Pubdate: Sun, 26 Nov 2017
Source: Daily Herald (Arlington Heights, IL)
Copyright: 2017 The Daily Herald Company
Contact:  http://www.dailyherald.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/107
Author: Jennifer Peltz

VETERANS ARE KEY AS SURGE OF STATES OK MEDICAL POT FOR PTSD

NEW YORK -- It was a telling setting for a decision on whether
post-traumatic stress disorder patients could use medical marijuana.

Against the backdrop of the nation's largest Veterans Day parade,
Democratic Gov. Andrew Cuomo announced this month he'd sign
legislation making New York the latest in a fast-rising tide of states
to OK therapeutic pot as a PTSD treatment, though it's illegal under
federal law and doesn't boast extensive, conclusive medical research.

Twenty-eight states plus the District of Columbia now include PTSD in
their medical marijuana programs, a tally that has more than doubled
in the last two years, according to data compiled by the
pro-legalization Marijuana Policy Project. A 29th state, Alaska,
doesn't incorporate PTSD in its medical marijuana program but allows
everyone over 20 to buy pot legally.

The increase has come amid increasingly visible advocacy from
veterans' groups.

Retired Marine staff sergeant Mark DiPasquale says the drug freed him
from the 17 opioids, anti-anxiety pills and other medications that
were prescribed to him for migraines, post-traumatic stress and other
injuries from service that included a hard helicopter landing in Iraq
in 2005.

"I just felt like a zombie, and I wanted to hurt somebody," says
DiPasquale, a co-founder of the Rochester, New York-based Veterans
Cannabis Collective Foundation. It aims to educate vets about the drug
he pointedly calls by the scientific name cannabis.

DiPasquale pushed to extend New York's nearly two-year-old medical
marijuana program to include post-traumatic stress. He'd qualified
because of other conditions but felt the drug ease his anxiety,
sleeplessness and other PTSD symptoms and spur him to focus on wellness.

"Do I still have PTSD? Absolutely," says DiPasquale, 42. But "I'm back
to my old self. I love people again."

In a sign of how much the issue has taken hold among veterans, the
2.2-million-member American Legion began pressing the federal
government this summer to let Department of Veterans Affairs doctors
recommend medical marijuana where it's legal . The Legion started
advocating last year for easing federal constraints on medical pot
research , a departure into drug policy for the nearly century-old
organization.

"People ask, 'Aren't you the law-and-order group?' Why, yes, we are,"
Executive Director Verna Jones said at a Legion-arranged news
conference early this month at the U.S. Capitol. But "when veterans
come to us and say a particular treatment is working for them, we owe
it to them to listen and to do scientific research required."

Even Veterans Affairs Secretary Dr. David Shulkin recently said "there
may be some evidence that this (medical marijuana) is beginning to be
helpful," while noting that his agency is barred from helping patients
get the illegal drug. (A few prescription drugs containing a synthetic
version of a key chemical in marijuana do have federal approval to
treat chemotherapy-related nausea.)

Medical marijuana first became legal in 1996 in California for a wide
range of conditions; New Mexico in 2009 became the first state
specifically to include PTSD patients. States have signed on in
growing numbers particularly since 2014.

"It's quite a sea change," says Michael Krawitz, a disabled Air Force
veteran who now runs Veterans for Medical Cannabis Access, an
Elliston, Virginia-based group that's pursued the issue in many states.

Still, there remain questions and qualms - some from veterans - about
advocating for medical marijuana as a treatment for PTSD.

It was stripped out of legislation that added six other diseases and
syndromes to Georgia's law that allows certain medical cannabis oils.
The chairman of the New York Senate veterans' affairs committee voted
against adding PTSD to the state's program, suggesting the drug might
just mask their symptoms.

"The sooner we allow them to live and experience the kind of emotions
we do, in an abstinence-based paradigm, the sooner that they are
returning home," said Sen. Thomas Croci, a Republican, former Navy
intelligence officer and current reservist who served in
Afghanistan.

The American Psychiatric Association says there's not enough evidence
now to support using pot to treat PTSD. The 82,000-member Vietnam
Veterans of America group agrees.

"You wouldn't have cancer treatments that aren't approved done to
yourself or your family members," and marijuana should be subjected to
the same scrutiny, says Dr. Thomas Berger, who heads VVA's Veterans
Health Council.

A federal science advisory panel's recent assessment of two decades'
worth of studies found limited evidence that a synthetic chemical
cousin of marijuana might help relieve PTSD, but also some data
suggesting pot use could worsen symptoms.

Medical marijuana advocates note it's been tough to get evidence when
testing is complicated by pot's legal status in the U.S.

A federally approved clinical trial of marijuana as a PTSD treatment
for veterans is now underway in Phoenix, and results from the current
phase could be ready to submit for publication in a couple of years,
says one of the researchers, Dr. Suzanne Sisley.
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