Pubdate: Mon, 19 Dec 2011
Source: Boston Globe (MA)
Copyright: 2011 Globe Newspaper Company
Contact: http://bostonglobe.com/news/opeds/letter.aspx?id=6340
Website: http://www.boston.com/globe/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/52
Author: Heidi Heilman

MEDICINE SHOULD BE DETERMINED IN THE LAB, NOT THE POLITICAL
SPHERE

JULIETTE KAYYEM'S Dec. 12 column on medicinal marijuana ("The 
government's marijuana problem," Op-ed) misses the boat. 
Reclassifying marijuana would not allow doctors to prescribe the 
drug, nor make it OK for pharmacists to dispense it. The US Food and 
Drug Administration requires drugs to go through a rigorous safety 
and efficacy approval process before allowing them to be prescribed.

Moreover, marijuana-derived medications, such as Marinol and Cesamet, 
have been reclassified, and are available by prescription. Recently, 
the FDA ruled that raw marijuana does not meet its general standards. 
The drug failed an eight-factor scientific analysis that examined 
hundreds of studies on the plant's health effects. The National 
Academies of Sciences' Institute of Medicine determined "there is 
little future in smoked marijuana as a medically approved medication."

We don't smoke opium to reap the benefits of morphine, nor do we chew 
willow bark to receive the effects of aspirin. We should not have to 
smoke marijuana to get potential therapeutic effects from its components.

Medicine should be determined in the lab by the scientific process, 
not by way of the ballot box, legislative initiative, or personal 
opinion. Such practice impedes good medicine and puts public safety 
and health at risk.

Heidi Heilman

Weston
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