Pubdate: Sun, 18 Aug 2013
Source: Sunday Independent (Ireland)
Copyright: 2013 Independent Newspapers Ltd
Contact:  http://www.independent.ie/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/434
Author: Julia Molony

MEDICAL MARIJUANA PASSES DRUGS TEST

If We Treat Recreational Drugs in the Same Way As Prescription Ones, 
We Might Be in a Better State, Says Julia Molony

SO MEDICAL marijuana will soon be added to your local GP's 
prescription slate. But don't all go rushing down asking for a couple 
of spliffs every time you've got a stomach ache.

The drug will be available for therapeutic purposes only, initially 
for treatment of spacisity in Multiple Sclerosis.

However, it has clinical applications for an array of ailments, 
including seizures and to improve cancer patients' tolerance for 
treatments such as chemotherapy.

The pro-legalisation lobby might be forgiven for treating this as a 
small victory. But we'd be wrong to see this as an ideological step 
towards a more liberal era.

In amongst the minefield of drugs legislation debate and the extreme 
emotions it inevitably provokes, this is one area in which sane 
empirical evidence can prevail.

There will be many people celebrating this development. The case for 
legalising medical cannabis has, thank God, nothing really to do with 
the wider war on drugs, nor is it about gratifying the liberal values 
of the post-dinner party spliff-smoking set, whose support of 
legalising pot is as much an identity issue as an ideological one.

Instead it's simple pragmatism. Medical cannabis has been evaluated 
according to the same method by which we test the benefits and 
efficacy of any other new medicine.

An empirical cost/benefit calculation has been made and it has been 
deemed useful.

I have an aunt with MS, who has for years, been declaring her 
interest in testing out medical cannabis. For her, it's not about 
declaring a liberal, live-and-let-live political agenda.

She's simply a person grasping at any opportunity for some measure of 
reprieve from the daily struggles her condition entails.

The case in support of therapeutic cannabis is overwhelmingly strong.

Last week, the well-known academic and physician Dr Sanjay Gupta 
wrote a long, heartfelt public apology, renouncing his former 
scepticism about the benefits of the drug, and endorsing it for a 
range of conditions.

This idea isn't new. Before weed was herbal rebellion, it was widely 
used as a remedy.

It was the great countercultural wave of the Sixties that led to its 
classification as a schedule 1 drug in America. Before then, it was 
available on prescription.

How we make the distinction between those drugs considered 
recreational and those considered therapeutic is almost scarily arbitrary.

The chemical difference between heroin, scourge of the streets and 
most destructive of social ills, and morphine, the widely used 
painkiller, is pretty slight.

Indeed, heroin itself is a legally prescribed drug in the UK, often 
administered in place of morphine because it causes fewer side-effects.

Of course, this doesn't apply to all addictive drugs. Some are just 
rotten. There is, as far as I'm aware, no current constructive 
application for, say, crystal meth.

But the division of psychoactive substances into those that are 
harmful and those that are beneficial is rarely that cut and dried.

The example of legislating for cannabis use as a therapeutic drug 
might be instructive. If we approach recreational drugs in the same 
way we treat prescription ones, we might be in a better state.

Sure, there are plenty of people who abuse prescription drugs. But 
the vast majority of us take them sensibly, in carefully limited and 
regulated doses, with the aim of achieving exactly the desired 
effect; no more and no less.

And yet, when it comes to alcohol, or ecstasy, or cocaine, the 
approach of those of us who take them seems to be to neck them with 
impunity and hope for the best. Cannabis can do many positive things.

But like many drugs, it has significant and sometime serious 
side-effects. Growing evidence links its prolonged use to psychosis. 
Those who have to take it for medical reasons, will no doubt do so 
with caution and care and with attention to proper dosing in order to 
limit any possible harm.

Perhaps those who do it just for fun should aspire to do the same?
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom