AspieRogue wrote:
FYI: Not only is the *law* you mentioned based on a bad idea, it's implementation is far, FAR worse than the idea itself!
We have two separate issues here, so I'm going to split them.
As for the law--bad execution of the law does not necessarily mean that the law, itself, is invalid. The fact that government has spent untold millions on the enforcement of marijuana legislation does not mean that the legislation is, in itself, bad or misguided. That being said, I would be foolish to suppose that the countless millions were not wasteful, and indicative that that the law has reached a fundamental disconnect with the people to whom it applies.
So, I don't disagree with you--but for different reasons, perhaps.
Quote:
As far as the the medications that you mention that are alternatives to medical cannabis, many of them have side effects which range from unpleasant to potentially lethal. Drugs that are derived from naturally occurring compounds, particularly when there is a mixture of compounds being absorbed, tend to be not only more effective but have very unintentional and problematic side effects than synthetic compounds. Cannabis has certain anti-carcinogenic effects and it WAaaaaaaaaaaY less toxic than most chemotherapy drugs.
Here I am far less sanguine. You have drawn some pretty broad generalizations. While you have used the usual conditional language ("tend," "most," "many") but the broad assertions are still problematic.
All drugs--including marijuana, have side effects. There is no drug that I am aware of that achieves its therapeutic effect and has no other effect on the human body. Now, some side effects are beneficial and some are harmful. Some have severe impacts, some have trivial impacts. And perhaps most importantly, no two patients will respond in exactly the same way to the same drugs. So to suggest that cannabis is preferred to other medications is, I think, to move dangerously close to pronouncing on matters that are best left to a patient and the patient's physician to decide.
As for Cannabis' anti-carcinogenic effects, let's not overstate the case. A few of the active ingredients (particularly delta-9 THC) have demonstrated some ability at retarding tumor growth. It has never been demonstrated, however, to reverse tumor growth. There is some medical literature that suggests that it might ret*d metastasis--but this is not conclusive. Cannabis doesn't kill cancer--but it probably slows it down. That really only makes it an effective drug for palliative cases where the tumor is going to be allowed to run its course, or post-operative/post-radiation/post-chemo cases where the intention is to mitigate recurrence or growth in metastases.
But as a treatment for active malignancies, it's seems to be a poor choice.
Furthermore, marijuana is an immunosuppressive. The two main sites where cannabinoid receptors are found in the body are on neurons and on leukocytes. Now if you are already immune compromised (whether from chemo, radiation therapy, HIV or any other cause) then the last thing you want is to have the T-cells that you have left firing on less than all cylinders. Marijuana is a really, really bad idea for people with dodgy immune systems.
But at the end of the day, this is a conversation for a patient to have with a doctor. We can speculate all we like, but we're not the two people making the decision in any specific case.
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--James