Can Marijuana Be Moved To The Less Restricted List For Chronic Pain Patients

Today's post from webmd.com (see link below) takes the discussion about medical marijuana a little further and looks at the dilemmas doctors face when confronted by patients' valid questions regarding their pain treatment and the laws that cloud the picture and make them uncertain as to whether they're doing the right thing. It's a call for considerably more research to be done at official drug-enforcement levels and asks for a further loosening of restrictions to enable an unbiased and science-based evaluation of the benefits of marijuana for various conditions. It's a valid point because we already allow several drugs which have the potential to be far more addictive (oxycodon, morphine and many others) to help patients with chronic pain but it seems that marijuana has so many pre-judged labels attached that law enforcers just can't see beyond the decades-old criminality issues. Worth a read.

What DEA Pot Rule Change May Mean for Research WebMD News from HealthDay
By Dennis Thompson HealthDay Reporter TUESDAY, May 10, 2016
 
Agency could move marijuana to a less strictly regulated class of drugs

 (HealthDay News) -- Most doctors approach medical marijuana with a great deal of uncertainty, because drug laws have hindered researchers' ability to figure out what pot can and can't do for sick patients.

That could soon change.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) is weighing whether to loosen its classification of marijuana, which would remove many restrictions on its use in medical research.

If that occurs, doctors could start getting answers to the questions they regularly receive from patients regarding marijuana's clinical benefits.

"I am asked as a practicing doctor even in a rural area about medical marijuana use, and I want to make sure I can give patients advice that's evidence-based," said Dr. Robert Wergin, board chair of the American Academy of Family Physicians. "We need those kinds of studies to help us give informed advice to our patients who ask about it now," he explained.

The DEA has said it will decide this summer whether marijuana should be lowered from a Schedule I drug to a Schedule II drug, according to an April memo from the agency to Congress.

Schedule I drugs are considered drugs "with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse," the DEA says on its website. Heroin, LSD and ecstasy stand alongside marijuana on the DEA's Schedule I list.

On the other hand, Schedule II drugs have a high potential for abuse, but "there is the recognition that they have some medical value as well," said Dr. J. Michael Bostwick, a professor of psychiatry at the Mayo Clinic, in Rochester, Minn.

"This could be an important softening of regulations that make it difficult to do marijuana or cannabis research in this country," Bostwick said.

Morphine, methamphetamine, cocaine and oxycodone are all Schedule II drugs, "because they have medical applications," Bostwick said. "So, it's not as if we don't have precedent for substances that are dangerous from an addictive point of view being useful in certain medical situations."

Studies have shown that marijuana might help decrease chronic pain and nausea, ease seizures, improve the appetite or be useful in psychiatric treatment, Wergin and Bostwick said.

But none of those studies has been large-scale and a definitive clinical trial. The reason: because marijuana's DEA drug status prevents scientists from using large quantities of the plant in medical research, Wergin and Bostwick said.

All marijuana available for research purposes in the United States is grown at the University of Mississippi, which has an exclusive contract with the U.S. National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to provide the nation's entire research supply, according to the DEA's memo to lawmakers.

In any given year, NIDA sends shipments of marijuana to a small handful of researchers, usually eight or nine, but sometimes as many as 12, the memo states. Researchers must go through a detailed registration process to gain access to the pot.

The American Medical Association (AMA) has come out in favor of loosening drug laws to "develop a special schedule for marijuana to facilitate study of its potential medical utility in prescription drug products," according to a statement its officials provided ABC News.

"While studies related to a limited number of medical conditions have shown promise for new cannabinoid-based prescription products, the scope of rigorous research needs to be expanded to a broader range of medical conditions for such products," the AMA added.

Back in December 2014, the American Academy of Neurology lamented the lack of solid marijuana research in a position paper.

Due to strict drug laws, researchers have not been able to determine whether medical marijuana could help treat neurological disorders such as epilepsy, multiple sclerosis and Parkinson's disease, the academy said.

The academy's paper concluded with a call to deschedule marijuana and open it up to more research.

Expanded research wouldn't necessarily lead to more people smoking pot for medical purposes, Wergin and Bostwick said.

Instead, it's more likely that researchers would focus on how the components of marijuana, such as THC or cannabidiol, interact with the body in ways that might help ease symptoms or illness.

An entire system of receptors has been discovered throughout the body that responds to different components of cannabis, Bostwick said.

"Almost any system you name in the body has a potential cannabinoid receptor that could be manipulated in a way that could be useful," he said. "When the drug was outlawed in 1970, we knew almost nothing about it. In the intervening 45 years, science has shown this endocannabinoid system actually exists. None of that was known when the drug was made illegal."

Such research could result in medications derived from marijuana that would treat conditions without a "high," Wergin said.

Wergin sees two main potential benefits from the descheduling of marijuana and any resulting boom in research.

First, he'd know what to tell patients about pot's particular benefits. And second, he'd feel confident issuing a prescription for a marijuana-based medication, knowing that it's a drug regulated by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

"This would result in higher-quality standardized product that's FDA-approved," Wergin said. "If I prescribe you an antibiotic, I'm very confident of what's in it because of the FDA regulations on it. I don't know how to prescribe marijuana to you, or what's even in it."

Paul Armentano, deputy director of the marijuana legalization group NORML, said that at this point a reclassification by the DEA would fall "well short of the sort of federal reform necessary to reflect America's emerging reefer reality."

Armentano added that even with descheduling, federal law still would require researchers to buy pot from NIDA's University of Mississippi marijuana cultivation program.

"Simply rescheduling cannabis from I to II does not necessarily change these regulations, at least in the short-term," Armentano said.

View Article Sources

http://www.webmd.com/mental-health/addiction/news/20160510/what-a-change-in-deas-pot-rules-might-mean-for-medical-research

Florida Medical Marijuana Debate Vid

Today's post from politics.heraldtribune.com (see link below) is a report on a debate about the efficacy of medical marijuana. It includes a video of the debate at the end. It's a fascinating look at both sides of the legislative argument regarding marijuana as a pain reliever and as many people with neuropathy are interested in the truths behind the matter, it's well worth a read and a view.

Medical marijuana debate at Tiger Bay
By Jeremy Wallace , Herald-Tribune / Wednesday, February 12, 2014

Selective statistics, references to God and highly-charged emotional stories of lost loved ones were lobbed back and forth Wednesday during the first major debate here over medical marijuana since a proposed constitutional amendment was certified for this year's ballot.


Sarasota County Sheriff Tom Knight and John Morgan, of Morgan; Morgan Attorneys, debate a proposed constitutional amendment allowing Medical Marijuana in Florida during a Sarasota Tiger Bay Club event at Michael's On East in Sarasota on Wednesday. (Staff Photo by Elaine Litherland)

But in the end, Orlando attorney John Morgan, who has become the statewide face of the push to legalize medical marijuana, and Sarasota County Sheriff Tom Knight, who opposes the effort, turned a clash in Sarasota over the issue into two simplified choices.

Morgan argued that allowing marijuana to be prescribed for those in pain is preferable to far more dangerous and addictive medications.

"The downside of marijuana pales with the FDA-approved drugs like Oxy, Percocet, Darvocet, Xanax," Morgan told more than 400 people at a Sarasota Tiger Bay luncheon. "It pales, because one is a narcotic poison and one is an organic plant in nature."

But Knight characterized the choice as one between the current quality of life in Florida and that in California and Colorado after marijuana use became legal there. Both have seen marijuana dispensaries proliferate, including some that have been tied to Colombian drug cartels, Knight said.

"One, our children are going to have much easier access to pot" if the proposed medical marijuana amendment passes, Knight said. "Secondly, crime will increase in this community. And thirdly, our quality of life will be negatively affected."

Knight said tourism, beaches and property values would all be affected if Florida followed other states in loosening restrictions on marijuana for medical use.

Debate over the issue is gaining momentum after the Florida Supreme Court ruled last month that an amendment to legalize marijuana for medical use could be on the Nov. 4 general election ballot.

If 60 percent of voters approve the measure, Florida would follow 18 other states and the District of Columbia in allowing medical patients to use marijuana.

Two states, Washington and Colorado, allow legal purchases for non-medical use.

A Quinnipiac University poll conducted in November showed a large majority of Florida voters, 82 percent, backed allowing adults to use marijuana for medical purposes if their doctor prescribes the drug. Just 16 percent of voters said they opposed marijuana for medical use.

Knight said those poll numbers are bound to change as opponents of the effort spread the word on the unintended consequences of the ballot measure.

"Only one side of the argument has been heard on this so far," Knight said at the meeting of Sarasota Tiger Bay, a civic group that meets monthly to talk about community issues and politics.

No one in the state is more responsible for the marijuana amendment getting on the ballot than Morgan, the attorney known statewide for his Morgan and; Morgan law firm's advertising campaign: "For The People."

Morgan has spent millions of dollars to draft the amendment, pay people to gather the signatures required to get the measure on the ballot and advocate for its passage.

The reason for his commitment is simple, he said. His father had cancer and his brother Tim is quadriplegic. He said when both used marijuana they were in far less pain, had improved appetites, and in the case of his brother, fewer spasms.

"It works," Morgan said. "I don't know why it works. I don't know why water quenches thirst. But it works."

Morgan even wove in a divine reason why marijuana should be legal.

"I don't know why God put this plant onto this Earth for us, but He did," Morgan said.

Knight was quick to counter.

"God put this on the Earth for us, but God also put cocoa leaves for crack cocaine and God also put the plants on the Earth for opiates, for heroin," Knight said. "God also put criminals on Earth."

Knight is part of a growing wave of opposition from sheriffs and law enforcement officials against the marijuana initiative.

He and other sheriffs have been writing letters to the editor in newspapers across the state opposing the marijuana initiative.

During Wednesday's meeting Knight also tried to counter Morgan's characterization of marijuana as a better alternative than prescription drugs. He said if marijuana has medical uses, he needs to see something from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration first that says "for sure" that it is medically useful.

"There is no scientific proof to say if legalized marijuana would help cure chronic pain and illness," Knight said.

Morgan nearly scoffed at the idea that the FDA should be the purveyor of what is safe and effective for patients, given the number of lawsuits his firm has filed against drug makers over the years.

"Sixteen thousand people die every year in American from Oxycotin — approved by the FDA," Morgan said, listing other medications that the agency once approved that are no longer available.

Morgan also sought to counter Knight's comparison of Florida to Colorado and California.

He said Florida's amendment is for medical purposes and conditions, not recreational use as in Colorado. Morgan said it would not allow for home growers of marijuana as California does.

"What our focus groups told me before I put the language together was, loud and clear: 'We don't want to be California,'" Morgan said, adding that he is following the lessons from other states as to what not to do.

He said even if Florida passes the amendment, the state Legislature will have the final say on how marijuana is dispensed and who can do it. The governor has to sign it into law and local governments would permit the places that dispense it.

He told the Tiger Bay audience to be wary of people who say marijuana will be pervasive.

"It's a scare tactic by well-meaning people to say we are going to have these things on every corner," Morgan said.

Knight said the issue is not a moral or even a medical one. He said he is not unsympathetic to people dealing with pain, but worries about the effect on law enforcement, crime and the community at large.

If the amendment passes, Knight said, Florida will be "getting more than we bargained for and it will affect our quality of life."


 

 Jeremy Wallace can be reached at 361-4966 or jeremy.wallace @heraldtribune.com

 http://politics.heraldtribune.com/2014/02/12/medical-marijuana-debate-at-tiger-bay/

Lessons Learned From Legal Marijuana In Colorado

Today's very interesting post from webmd.com (see link below) looks at the impact of legalised marijuana in Colerado, a year after it's legalisation. As many people living with neuropathy will know, marijuana is one of the few proven treatments for neuropathic pain but very few people will have tried it themselves, either due to fears of the 'smoking' aspect, or the lack of availability in their region, or even fears of being 'high' all the time. It's always worthwhile looking at the facts; discussing it with your doctor and doing as much of your own research as possible (many more posts on this blog for instance). One of the most interesting points of research is examining what has happened in areas where marijuana has been legalised and is in controlled use. This article is well worth a read.

Year 1 of Legal Marijuana: Lessons Learned in CO
By R. Scott Rappold
WebMD Health News
Reviewed by Brunilda Nazario, MD
Nov. 6, 2014 --

When the first legal sales of recreational marijuana in modern history began Jan. 1 in Colorado, it was a bold experiment fraught with unknowns.

Would kids get easy access to the drug? Would stoned drivers make the highways more dangerous? Would drug addiction problems increase?

While there isn’t enough data yet to answer some of those questions, one thing is clear: There is a rising tide of public support for marijuana legalization in America. Voters in Washington State approved it in 2012, and earlier this week, voters in Alaska, Oregon, and Washington, D.C., approved legalizing recreational marijuana.

Some of the lessons being learned in the Rocky Mountains could be instrumental in other states, as public health officials figure out how to regulate a drug that has been illegal for 8 decades.

Commercialization of Marijuana

Even before the first recreational stores opened in 2014, marijuana storefronts were a presence in most Colorado communities.

Since 2009, a loosening of regulations led to a growing medical marijuana industry, in which residents who received a doctor’s recommendation and applied for a state license could walk in and buy marijuana. There are today nearly 500 such dispensaries in Colorado.

Since Jan. 1, another 212 recreational stores have opened. In these stores, state residents 21 and over can buy up to an ounce of pot at a time. Out-of-state residents can buy a quarter-ounce. While some cities, including Colorado Springs, have banned the stores, in the Denver and Boulder areas and most resort towns, marijuana is visible and available.

Not everyone is happy about that. The mainstreaming of marijuana led Gina Carbone to co-found Smart Colorado, which calls for stricter regulations on the marijuana industry.

“What we’ve seen in the roll-out of this is the mass commercialization and the mass marketing of marijuana,” Carbone says.

“The more stores you have around, the more visibility, the more normalized it becomes, the greater the youth use is, because the perception of harm at the same time is plummeting,” she says.

Carbone would've preferred for Colorado to have followed the Washington model, where the number of marijuana stores are limited. Seattle, for example, will have just 21 stores. 

Marijuana Edibles

When an adult comes to the University of Colorado Hospital complaining about ingesting too much marijuana, the symptoms are usually anxiety, nausea, or vomiting, but it’s not life-threatening unless associated with another substance or an injury.

But when a child comes in, emergency department head Richard Zane, MD, has observed instances of a breathing problem called respiratory depression, which can be life-threatening.

Since legalization, he has seen a sharp increase in such cases, and he points the finger at edibles infused with THC, the psychoactive ingredient in marijuana.

“I think the way in which marijuana became legal in Colorado was pretty careless, specifically around the total lack of regulation or control around edible products, which have been causing the most impact on health,” Zane says.

Edible items available in marijuana stores run the gamut from sodas to chocolates and many other kinds of candies. Adults who take too much are often novice users who perhaps didn’t read or understand the label indicating the amount of THC, or ate some and didn’t wait long enough for it to take effect before having more.

But children usually have no idea what they're eating, whether they got the item from a friend or from their parents’ stash.

“To an 8-year-old, a gummy bear looks like a gummy bear,” Zane says. “It’s unconscionable to make a THC product that looks like a child’s sweet.”

The concern led the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment (CDPHE) to recently propose a ban on almost all edibles.

“We had some pretty strong recommendations,” says CDPHE head Larry Wolk, MD. “If the industry isn’t going to do a better job on how they package and make this stuff not appealing to kids, our position has to be the only edible we can endorse are drops, where you can make your own, and single-serving tinctures.” The proposed edible ban, though only an idea, caused an outcry in an industry where 45% of marijuana sales are from edibles.

“A total ban defies logic,” says Mason Tvert, who spearheaded the legalization effort in Colorado and now is spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project. “Voters ended marijuana prohibition because they wanted to take marijuana out of the underground market. To go back to prohibiting a very popular product would simply result in it being produced and sold illegally.”

A state task force looking at the issue has yet to make a decision. Other ideas include requiring child-proof containers for edible products, stronger labeling and dosing recommendations, a symbol on edibles, and limiting their THC content.In Washington, edibles are regulated much more toughly. Candies and lollipops are banned. And while cookies and brownies are allowed, they must be divided into doses and can't be marketed in a way that makes them similar to a non-marijuana product. 

Marijuana and Teens

Teens using pot is nothing new, but one of the main concerns of legalization was that it would lead to a spike in use. But the state’s Healthy Kids Colorado Survey, done every 2 years and released in September, showed 36.9% of high-schoolers had ever used marijuana, below the national average of 40.7%. The number who'd admitted using it in the preceding month dropped by 2% from 2011.

Still, law enforcement groups say marijuana problems are on the rise in schools. In one survey, 89 out of 100 school resource officers said marijuana-related incidents have increased in their schools.

Recreational stores are not allowed to sell to minors, and in a recent compliance check in Denver, not a single store sold to minors.

“I think we’ve kept it away from causing significant harm to kids, whether that’s as a result of packaging or limitations that are put in place by the stores, or safety concerns, or heightened parental awareness,” Wolk says.

The state spent as much as $2 million on an anti-marijuana education campaign aimed at minors in 2014, he says, and it will spend twice that much in 2015, funds derived from taxes on marijuana. 

Impaired Drivers

Driving while high is illegal in Colorado, but whether legalization has led to a rise in stoned driving is not yet clear.

The Colorado State Patrol, through September of this year, cited 497 people for driving while under the influence of marijuana -- though about half of those cases also involved alcohol or another drug -- out of 4,177 impaired driving citations.

But the agency only began keeping statistics separating marijuana from other drugged-driving cases this year. So, with no comparison data, both marijuana supporters and law enforcement agree more data is needed to learn legalization’s impact. 

Addiction

It will also take several years of data so show whether legalization has led to a spike in marijuana addiction and rehab visits in Colorado. Legalization critic Ben Cort, director of professional relations for a Denver treatment center, believes it will.

“They’ve got to expand demographics, and they’re not shy about this,” he says of the marijuana industry. “You’ve got a need to get new people using the substance, and you’ve got to get current users to consume more.”

Opponents to legalization in Oregon pointed to data that shows adult marijuana use has gone up in Colorado since medical marijuana became widespread, and warned that would happen in Oregon.

But, says marijuana activist Tvert, “there’s nothing wrong with an adult consuming marijuana responsibly, just like there’s really nothing wrong with an adult having a glass of wine with dinner or a beer while watching a sports game.

“For decades, law enforcement officials have been trying to scare the public into keeping marijuana illegal. This is just more of the same, but the public is seeing through that.” 

Looking Ahead

So can Colorado’s experiment be called a success? While Tvert says it will take years to answer some questions about the results of legalization, he does believe so.

“We’ve got hundreds of businesses that are tightly regulated, collecting taxes and providing a substance that’s less harmful than alcohol to adults who would otherwise get it in the underground market,” he says.

Marijuana is expected to bring in more than $100 million in tax revenue this fiscal year and has created thousands of jobs in Colorado.

“We’re on the right side of history, and if there are concerns about us being the first state or one of the first states, that is something that will inherently change in the next few years,” Tvert says.

Cort says that while he respects the will of the voters, he doesn’t think they knew what legalization would look like in reality. He says other states where legalization has passed could benefit from waiting to see what happens in Colorado.

“Lots of other states moving forward before Colorado has had an opportunity to showcase what’s really happened-- that is rash,” he says. “If everybody is calling Colorado an experiment, if we’re the canary in the coal mine, then give us a minute to see if we’re singing or we’re dead.”

Wolk, the state’s public health director, expects to have a clearer picture of legalization by spring 2015, when the Retail Marijuana Public Health Advisory Committee will release its findings on the first year of legalization.

The report will look at hospital visits, impaired driving incidents, teen use, rehab visits, and many other metrics. In the meantime, he believes the state is doing all it can, given the mandate to allow and regulate legal sales issued by voters in 2012.

“It’s been challenging, but I think it’s been an interesting challenge for us,” Wolk says. “I believe we’re asking the right questions. I believe we’re getting the right messages out and we’re studying what we should be studying, and hopefully by next year we’ll have some data and some answers.”

But, he says, “I'm not sure we’ll ever be able to say this has been an absolute success or a terrible failure.”

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© 2014 WebMD, LLC. All rights reserved.

http://www.webmd.com/brain/news/20141106/legal-marijuana-year-one

Is Marijuana Effective Against Neuropathic Pain

Today's post is from scientistlive.com (see link below) and is yet another article about the benefits of marijuana for neuropathy patients. It's based on another small study by researchers at San Diego School of Medicine but the 'cannabis as analgesic' evidence is mounting with time. Others are also working on cannabis derivatives which don't give the high and don't require you to smoke, which could be beneficial to ex-smokers and people who aren't keen on getting stoned. An extract of cannabis has been developed into a drug for multiple sclerosis called Sativex. This is taken as a spray under the tongue. An artificial form of cannabis’ active ingredient delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is also licensed, as dronabinol (Marinol). These preparations do not cause the ‘high’ of the illegal drug.
*The biggest problem for neuropathy patients who wish to go down this road, is the legal one. It's then a lottery as to where you live and what the laws are but wherever that may be, let's hope that it doesn't lead to what happens in tomorrow's video post, which may put you off forever!

Marijuana effective against HIV pain 
  

In a double-blind, placebo-controlled clinical trial to assess the impact of smoked medical cannabis, or marijuana, on the neuropathic pain associated with HIV, researchers at the University of California, San Diego School of Medicine found that reported pain relief was greater with cannabis than with a placebo. The study, sponsored by the University of California Center for Medical Cannabis Research (CMCR) based at UC San Diego, will be published on line, August 6 in the journal Neuropsychopharmacology.

Led by Ronald J. Ellis, M.D., Ph.D., associate professor of neurosciences at UCSD School of Medicine, the study looked at 28 HIV patients with neuropathic pain not adequately controlled by other pain-relievers, including opiates. They took part in the controlled study as outpatients at the UCSD Medical Center. The proportion of subjects achieving pain reduction of 30 percent or more was greater for those smoking cannabis than those smoking the placebo.

"Neuropathy is a chronic and significant problem in HIV patients as there are few existing treatments that offer adequate pain management to sufferers," Ellis said. "We found that smoked cannabis was generally well-tolerated and effective when added to the patient's existing pain medication, resulting in increased pain relief."

Each trial participant participated in five study phases over seven weeks. During two five-day phases, randomly selected participants smoked either cannabis or placebo cigarettes made from whole plant material with cannabinoids (the psychoactive compound found in marijuana) removed, both provided by the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Outcome was tested by standardised tests measuring analgesia (lessened pain sensation), improvement in function and relief of pain-associated emotional distress.

Using verbal descriptors of pain magnitude, cannabis was associated with an average reduction of pain intensity from 'strong' 'to mild-to-moderate' in cannabis smokers, according to Ellis. Also, cannabis was associated with a sizeable (46% versus 18% for placebo) proportion of patients reporting clinically meaningful pain relief.

The study's findings are consistent with and extend other recent research supporting the short-term efficacy of cannabis for neuropathic pain, also sponsored by the CMCR.

"This study adds to a growing body of evidence that indicates that cannabis is effective, in the short-term at least, in the management of neuropathic pain," commented Igor Grant, M.D., professor of psychiatry and director of the CMCR.

http://www.scientistlive.com/European-Science-News/Pharmacology/Marijuana_effective_against_HIV_pain/20850/

Mexican Grandmas Defy Marijuana Oil Laws To Relieve Pain

Don't laugh; today's post from news.yahoo.com (see link below) is a serious story and has potential interest for people living with localised neuropathic pain. Because of the expense of cannabis oils, it's not likely that you will be able to cover your feet and legs in the stuff but many neuropathy patients swear by using it on the soles of their feet, or backs of their hands. We're entering an age where cannabis is finally being recognised for its many medicinal qualities. We already know that smoked cannabis is one of the few proven methods of relieving neuropathic pain but there are other ways in which cannabis can be used and a transdermal oil is just one of them.

'Grandma's magic remedy:' Mexico's medical marijuana secret 
By Sofia Miselem December 14, 2015
 
Mexico City (AFP) - When her legs ache, this Mexican grandmother rubs them with marijuana-infused alcohol. She is well aware the homemade remedy defies the country's cannabis ban, but her family has used the concoction to treat ailments since she was a child, handing it down the generations.

"I really have a lot of faith in it," said the slender 53-year-old, a housewife and amateur dancer who spoke to AFP about her cannabis use on condition of strict anonymity.

"When I'm very tired, I spread it on my legs, feet and body. It's really good. I can go without salt but not without marijuana with alcohol. My grandmother used it," she said, holding a plastic bottle filled with the leaves and liquid.

In turn, she used the family remedy to care for her three children, and three grandchildren. For the kids, a piece of cotton soaked in the liquid is placed in the bellybutton to fight fevers. When they're congested, the alcohol is rubbed on the chest and back.

A debate on whether to legalize marijuana for recreational or medicinal uses in Mexico is in its infant stages, but Mexicans have used cannabis for therapeutic purposes for centuries.

The national discussion was launched in November when the Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling authorizing four people to grow and smoke marijuana for personal use, opening the door for others to seek similar permits.

Weeks earlier, the parents of an eight-year-old girl named Grace, who suffers from a severe form of epilepsy, won a legal battle to import a cannabis-based oil to treat her condition.

But for generations Mexicans have been using "grandma's magic remedy" to combat a wide range of pains, fevers or other complaints.

The cannabis-infused oil can be kept for months, and many keep a flask hidden in a closet. The remedy also comes in dry forms or as pastes. Some drink marijuana tea to relieve headaches or help with insomnia while others smoke it to fight nausea or cancer-related pains.

"Infused into alcohol is the traditional use for rheumatism as well as muscular and circulation pains," said Humberto Rocca, a doctor specializing in addictions and herbalism.

"It's an ancient medicine, passed on from generation to generation. Young people know that their grandmothers or mothers use it," Rocca said.
A debate on whether to legalize marijuana for recreational or medicinal uses in Mexico is in its infant stages, but Mexicans have used cannabis for therapeutic purposes for centuries.

- Home brew -

Jorge Hernandez Tinajero, a veteran pot legalization activist, said Spanish conquistadors brought hemp with them, and indigenous populations added it to their ceremonial and medicinal traditions.

"Marijuana began to be used in different ways in the 16th century, for rituals guided by shamans, which persist to this day in some villages," said Tinajero, who is part of the Mexican Association of Cannabis Studies.

In a Mexico City home, a 33-year-old publicist agreed to show AFP reporters his hydroponic system of some 20 marijuana plants growing under intense spotlights.

"This is for personal and medical use," he said from his greenhouse, walking barefoot and smoking a joint during the chat.
While President Enrique Pena Nieto has voiced opposition to legalizing marijuana, he has convened experts to hold debates between January and March to see if the government should change the law in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling. 

"There's no sale or purchases. We only do this to change the system and this war" against drug trafficking, he said, echoing the argument among pro-legalization activists that decriminalizing pot will help combat the violence associated with the illegal trade.

He taught himself to make various types of therapeutic marijuana, including the traditional alcohol-based recipe, a thick wax concentrate of tetrahydrocannabinol -- the main psychoactive ingredient in cannabis -- which is used to treat nausea, and extracts that are used for vaporizations.

"If your mom has a migraine, you give her a little tea because the pain goes away with a little bit of marijuana," he said.

"Typically I make alcohol for the grandmother of a friend who has pains in the hands or feet due to arthritis or sciatica," said the man, who insists he gives away the medicine for free.

- National debate -

While President Enrique Pena Nieto has voiced opposition to legalizing marijuana, he has convened experts to hold debates between January and March to see if the government should change the law in the wake of the Supreme Court ruling.

In its wake, Mexican health authorities this week issued the first permit allowing the individuals concerned to grow their own marijuana for recreational purposes.

Though limited to those four people only, the authorization opens a crack in Mexico's prohibitionist policies.

In parallel, a member of Pena Nieto's Institutional Revolutionary Party has introduced a bill in the Senate that would allow Mexicans to import and consume medical marijuana -- though not grow it on national soil.

But the head of the government's Cofepris health and drug regulator, Mikel Arriola, doubts the medicinal value of marijuana.

"For it to have healing effects, it must be presented in a medicine form, like a tablet, an injection or a solution," Arriola told AFP. "Marijuana does not go through this process. Its healing effects are not recognized."

A spokesman for the attorney general's office said that carrying marijuana-infused alcohol is illegal. But he also said there was no precedent of anyone being arrested for using the home brew.

http://news.yahoo.com/grandmas-magic-remedy-mexicos-medical-marijuana-secret-071008150.html

Will legalising Marijuana help Neuropathy patients

The argument drones on but a successful outcome for chronic pain sufferers does seem to be getting nearer, especially after the results of yet more tests on the efficacy of cannabinoids as a neuropathic painkiller. Today's post comes from Genetic Engineering & Biotechnology News (see link below). There are other posts about how useful marijuana is for our health group (see list on the right) but this one is very clearly written and explains the situation in America at the moment. Of course, medical marijuana is already legal in various countries and states, or regions within countries but it's almost never a matter of course that it will be prescribed for you. It's been proved to be one of the very few effective neurological pain controls and is of great value to many neuropathy sufferers - the chance to be able to take advantage of its benefits, seems a no-brainer!

Medical Marijuana Policy Catches Up with Science
Bruce Mirken

Shifting Stance on Herbal Medicine by Government and Physicians Benefits Patients

Marijuana’s recorded use as a medicine goes back nearly 5,000 years. The ban on such use is a much newer phenomenon—72 years in the U.S., a bit more or less in other nations and in specific U.S. states—and one whose unhappy tenure is now apparently near an end. Simply put, research has made that ban increasingly untenable.

The two clearest signals of the sea change that is occurring came this past fall. In October, the Obama administration signaled a careful but hugely significant softening of the federal government’s dogmatic hostility toward medical marijuana. Instead of treating state medical marijuana laws either as nullities or as affronts to be attacked any way possible, a memo from the Department of Justice signaled a hands-off policy toward medical marijuana activities when such activities are clearly permitted by state law.

Less than a month later, the American Medical Association (AMA)—the largest and most institutionally conservative U.S. physicians’ group—announced a major reversal of its policy on the issue. The AMA’s old language had urged that marijuana “be retained in Schedule I” of the federal Controlled Substances Act. That classification deemed marijuana as having a high potential for abuse, lacking accepted medical uses in the U.S., and as unsafe for use even under medical supervision.

In contrast, Schedule II—still considered to have high abuse potential but declared to have accepted medical uses and to be safe for use under physician supervision—includes cocaine, morphine, and even methamphetamine. Stranger still is the fact that in pill form, THC—the component responsible for marijuana’s “high,” though not all of its therapeutic effects—is in Schedule III, with controls so mild that phoned-in prescriptions are allowed.

Some of us thought this classification of marijuana was ludicrous from the get-go, but a recent succession of controlled clinical trials has made the case irrefutable. And the AMA has noticed, replacing its old position with this: “Our AMA urges that marijuana’s status as a federal Schedule I controlled substance be reviewed with the goal of facilitating the conduct of clinical research and development of cannabinoid-based medicines and alternate delivery methods.” While carefully avoiding an endorsement of existing state medical marijuana laws, the new AMA stand represents a major shift.

The report accompanying the new policy makes clear that this shift was driven by research into medical marijuana, some of the most interesting of which has looked at marijuana for neuropathic pain. This type of pain, stemming from nerve damage that can be caused by a wide variety of illnesses (including HIV/AIDS, multiple sclerosis, and diabetes) and injuries, is notoriously hard to treat. Standard pain drugs, even opioid narcotics, often provide incomplete relief at best. Sometimes anticonvulsant drugs such as gabapentin can be helpful, but some patients do not respond or cannot tolerate these medications. The need for better treatments is universally recognized.

Trial Results

The first human trial of marijuana for HIV-associated neuropathy, conducted by Donald Abrams and colleagues at the University of California, San Francisco, was published in Neurology in February 2007. Abrams compared smoked marijuana to placebo (marijuana with the cannabinoids removed) in patients who had a chronic pain score of at least 30 on a 100-point scale. The first marijuana cigarette reduced pain 72%, compared to just 15% with placebo. No serious adverse events were reported, and while some experienced the side effects one would expect (like dizziness or disorientation), these were mild enough that the researchers concluded that they “do not represent any serious safety concerns in this short-term study.”

A second HIV neuropathy study, out of UC San Diego and published in 2008 by Neuropsychopharmacology, focused on patients for whom at least two classes of analgesic drugs had failed. Again, smoked marijuana was, as the study concluded, “generally well-tolerated and effective... cannabis was associated with a sizeable (46%) and significantly greater (vs. 18% for placebo) proportion of patients who achieved what is generally considered clinically meaningful pain relief.”

A third University of California study, also published in 2008, found smoked marijuana effective for relief of neuropathic pain from a variety of non-HIV causes, including multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injury. Notably, the researchers explained, “cannabis does not rely on a relaxing or tranquilizing effect (e.g., anxiolysis), but rather reduces both the core component of nociception and the emotional aspect of the pain experience to an equal degree.”

Meanwhile, a 2007 Columbia University study, published in the Journal of Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndromes in August 2007, compared relatively weak marijuana (2.0 or 3.9% THC) with relatively high doses of Marinol (dronabinol), the prescription THC pill. Margaret Haney and colleagues compared the drugs’ effects on a variety of parameters, including caloric intake, weight, mood, sleep, and cognitive performance.

The pill was administered at five or 10 mg four times a day, four or eight times the standard dose for appetite stimulation.

Both treatments were rated as effective, but the 3.9% THC marijuana outperformed even the highest dose of dronabinol at stimulating hunger/desire to eat, increase in daily caloric intake, sleep duration, and in patients’ self-rated quality of sleep. The researchers also tracked patient requests for over-the-counter medications to treat nausea, diarrhea, and upset stomach, and both marijuana and dronabinol reduced these to almost zero. Strikingly, the article notes no effect on patient performance on a series of tests used to measure psychomotor or cognitive functioning: “Compared with placebo, neither marijuana nor dronabinol significantly altered performance on any of the tasks.”

As Dr. Abrams has been known to observe, it’s not surprising that an herbal medicine that’s been safe and effective for 5,000 years is still safe and effective today. But as the evidence piles up in favor of this natural plant product, the pharmaceutical industry is energetically pursuing its own versions of cannabinoid medicines.

Some, such as GW Pharmaceuticals’ Sativex, are made from the plant, while others are synthetic single cannabinoids. No doubt Western medicine’s preference for single chemical entities—along with politicians’ continuing desire not to recognize anything good about marijuana—will exert a powerful pull in favor of prioritizing these new pharmaceutical products over the plant.

And maybe, someday, Big Pharma will produce a synthetic cannabinoid medicine that works better than Marinol, which is unloved by patients. At that point, the policy question will be this: Is it appropriate for government to push customers toward expensive pharmaceutical products, when many can get adequate and safe relief from a plant they can grow in their own backyard?

The right answer is obvious. What will happen in the real world is less so.

http://www.genengnews.com/gen-articles/medical-marijuana-policy-catches-up-with-science/3156/