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Medical Marijuana Sparks Political Controversy
Art Chimes | Voice of America | 12/01/2004

The U.S. Supreme Court heard arguments recently*in a case involving the medicinal use of marijuana, a drug which is illegal in the United States. The high court will decide the case as a constitutional matter because it involves a conflict between federal and state laws. But the science behind the case - the medical value of marijuana - continues to be a matter of intense debate.

The trouble with trying to have an honest scientific discussion about marijuana's value as a medicine is that the drug is a flashpoint of controversy. In the 1960s, millions of American youngsters casually smoked marijuana to get high, protest authority, and celebrate their drug of choice. Today, years into the "war on drugs," public service announcements on television demonize marijuana as a prelude to date rape or a destroyer of families.

The case under consideration by the U.S. Supreme Court involves Angel Raich, a California woman with cancer, chronic pain and other conditions, whose doctor recommended marijuana, also known as cannabis, to alleviate some of her symptoms.

"She uses cannabis to relieve severe chronic pain, anorexia and nausea, and its resulting weight loss and malnutrition," said Frank Lucido, Ms. Raich's physician. "She's tried numerous regular pharmaceutical medications, including Marinol, the synthetic THC, and these have all failed. In fact, they've often made her sicker, while medical cannabis has worked amazingly well for her."

Mrs. Raich and many others who have used marijuana for medical purposes say the drug works wonders. But for scientists, such reports are dismissed as anecdotal evidence - individual stories that do not have the validity of a rigorous scientific experiment.

"Anecdotal information is absolutely a terrible way to make policy, but it doesn't mean that the anecdote is not true," said Janet Joy, co-editor and staff director for a landmark study on medical marijuana. "One of the issues that the group who put together this report struggled with was the lack of good, comprehensive data. That is, plenty of anecdotes, but a very few reliable clinical studies."

That medical marijuana report was published in 1999 by the Institute of Medicine, an arm of the U.S. National Academy of Sciences. The study found enough reason to believe that marijuana could help with symptoms including pain relief and appetite stimulation that it recommended further research into the matter. It cautioned that smoking marijuana for long-term medical use was not a good idea, while admitting that the concern was not very relevant for terminally-ill patients. And it downplayed the negatives, for example dismissing the idea that smoking marijuana causes users to move on to other, more dangerous drugs. The report was commissioned by the White House Office of Drug Control Policy.*Despite the potential seen by the Institute of Medicine and the many advocates for medical marijuana, there has not been a surge in research in the five years since the report was released. One reason is that marijuana, because it is a chemically complex plant with numerous physiological effects, is difficult to study. Another is that marajuana possession is illegal, and that status has had "an enormous impact," according to Janet Joy.

"The anti-drug baggage." she says, "might discourage people from walking into what they might see as a politically-risky field. I don't think that's the biggest deterrent. I think an even greater deterrent is the simple cost of doing the research. And when I say cost, it's not just dollars, but it takes an enormous amount of time to go through all the regulatory hurdles to get approval for it, which you need, because it is a controlled substance in the States."

A synthetic form of THC, one of marijuana's active ingredients, is already on the market. U.S. doctors can prescribe Marinol, or dronabinol, for nausea from chemotherapy and weight loss in AIDS patients. Its manufacturer, Solvay Pharmaceuticals, stresses that it provides a standardized dose and does not contain as many as 400 other substances that are contained in smoked marijuana. But Angel Raich's doctor says it does not work for her, and Janet Joy says it does not act as quickly as smoked marijuana.

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RT in IL

As I stated in my previous post on this subject, the evidence of medical Marijuana's medicinal benefits are largely inadmissable as evidence in a US court. It goes in a big circle like this:

1) In 1937, Marijuana legislated as most dangerous drug in the history of America and possibly humankind - despite protest of lack of scientific evidence, by the American Medical Association.. - and without any research to back it, except anecdotal evidence, in less than 2 minutes of debate, all forms of cannabis are banned.

2) Doctors continue prescribing cannabis, and get threatened with losing their license, fines and jail time. Former medical users are jailed with harsh sentences. Within a couple years of the anti-medical Marijuana law, most all doctors stop prescribing it.

3) The issue seems to fade for the decade of the 1950s.

4) Marijuana makes a huge mainstream comeback due to the young people of the 1960s, rock music, and a way to rebel against authority and war. This allows the government good reason to demonize it further, emphasizing similarities to the jazz movement of the pre-1930s and the threat to young people. Young people of the 1960s have not much recollection or care of Marijuana's previous use as medicine, and the majority of the Marijuana users are using weak Marijuana anyway, leading many to go to harder drugs, to find their kicks.

5) To cap off the 1960s, the US government enacts the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, which by law requires all authority of the land to treat Marijuana as if it were just as equal to or worse than heroin. This act becomes the basis for the beginning in 1972 of President Nixon's "War on Drugs", and referred to constantly by judges when deciding cases and making new laws.

6) The boom in the study of psychology in the '60s and early 1970s leads to some limited medical research on Marijuana. But, referring to Marijuana's listing in the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, and maybe even Elvis Presley's historic visit to the White House [to personally inform Nixon that the new wave of rock music started by the Beatles is turning young kids into dropouts, drug addicts and lazy Communists] - Nixon becomes angered, and launches the "War on Drugs" to try and change people's views by force.

7) Nixon grudgingly allows medical research on Marijuana, determined beforehand the results will show Marijuana to BE that dangerous drug which deserved to be listed in Schedule 1 alongside heroin. In 1974, a study is done which shows Marijuana may be very effective against tumors and possibly cancer. Nixon's top blows off and the study is censored, and eventually all traces of it removed from public record. One small newspaper article is published about it before the scientific evidence is buried.

8) Realizing there may be something good about Marijuana, the administration shifts gears and for the next couple decades, reforms and forms government-sponsored groups who can only do research on Marijuana to try and prove to all that it IS the world's most dangerous drug... or else lose funding, along with their reputation and rights to research Marijuana.

9) Hard drugs such as cocaine become affordable and widely available to the general public in the 1980s. Marijuana is labeled the gateway drug to these harder drugs.. yet scientific studies continue to show from time to time, that medical Marijuana may have medicinal benefits. These studies are discounted by anti-drug zealots, who point to the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 as proof Marijuana is just as bad as heroin. One study in 1988 prompts the head of the DEA to declare "THC is the most benign substance on the planet". He is forced to step down from his post as head of the DEA.

10) Somehow the Federal medical Marijuana program gets started, and begins admitting patients to the program. Then the government abruptly freezes the program, apologizes to the public that it was a mistake, and ends the Federal medical Marijuana program in 1992. Though curiously, the patients admitted to the program are allowed to continue to receive Marijuana from the US government for the rest of their lives, not least of the reason why is that they are benefitting from it medicinally and it is saving their lives.

11) The 1990s see a culmination of cultivation expertise, and new and stronger strains are developed, which exaggerate the medicinal effect to the extent that people are experiencing real results never seen before in treating many conditions of illness. Another factor is the aging of the 1960s generation who continued to use Marijuana and found the newer strains to be medicinally beneficial. It is however anecdotal evidence - because researching any newer strains not produced by the US government was made illegal in 1937.

12) Backlash to the ending of the Federal medical Marijuana program in 1992, leads the public to respond with their anecdotal evidence to the government with California's passage of Proposition XX in 1996. This is the public's voice to the Federal government that it has anecdotal evidence of Marijuana's medicinal benefits.

13) Pointing back to the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, and the anti-medical "Marihuana Tax Act of 1937", [based on anecdotal evidence itself,] the government maintains Marijuana is as bad as heroin, and now in the 1990s, even worse, because some Marijuana is stronger than it was in the 1960s.

14) Word spreads through media and word-of-mouth, about the newly engineered strains of medical Marijuana, and how much better and effective they are than even the supply that the Federal government produces for its remaining medical Marijuana recipients... and word spreads the new Marijuanas are in some cases more effective than Marinol, which is a standardized THC extract lacking elements found in most of the new strains of medical cannabis...

15) Institute of Medicine does tests in 1999, discovers and reports on some of the possible, real benefits from medical Marijuana, if the time and money and effort were allowed to be given to the research process. In this same year the US government begins buying a new strain of medical Marijuana [engineered in a foreign country with less strict laws against researching Marijuana] and begin giving it to military personnel. It is revealed a few years later that this drug made entirely from Marijuana is designed to protect the brain in case of chemical attack. The US government quietly reschedules Marinol and other more powerful cannabis-based medicine in this form. The natural leaf remains scheduled as being as dangerous as heroin.

16) 2004 and this case brought to the Supreme Court. Medical Marijuana research is still banned or blocked from happening in the U.S. The laws still will not allow real, first-hand anecdotal experience in courts, or even any way to validate or disprove of the anecdotal evidence. And the laws still do not allow the kind of true research needed to even begin to show scientific evidence. Doctors are still threatened, patients still facing danger. Ashcroft vs. Raich is another attempt in the vein of California's 1996 proposition, a plea to the Federal government to recognize anecdotal evidence and at least give people suffering from illness a break already. Give the benefit of the doubt.

If there was the discovery of an invention that helped solve a problem better than anything available now or in the past - shouldn't that be celebrated, investigated and cleared up by proving or disproving the facts as soon as possible?
It happens in the computer industry all the time.


The Supreme Court seems a bit dismayed that this is before them. One of them even upset that they didn't go to the FDA first. Come on? Are any of them aware of all the facts leading up to this case? How about the reasons which make up the laws they are supposed to enforce - aren't they aware of what is disputed as fact due to the anecdotal evidence?

I fear the Supreme Court will make the same old error and point back to #1 and #5 of my above list in order to dismiss the case as soon as possible. Without thinking, that's all it'll take for them to throw this out. It's simple enough for them. But they are in the Supreme Court to make worthwhile and lasting decisions which I believe should benefit The People.

It'll require more thought than just relying on what the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937 and Controlled Substances Act of 1970 erroneously say about cannabis.

It's going to require an understanding of the mounds of anecdotal evidence and why it exists. It's going to require taking into consideration that the stronger engineered Marijuana of the 1990s and 2000s is what makes it more beneficial and less dangerous in many ways.

They'll have to see it fully from both sides and quit going on about "street Marijuana", because that is not what medical Marijuana is anything about. It's almost the opposite of "street Marijuana" in purpose, effect, and use.

They should know a person can't just buy "street Marijuana" and expect it to be medicinal.