Marijuana’s success in medical use explored

Bucks County Courier Times (Source)

The words “marijuana” and “cannabis” can conjure up images of drug addicts and criminal behavior.

That’s why the eight people attending a seminar about the drug at the Levittown branch of the Bucks County Public Library said they didn’t want to reveal their names to the newspaper.

But Saturday’s two-hour seminar by the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws, or NORML, was about the medical uses of marijuana as well as its history in the U.S. and other countries. Several people threw curious glances into the meeting room but did not enter.

Those who gathered wanted to learn more about efforts in Pennsylvania to legalize the drug for medical use. Just about everyone in the room knew someone with an illness who either uses marijuana illegally to find relief or who can’t find relief using current treatments.

“It’s so stigmatized. But getting sick would change your mind overnight,” said one man, who didn’t want his name used. “It’s like prohibition of alcohol. That didn’t work, and alcohol is more deadly.”

A woman and her son came to the meeting from Lancaster because they know people who they believe would benefit from medical marijuana use. One is an AIDS patient and another suffers detrimental side-effects from the drugs he takes for manic-depression.

“When you buy marijuana illegally, you don’t know what you’re getting,” the woman said.

This year, state Rep. Mark Cohen and six co-sponsors introduced House Bill 1393 to make the medical use of the marijuana legal. If passed, the Barry Busch Compassionate Use Medical Marijuana Act of 2009 would allow patients who get clearance from their doctors and the state to possess and cultivate cannabis for therapeutic purposes. The measure also seeks to allow the state-licensed distribution and sale of medical marijuana by authorized “compassion centers.”

Currently, 13 other states have medical marijuana laws: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode Island, Vermont, and Washington.

“This year has seen the most movement toward the end of prohibition,” said Chris Goldstein, a spokesperson for NORML. He’s on the board of directors for the New Jersey chapter of the national organization, founded in 1970. New Jersey is also considering a medical marijuana bill.

By legalizing the drug, patients would be ensured of the highest quality and wouldn’t have to worry about contaminants, fungus or toxic substances on the marijuana, said Goldstein.

NORML reports that something like 14 million people use marijuana regularly, according to federal government surveys.

A March 2001 Pew Research Center poll reported that 73 percent of Americans support making marijuana legally available for doctors to prescribe. In a 2004 AARP poll, 72 percent of respondents said they agree that “Adults should be allowed to legally use marijuana for medical purposes if a physician recommends it.”

The National Institutes of Health and The National Institutes of Drug Abuse are funding research into medical marijuana applications, Goldstein said.

Studies and actual use have proven effective in treating symptoms and treatment side-effects of serious illnesses such as AIDS, cancer and neurological disorders including Lou Gehrig’s Disease and multiple sclerosis. Details about these studies as well as endorsements by health organizations and state programs are posted on NORML’s Web site, at norml.org.

“This is not some sort of underground issue. It’s a mainstream topic,” said Goldstein.

The organization advocates responsible use of the drug. It’s active in trying to get marijuana off the federal Drug Enforcement Administration’s Schedule I drug classification, which defines a drug as having no accepted medical use and a high potential for abuse.

However, marijuana has been used in the United States and around the world for generations, said Goldstein. Until the Marijuana Tax Stamp Act of 1937, the substance was legal in this country, and doctors used it to relieve a variety of ailments, he said.

Derek Rosenzweig, co-chairman of the Philadelphia chapter of NORML, is looking forward to the passage of House Bill 1393, which has been referred to the House Committee on Health and Human Services.

“We’ve talked to almost every member of the committee. We’re hoping this bill gets passed in two years,” said Rosenzweig. He and Goldstein are also members of Pennsylvanians For Medical Marijuana.

To people with debilitating diseases or chronic pain, marijuana can be the only agent of relief, Rosenzweig said.

He is a passionate advocate and joined NORML after his father was diagnosed with Reflex Sympathetic Dystrophy Syndrome, a chronic pain condition.

“It’s 24-7 pain,” said Rosenzweig’s mother, Faith Rosenzweig of Bristol Township. She petitions legislators to consider the advantages of marijuana as medicine.

Marijuana Goes Mainstream

by Jonah Lehrer for The Atlantic (source)

The LA Times profiles the normalization of pot:

After decades of bubbling up around the edges of so-called civilized society, marijuana seems to be marching mainstream at a fairly rapid pace. At least in urban areas such as Los Angeles, cannabis culture is coming out of the closet.

At fashion-insider parties, joints are passed nearly as freely as hors d’oeuvres. Traces of the acrid smoke waft from restaurant patios, car windows and passing pedestrians on the city streets — in broad daylight. Even the art of name-dropping in casual conversation — once limited to celebrity sightings and designer shoe purchases — now includes the occasional boast of recently discovered weed strains such as “Strawberry Cough” and “Purple Kush.”

Public sentiment is more than anecdotal; earlier this year, a California Field Poll found that 56% of California voters supported legalizing and taxing marijuana. Last month, voters in Oakland overwhelmingly approved a tax increase on medical marijuana sales, the first of its kind in the country, and Los Angeles Councilwoman Janice Hahn has proposed something similar for the City of Angels. “In this current economic crisis, we need to get creative about how we raise funds,” Hahn said in a statement.

I recently moved to Los Angeles and I’m still adjusting to all the medical marijuana stores – there are two within a mile of my apartment. And it’s not just the dispensaries, with their parking lots full of fancy cars – it’s the Amsterdamesque attitude. Light up a joint and people ask for a hit; light up a cigarette and they give you a dirty look.

My hunch is that the normalization of marijuana is here to stay. In recent years, there’s been increasing interest among scientists in cannabinoid receptors, which are the cell receptors activated when you inhale some THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. (There’s a grand scientific tradition of naming cell receptors after the drugs that activate them, which is why you also have opiate receptors and nicotinic receptors. For some still mysterious reason, a chemical in the tropical shrub cannabis sativa is able to perfectly mimic our natural neurotransmitters. As Roger Nicoll, a neuroscientist at UCSF, puts it: “The brain makes its own marijuana.” Smoking a joint just helps you make more of it.) While these cannabinoid receptors have been targeted for the treatment of a wide variety of ailments and disorders, from obesity to chronic pain, I think they might hold the most promise for the treatment of anxiety. There’s now good evidence that mice lacking a normal cannabinoid receptor have difficulty forgetting or unlearning fearful memories. This suggests that endocannabinoids – the natural molecules in your brain that work like THC – help the brain get over the negative emotions  triggered by past trauma. Of course, this shouldn’t be too surprising: Despite the fact marijuana was first cultivated almost 10,000 years ago, modern medicine has yet to find another substance that can melt away our fears with such slick efficiency.

Neuroscientists now believe that a faulty endocannabinoid system might play a part in all sorts of anxiety syndromes, from post-traumatic stress disorder to irrational phobias. The Holy Grail of Big Pharm would be a THC compound targeted to the specific parts of our brain—like the amygdala—that modulate our sense of fear. Such a pill would give us the anti-anxiety effects of pot, but without the giddiness, hunger or irrational urge to watch The Big Lebowski. While scientists still don’t know if such a site-specific pill is possible—can we just get our amygdala high?—experiments done in the next few years should help resolve the issue. If such a pill ever hits the market, of course, I think it would dramatically alter the way in which most Americans (and not just those in my liberal zip code) think about marijuana. Weed would no longer be synonymous with Cheech and Chong, or Jeff Spicoli, or Harold and Kumar. Instead, it just might be the new Prozac.