What is Medical Marijuana?

Wikipedia defines Medical Cannabis (also referred to as medical marijuana) as: the use of Cannabis and its constituent cannabinoids such as THC as a physician recommended form of medicine or herbal therapy.

In 1988, the DEA's Chief Administrative Law Judge, Francis L. Young, ruled after extensive hearings that, "Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known..." Medical Cannabis is now known to have positive effects in the treatment of nausea, lack of appetite, cachexia, unintentional weight loss, anorexia, appetite loss from chemotherapy and radiation, pain, arthritis, migraine, epilepsy, depression, anxiety, PTSD, irritable bowel disease, AIDS, Crohn's disease, colitis, fibromyalgia, chronic pain and certain symptoms of multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injuries. "It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for the DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance..."

Preclinical studies assessing the anticancer properties of cannabinoids have shown that they inhibit the proliferation of a wide range of cancers, including brain cancer and gliomas, prostate cancer, oral cancer, breast cancer, lung cancer, skin cancer, pancreatic cancer, biliary tract cancer and lymphoma.*

Although the medicinal effects of Cannabis are often in dispute, there are several well documented studies showing it's positive effects. Medical marijuana is medicine, just like Morphine, Dilaudid, Megace, Prednisone, Ativan, Zofran and the list goes on. The difference is that Cannabis is a plant, with a variety of compounds, which together provide one of the safest elements available to suffering patients. Every person is unique in how they experience illness. They are also unique in their ability to tolerate the symptoms of illness and the side effects of treatments. The alleviation of symptoms is an ethical imperative for physicians and health care providers. All medicines that demonstrate effective results should be available to them to provide relief.

Getting the conversation started about the benefits of Cannabis proves to be difficult at times. There is an unnecessary stigma associated with marijuana and getting past that takes education. With education, the preconceived notions against the use of medical marijuana for seriously ill patients can be overcome.

* excerpts taken from the ASA and NORML