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Medical Marijuana
Sciam Observations (blog of Scientific American) has a post about medical marijuana, sparked by an article in the New York Times.
The sum up: The FDA says there is no evidence for medical use, but a report from the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences says there is. Meanwhile researchers are having a hard time addressing the issue because of federal regulations. It's a political mess.
I think reasonable people can differ over public policy regarding marijuana use, but it seems to me that we ought to at least get to the bottom of the medical issue and go from there.
An interesting bit from the Times:
Opponents of efforts to legalize marijuana for medicinal uses suggest that marijuana is a so-called gateway drug that often leads users to try more dangerous drugs and to addiction.
But the Institute of Medicine report concluded there was no evidence that marijuana acted as a gateway to harder drugs. And it said there was no evidence that medical use of marijuana would increase its use among the general population.
If marijuana does have medicinal value, does its use for medical purposes violate the principles of the Word of Wisdom?
4 comments:
I think it is like alcohol. NyQuil is not proscribed.
There is a distinct lack of precision to this debate. If I understand correctly, the debate is not about cannibus per se (the presumed active ingredient), but rather about smoked marijuana. If the benefits could be realized through encapsulated, prescribed cannibus, I don't think you would have any argument about "gateway drugs" or even the Word of Wisdom. However, advocates of medical marijuana insist that only smoked marijuana works. Until they can explain why it has to be smoked, I will remain suspicious of their motives. And the Institute's assertion that "there is no evidence..." is meaningless. I want to see evidence that marijuana is not a gateway drug. "There is no evidence.." could just mean that nobody has bother to gather any yet.
FYI, the IOM report is available here.
From page 99:
---quote---
There are strikingly regular patterns in the progression of drug use from adolescence to adulthood. Because it is the most widely used illicit drug, marijuana is predictably the first illicit drug that most people encounter. Not surprisingly, most users of other illicit drugs used marijuana first.81,82 In fact, most drug users do not begin their drug use with marijuana—they begin with alcohol and nicotine, usually when they are too young to do so legally.82,90 [emphasis added - Jared]
The gateway analogy evokes two ideas that are often confused. The first, more often referred to as the ''stepping stone'' hypothesis, is the idea that progression from marijuana to other drugs arises from pharmacological properties of marijuana itself.82 The second is that marijuana serves as a gateway to the world of illegal drugs in which youths have greater opportunity and are under greater social pressure to try other illegal drugs. The latter interpretation is most often used in the scientific literature, and it is supported, although not proven, by the available data.
The stepping stone hypothesis applies to marijuana only in the broadest sense. People who enjoy the effects of marijuana are, logically, more likely to be willing to try other mood-altering drugs than are people who are not willing to try marijuana or who dislike its effects. In other words, many of the factors associated with a willingness to use marijuana are, presumably, the same as those associated with a willingness to use other illicit drugs. Those factors include physiological reactions to the drug effect, which are consistent with the stepping stone hypothesis, but also psychosocial factors, which are independent of drug-specific effects. There is no evidence that marijuana serves as a stepping stone on the basis of its particular physiological effect. One might argue that marijuana is generally used before other illicit mood-altering drugs, in part, because its effects are milder; in that case, marijuana is a stepping stone only in the same sense as taking a small dose of a particular drug and then increasing that dose over time is a stepping stone to increased drug use.
Whereas the stepping stone hypothesis presumes a predominantly physiological component of drug progression, the gateway theory is a social theory. The latter does not suggest that the pharmacological qualities of marijuana make it a risk factor for progression to other drug use. Instead, the legal status of marijuana makes it a gateway drug.82
---end quote---]
From page 100:
---quote---
In the sense that marijuana use typically precedes rather than follows initiation into the use of other illicit drugs, it is indeed a gateway drug.
---end quote---
When you ask, "...does its use for medical purposes violate the principles of the Word of Wisdom?"
Do you mean "principles" or do you mean "practice/enforcement"?
I haven't seen any non-anecdotal evidence that smoked marijuana is more effective/safer than other medical alternatives, so I think that in this respect it violates the principles of the WoW. Perhaps there are cases where it is the only thing that will help someone. In those cases, I wouldn't see any difference between smoked marijuana and a host of other psychoactive drugs.
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