February 2008 Spanish scientists investigated allergies to cannabis leaves. They found out that subjects with an allergy against tomato have a high risk to also have an allergy to cannabis leaves. (Source: de Larramendi CH, et al. Int Arch Allergy Immunol 2008;146(3):195-202) April/May 2006 FDA Announces Decision - Medical Marijuana is NOT Approved. Many disagree with their findings, particularly in light of the 1999 Institute of Medicine report citing potential benefits. All agree more research is needed. Advocates think FDA will stand in the way as DEA has done (Drug Enforcement Administration). It Is Time for Marijuana to Be Reclassified as Something Other Than a Schedule I Drug Posted 08/26/2005 George D. Lundberg, MD Source: MEDSCAPE For many decades, marijuana has been the American poster child for how not to deal with a troubling psychoactive substance. By US law, a Schedule I substance is one with no recognized medical use and great potential harm to the user. Marijuana has been classified as a Schedule I substance for many decades,[1] along with heroin and LSD. Judging from its easy availability, low cost, and widespread current use, such a restrictive classification has failed to retard its use. In fact, enforcement of unrealistic laws regarding marijuana has probably caused more harm than marijuana itself. Although far from harmless by toxicologic or pathologic criteria, marijuana is much less dangerous than many other substances in less restrictive schedules, like morphine and cocaine, not to mention the unscheduled legal mass killers tobacco and alcohol. Of course, marijuana does have proven medical usefulness for some conditions.[2] People obey laws they believe to be just; they do not obey the marijuana laws because they know they are unjust, even absurd. Kids quickly see through lies. Many kids may discount the proper scare tactics about really dangerous drugs, like heroin and PCP, because the dangers of marijuana have been so overstated. Ninety percent of Americans believe that the federal government should not prosecute medical users of marijuana, despite the newest "federal foolishness" of the recent Supreme Court decision against it.[3] This commonsense position of the people should give pause to any overzealous prosecutors who might have real trouble finding a jury that would convict a seriously ill user of medical marijuana. The court decision now provides the Congress and the Drug Enforcement Administration with a sterling opportunity to join with the population they are supposed to be serving and with the good science of the 10 states that have authorized the controlled use of medical marijuana and reclassify it at some level other than Schedule I. That's my opinion. I'm Dr. George Lundberg, Editor of MedGenMed. References Department of Justice. Drug Enforcement Administration. Marijuana scheduling petition: denial of petition: remand (Pocket No. 86-22). Fed Regist. 1992;57:10489-10508. Kassirer JP. Federal foolishness and marijuana. N Engl J Med. 1997;336:1184-1187. Available at: http://content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/336/5/366 Accessed August 19, 2005. US News - MSNBC.com. Should the federal government prosecute medical marijuana users? Available at: http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8118359 Accessed August 19, 2005. George D. Lundberg, MD, Editor-in-Chief, Medscape General Medicine; Adjunct Professor of Health Policy, Harvard School of Public Health, Boston, Massachusetts Sent 8/30/05 by Ann Fonfa (Medscape asked to publish this) Dear Dr. Lundberg, Once again a marvelous editorial, and much needed. We have beer commercials that make fools of young men at the same time as marijuana persecution continues. Cancer patients whisper to each other of their desire to 'try' it to relieve unbearable nausea while studies show it may have many other medical uses. Thank you for speaking up. Ann Fonfa President The Annie Appleseed Project www.annieappleseedproject.org Politics harming research on marijuana's anti-cancer properties? by Indo-Asian News Service , New Kerala September 22nd, 2004 Health India] Washington, Sep 22 : Even as research findings confirm marijuana's anti-cancerous properties, a stoic disinterest on the part of the US government to fund further research raises questions about its priorities, UPI reports. Results of clinical research at Madrid's Complutense University showing components in marijuana derived from the cannabis plant inhibits the growth of cancerous brain tumours have been published by the journal of American Association of Cancer Research. The finding that cannabis restricts the blood supply to Gliobastoma multiforme tumours, an aggressive brain tumour that kills some 7,000 people in the US every year, has been released in the backdrop of scant media coverage of the topic in the US as its government has not acknowledged the research abroad. That is despite the fact that the first experiment documenting pot's anti-tumour effects took place in 1974 at the Medical College of Virginia at the behest of the US government. The results of that study, reported in August 1974, were that marijuana's psychoactive component "THC slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers and a virus-induced leukaemia in laboratory mice and prolonged their lives by as much as 36 percent". Despite the early success, US officials banished the study and refused to fund follow up research until conducting a similar -- though secret -- clinical trial in the mid-1990s. That $2 million study, conducted by the US National Toxicology Programme, concluded that mice and rats administered high doses of THC over long periods had greater protection against malignant tumours than untreated controls. However, government researchers shelved the results, which only became public after the findings were leaked in 1997 to a medical journal, which in turn forwarded the story to the national media. Since the completion of that trial, the US government has yet to fund a single additional study examining the drug's potential anti-cancer properties leaving room for conjecture whether federal bureaucrats were putting politics over health and safety of patients. Scientists overseas picked up where US researchers abruptly left off. In 1998, a research team at Complutense's Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology discovered that THC could selectively induce programme cell death in brain tumours without affecting healthy cells. In 2000, they reported in the journal Nature Medicine that injections of synthetic THC eradicated malignant gliomas (brain tumours) in one-third of treated rats and prolonged life in another third by six weeks. Last year, researchers at the University of Milan in Naples reported that non-psychoactive compounds in marijuana inhibited the growth of glioma cells in a dose-dependent manner and selectively targeted and killed malignant cells through a process known as apoptosis. Researchers reported earlier this month that marijuana's constituents inhibited the spread of brain cancer in human tumour biopsies from patients who had failed standard cancer therapies. Indo-Asian News Service, 9/04 Our source: www.safeaccessnow.org |
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