Cancer medicinal marijuana

The FDA, in 1985, gave approval for the use of two psychoactive chemicals from marijuana to prevent nausea and vomiting after chemotherapy in cancer treatment. THC can be prescribed in capsule form for these patients. Research suggests that compounds, other than THC, inhaled when smoking marijuana can also be used for medicinal purposes. Marijuana may help stop the weight loss in AIDS patients, it might lower eye pressnre in people with glaucoma, it may control spasms in multiple sclerosis patients, and it could be used to relieve chronic pain. 

The illicit drug best known for its medicinal use is marijuana (see Appendix A Paton etal. 1973 Roffman 1982 Zinberg 1979). This drug has shown many medicinally-valuable properties, but is best known as an anti-nausea agent for patients receiving cancer or AIDS chemotherapy, and as a treatment for glaucoma- a drug to lower... 

A -frar s-Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) is the major psychoactive (euphoriant) constituent of marijuana. Cannabis sativa. The synthetic form of THC (dronabinol) was approved approximately 20 years ago to treat nausea and vomiting associated with cancer chemotherapy, and it has been used for a lesser amount of time to treat appetite loss in patients with HIV/AIDS (44). More recently, an approximately 1 1 mixture of THC and the structurally related marijuana constituent cannabidiol has been approved in Canada for the alleviation of neuropathic pain and spasticity fcr patients with multiple sclerosis and is administered in low doses as a buccal spray (53). Ccnsiderable interest exists in using cannabinoid derivatives based on THC for medicinal purpcses, but it is necessary to minimize the central nervous system effects of these compounds. 

Malignant glioma is a fairly common, especially aggressive, and often fatal form of brain cancer. Existing treatments for this disease have a low success rate, but recent research on rats indicates that cannabinoids from marijuana may be able to stop the disease in humans. In the research, which was performed in Spain and reported in the March 2000 issue of the scientific journal Nature Medicine, malignant brain tumors either disappeared or were reduced in two-thirds of cancerous rats injected with cannabinoids. The cannabinoid treatments caused no damage to healthy cells. 

Whether they support medical marijuana use or not, many doctors resent the intrusion of nonmedically trained politicians and law enforcement officials into the debate on medical marijuana. One of the most outspoken critics of the government s medical marijuana policy is Lester Grinspoon, M.D., an associate clinical professor of medicine at Harvard Medical School who has written two books on the medicinal use of marijuana and served as an official at NORML. After his son died ftom leukemia (a cancer of the blood system). Dr. Grin-spoon became an avid medical marijuana activist, often recommending marijuana to his cancer and AIDS patients. Speaking about his firsthand experience with the medical use of marijuana, Grinspoon said ... 

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