Pubdate: Thu, 07 Jul 2005 Source: Lowell Sun (MA) Copyright: 2005 MediaNews Group, Inc. Contact: http://www.lowellsun.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/852 Author: Katherine L. Phaneuf, MD Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/mmj.htm (Cannabis - Medicinal) WESTFORD PHYSICIAN WOULD NOT PRESCRIBE MARIJUANA TO PATIENTS Responding to a spate of articles and editorials prompted by the recent Supreme Court decision regarding medical marijuana, I offer my take on the subject from the perspective of a practicing physician. The key points for me are that, if such products could be developed by the pharmaceutical industry, they would be regulated for safety and efficacy by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) and I could be more certain as to the dose I would be prescribing. In addition, I believe this would already fall under the purview of the FDA, so that we do not need the courts to intervene. I would like to make an illustrative comparison. Let's say I had a patient with intractable pain for whom opiate therapy would be appropriate. I would never tell him to go out and buy a few bags of heroin. Heroin can be quite effective in easing extreme pain, but I could never be certain of the dose he would be getting. Heroin is a street drug, cut with any number of substances in illegal laboratories. What adverse effects might these uncontrolled additives have? The pharmaceutical industry provides us with a number of similar opiates (such as Morphine), regulated by the FDA for safety in prescribed uses, with standardized dosing. Several routes are available, including oral, injectable and transdermal. I would like similar availability and regulation of various drug delivery systems for the active ingredient(s) of marijuana, so that I can be as sure of dosing as I am for medically available opiates. Do I think marijuana should be legalized? That is, or should be, a separate issue entirely. We are addressing medical uses of marijuana. Simply put, I'm not looking to prescribe smoked marijuana, but rather a regulated medication. Katherine L. Phaneuf, MD Westford - --- MAP posted-by: Larry Seguin