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View Full Version : Yet ANOTHER study released showing Marijuana is "Valuable Medicine"...



Hardrock69
03-05-2007, 01:55 AM
Marijuana - The Wonder Drug
Lester Grinspoon
The Boston Globe
3-3-7

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts -- A new study in the journal Neurology is being hailed as unassailable proof that marijuana is a valuable medicine. It is a sad commentary on the state of modern medicine that we still need "proof" of something that medicine has known for 5,000 years.

The study, from the University of California at San Francisco, found that smoked marijuana was effective at relieving the extreme pain of a debilitating condition known as peripheral neuropathy.

It was a study of HIV patients, but a similar type of pain caused by damage to nerves afflicts people with many other illnesses including diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

Neuropathic pain is notoriously resistant to treatment with conventional pain drugs. Even powerful and addictive narcotics like morphine and OxyContin often provide little relief. This study leaves no doubt that marijuana can safely ease this type of pain.

As all marijuana research in the United States must be, the new study was conducted with government-supplied marijuana of notoriously poor quality. So it probably underestimated the potential benefit.

This is all good news, but it should not be news at all. In the 40-odd years I have been studying the medicinal uses of marijuana, I have learned that the recorded history of this medicine goes back to ancient times.

In the 19th century it became a well-established Western medicine whose versatility and safety were unquestioned. From 1840 to 1900, American and European medical journals published over 100 papers on the therapeutic uses of marijuana, also known as cannabis.

Our knowledge has advanced greatly over the years. Scientists have identified over 60 unique constituents in marijuana, called cannabinoids, and we have learned much about how they work. We have also learned that our own bodies produce similar chemicals, called endocannabinoids.

The mountain of accumulated anecdotal evidence that pointed the way to the present and other clinical studies also strongly suggests there are a number of other devastating disorders and symptoms for which marijuana has been used for centuries.

They deserve the same careful, methodologically sound research.

While few such studies have so far been completed, all have lent weight to what medicine already knew but had largely forgotten or ignored: Marijuana is effective at relieving nausea and vomiting, spasticity, appetite loss, certain types of pain and other debilitating symptoms. And it is extraordinarily safe - safer than most medicines prescribed every day.

If marijuana were a new discovery rather than a well-known substance carrying cultural and political baggage, it would be hailed as a wonder drug.

The pharmaceutical industry is scrambling to isolate cannabinoids and synthesize analogs and to package them in non-smokable forms. In time, companies will almost certainly come up with products and delivery systems that are more useful and less expensive than herbal marijuana.

However, the analogs they have produced so far are more expensive than herbal marijuana, and none has shown any improvement over the plant nature gave us to take orally or to smoke.

We live in an antismoking environment. But as a method of delivering certain medicinal compounds, smoking marijuana has some real advantages: The effect is almost instantaneous, allowing the patient to fine-tune his or her dose to get the needed relief without intoxication.

Smoked marijuana has never been demonstrated to have serious pulmonary consequences, but in any case the technology to inhale these cannabinoids without smoking marijuana already exists as vaporizers that allow for smoke-free inhalation.

Hopefully the UCSF study will add to the pressure on the U.S. government to rethink its irrational ban on the medicinal use of marijuana - and its destructive attacks on patients and caregivers in states that have chosen to allow such use.

Rather than admit they have been mistaken all these years, federal officials can cite "important new data" and start revamping outdated and destructive policies.

Such legislation would bring much-needed relief to millions suffering from cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, arthritis and other debilitating illnesses.

Lester Grinspoon, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, is the coauthor of "Marijuana, the Forbidden Medicine." This article first appeared in The Boston Globe.

Panamark
03-05-2007, 06:41 AM
Tis a wonder herb, no doubt, also eradicates Glaucoma...

jhale667
03-05-2007, 10:34 PM
I'm self-medicating right now. :D

Dan
03-05-2007, 10:41 PM
:smoke2:

VanHalener
03-06-2007, 02:09 AM
Originally posted by jhale667
I'm self-medicating right now. :D

I Hear that!:smoke2: :hitch:

Check it out... hope this is not old news...

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/C/CHILDREN_SMOKING_POT?SITE=WUSA&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLA TE=DEFAULT

WATAUGA, Texas (AP) -- Two teenagers were arrested after police found a video of them showing two children how to smoke marijuana, authorities said.

Fort Worth Police found the video Feb. 22 while investigating Demetris McCoy, 17, and Vanswan Polty, 18, in connection with some burglaries.

In the video, the children are called "potheads" and a man can be seen placing a marijuana cigarette into a baby's mouth. In another part of the video a boy is seen smoking on his own. The children were also asked if they "have the munchies."

Police said the boys are McCoy's nephews, aged 2 and 5. The children have been placed in foster care, the child protective services said.

Both men have been arrested on felony charges of injury to a child and were being held in jail Sunday. It wasn't immediately known if the two men had attorneys.

Shirley Russell, McCoy's grandmother, told KXAS-TV that she was working when the video was made.

"I'm very upset about it. I didn't raise them like that and they know I didn't raise them like that," Russell said. "I feel terrible about it, it's outrageous, all the things that went on and I didn't know nothing about them."

Asked for comment by KXAS-TV as he was being led into jail, McCoy responded with expletives.

© 2007 The Associated Press

Hardrock69
03-06-2007, 09:20 AM
THAT is fucking bullshit!!!

Those fuckers oughta be smacked down with a sack of rocks!!!!

I started smoking it when I was in high school.....but I feel that letting younger kids fool with it is UNACCEPTABLE!
:mad:

VanHalener
03-06-2007, 03:54 PM
Originally posted by Hardrock69
THAT is fucking bullshit!!!

Those fuckers oughta be smacked down with a sack of rocks!!!!

I started smoking it when I was in high school.....but I feel that letting younger kids fool with it is UNACCEPTABLE!
:mad:

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Jesus Christ
03-06-2007, 04:40 PM
Whomever causes a little one to stumble, it is better for him that a millstone be hung around his neck and he be drowned at sea :mad:

Now that hath been said, when it comes to legitimate medical usage, if Dad and I did not create it, then why are ye using it?

Do ye trust the chemical merchants more than thy Father who is in Heaven?

ThrillsNSpills
03-07-2007, 06:26 AM
Originally posted by Jesus Christ

Now that hath been said, when it comes to legitimate medical usage, if Dad and I did not create it, then why are ye using it?

Do ye trust the chemical merchants more than thy Father who is in Heaven?


No Jesus but we the advertising of drugs on television.
I can only hope people see through it.
Cures are suppressed but there is a shift and more people are becoming aware
(you know this)

Hemp has so many other uses that are not being utilized.

Could you imagine a commercial for marijuana on television?

Hardrock69
03-07-2007, 09:59 AM
Jesus, you know as well as we do the benefits Marijuana can bring to those who are seriously ill....

And those who are not! ;)

I gave up chemicals many many years ago, after a few experiments.

Roth & Roll
03-07-2007, 10:38 AM
Originally posted by Hardrock69
Marijuana - The Wonder Drug
Lester Grinspoon
The Boston Globe
3-3-7

CAMBRIDGE, Massachusetts -- A new study in the journal Neurology is being hailed as unassailable proof that marijuana is a valuable medicine. It is a sad commentary on the state of modern medicine that we still need "proof" of something that medicine has known for 5,000 years.

The study, from the University of California at San Francisco, found that smoked marijuana was effective at relieving the extreme pain of a debilitating condition known as peripheral neuropathy.

It was a study of HIV patients, but a similar type of pain caused by damage to nerves afflicts people with many other illnesses including diabetes and multiple sclerosis.

Neuropathic pain is notoriously resistant to treatment with conventional pain drugs. Even powerful and addictive narcotics like morphine and OxyContin often provide little relief. This study leaves no doubt that marijuana can safely ease this type of pain.

As all marijuana research in the United States must be, the new study was conducted with government-supplied marijuana of notoriously poor quality. So it probably underestimated the potential benefit.

This is all good news, but it should not be news at all. In the 40-odd years I have been studying the medicinal uses of marijuana, I have learned that the recorded history of this medicine goes back to ancient times.

In the 19th century it became a well-established Western medicine whose versatility and safety were unquestioned. From 1840 to 1900, American and European medical journals published over 100 papers on the therapeutic uses of marijuana, also known as cannabis.

Our knowledge has advanced greatly over the years. Scientists have identified over 60 unique constituents in marijuana, called cannabinoids, and we have learned much about how they work. We have also learned that our own bodies produce similar chemicals, called endocannabinoids.

The mountain of accumulated anecdotal evidence that pointed the way to the present and other clinical studies also strongly suggests there are a number of other devastating disorders and symptoms for which marijuana has been used for centuries.

They deserve the same careful, methodologically sound research.

While few such studies have so far been completed, all have lent weight to what medicine already knew but had largely forgotten or ignored: Marijuana is effective at relieving nausea and vomiting, spasticity, appetite loss, certain types of pain and other debilitating symptoms. And it is extraordinarily safe - safer than most medicines prescribed every day.

If marijuana were a new discovery rather than a well-known substance carrying cultural and political baggage, it would be hailed as a wonder drug.

The pharmaceutical industry is scrambling to isolate cannabinoids and synthesize analogs and to package them in non-smokable forms. In time, companies will almost certainly come up with products and delivery systems that are more useful and less expensive than herbal marijuana.

However, the analogs they have produced so far are more expensive than herbal marijuana, and none has shown any improvement over the plant nature gave us to take orally or to smoke.

We live in an antismoking environment. But as a method of delivering certain medicinal compounds, smoking marijuana has some real advantages: The effect is almost instantaneous, allowing the patient to fine-tune his or her dose to get the needed relief without intoxication.

Smoked marijuana has never been demonstrated to have serious pulmonary consequences, but in any case the technology to inhale these cannabinoids without smoking marijuana already exists as vaporizers that allow for smoke-free inhalation.

Hopefully the UCSF study will add to the pressure on the U.S. government to rethink its irrational ban on the medicinal use of marijuana - and its destructive attacks on patients and caregivers in states that have chosen to allow such use.

Rather than admit they have been mistaken all these years, federal officials can cite "important new data" and start revamping outdated and destructive policies.

Such legislation would bring much-needed relief to millions suffering from cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis, arthritis and other debilitating illnesses.

Lester Grinspoon, an emeritus professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, is the coauthor of "Marijuana, the Forbidden Medicine." This article first appeared in The Boston Globe.

I have been suffering from a degenerative nerve condition (ALS) for over 2 years and I can tell you first hand that ganja has been more beneficial to me that any prescription medecine I have been given without any of the side effects of prescription medecine - just the munchies. :)

Diamondjimi
03-07-2007, 02:20 PM
Originally posted by Roth & Roll
I have been suffering from a degenerative nerve condition (ALS) for over 2 years and I can tell you first hand that ganja has been more beneficial to me that any prescription medecine I have been given without any of the side effects of prescription medecine - just the munchies. :)

Pot laws in North America are a fuckin joke.
Doctors are drug dealers. As much good they do ,many of the drugs they prescribe turn people into drug addicts. Governments refusal to leagalize pot forces many suffering people to seek it on their own rendering them to the mercy of the courts regarding these pathetic laws. Yet Govt. legalizes booze, the most destructive of all substances.IMO.

Put it this way:
You put 10 people in a room with a couple of 60oz.'ers of whiskey,there's gonna be trouble...

You put 10 people in a room with a bag of weed , they're gonna be calling for pizza's !

Roth and Roll..
Hope your managing ok !;) :cool: