I've given thousands of doses of marijuana extract in my career. The trade name is Marinol, and it's available by prescription, usually for control of nausea and discomfort in nasty end stage cancers. It's a gel cap filled with hash oil, basically. I used to work at an oncology ward where we kept them in the fridge to make absolutely sure none of that volatile goodness evaporated.

By the way, this shows the lie inherent in medical marijuana legalization. It's been available for a long time, just not in a formulation designed to hit you all at once (inhaled vapors hit almost as fast as IV injections), and the faster it hits, the more it'll produce a high, and the faster it'll be gone. Cancer patients who wanted to use the natural weed ate it in brownies. Gives a nice slow onset, and a long duration, which is what you need if you're ACTUALLY in pain, and not trying to get high.

A
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Who cares if people want to get high? I don't really understand where you get your moral indignation here.

Also why is it up to you to condemn patients as lying when they say that they get relief from smoked by not eaten mj? Maybe they need to be high to get the effect they are looking for? Smoking vs eating both get you high, one is just more easily controllable and frankly more effective than the other.

I find your black and white attitude here to be pretty disturbing actually. Are you mad because medical marijuana is being used a back door to legalization? Why would someone be against legalization to begin with?

Hey I have an idea, let's throw people in jail for getting high. What a genius idea.
 
NewtonTrino said:
Who cares if people want to get high? I don't really understand where you get your moral indignation here.

Also why is it up to you to condemn patients as lying when they say that they get relief from smoked by not eaten mj? Maybe they need to be high to get the effect they are looking for? Smoking vs eating both get you high, one is just more easily controllable and frankly more effective than the other.

I find your black and white attitude here to be pretty disturbing actually. Are you mad because medical marijuana is being used a back door to legalization? Why would someone be against legalization to begin with?

Hey I have an idea, let's throw people in jail for getting high. What a genius idea.
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Boy are you reading a lot into what I wrote that isn't there. I like the crude straw man at the end.

A
 
Barsdamian said:
The biggest is money. There is trillions of dollars worth of the economy tied up in cannabis prohibition. So many organizations benefit it can be hard to keep track. Here's just a few of the major benefactors...

-Law enforcemnent from the DEA to local cops and everything in between. 700,000 marijuana related arrests annually in the US.
-Private prison industry and prison guards. 1 in 32 US adults is in the justice system with the 'war on drugs' being a major contributor.
-Drug treatment industry. Drug courts send thousands to 'treatment' programs even though cannabis arguably has a lower potential for addiction than caffeine.
-Alcohol and beer makers. Many view medical cannabis as a stepping stone to out and out legalization and the alcohol industry put a fair amount of money behind keeping cannabis restricted.
The list goes on and on and on.
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I'm pretty "meh" about legalizing marijuana. I don't really care either way.

However, your first point here is just complete bull. You imply that law enforcement wants to keep marijuana illegal to keep themselves funded? I doubt there is a single officer that wouldn't prefer to focus on more serious crime than busting pot heads.

I would say the same of your second reason except that you said "private". So, yes, I can see a small interest there, but I'm willing to wager that business would still be brisk.

The last point I have never heard before. Alcohol is legal in 99% of the US, so I don't understand the concern. Regulated, yes. Illegal, no.

Those arguments seem a bit paranoid and conspiratorial. Maybe you (or the original author) should cut back on the weed. ;)
 
One Eyed Jack said:
Because the question at hand is the use of marijuana to relieve pain, not get high.
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Possibly the same thing?

Some pain can be relieved by altering the mental state; especially with obsessive/compulsive personalities.
Some pain is psychological.

Imagine the pain of an old person dying, even if there was no physical pain.
Said person deserves a chance at the distraction and comfort that might be possible with a joint and an old favorite record.

It is certainly easy enough, in that situation, to legally obtain all manner of other drugs of dubious purpose.
 
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