Marijuana recommendations

The Senate Committee on Illegal Drugs in Canada promoted the legalization of marijuana, recommending that it be made readily available to persons over 16 years of age. It calls for amnesty for those previously convicted of marijuana possession, approximately 600,000 Canadians. 

Patients seen for flashbacks are treated with oral diazepam (15—30 mg/day for adults) if symptoms of anxiety are severe (Rumack 1987). Neuroleptics, especially haloperidol, have been implicated in a transient increase in visual flashbacks and are not recommended (Moskowitz 1971 Strassman 1984). Risperidone and selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors may also worsen symptoms of hallucinogen persisting perception disorder (Halpern and Pope 2003). The patient needs assurance of the self-limiting nature of the phenomenon and its decreasing frequency of reoccurrence with time. The patient should be reminded that any future use of hallucinogens or marijuana may precipitate similar symptoms (Strassman 1984). 

In 1996, California voters enacted a ballot proposition called the Compassionate Use Act of 1996. This initiative exempted from California anti-marijuana laws a patient or his or her primary caregiver who cultivates or possesses marijuana for medical purposes, providing such use had been recommended by a physician. 

September Under President Gerald Ford the Domestic Council Drug Abuse Task Force issues a report that recommends that enforcement be concentrated on the most dangerous drugs such as heroin, amphetamines, and barbimrates, while marijuana should be given a low priority. November 25 After Colombian police seize an unprecedented 600 kilos of cocaine at the Cali airport. Drug traffickers assert their power by killing 40 people in the city in one weekend. 

The Uniform Controlled Substance Act of 1970, drafted by the National Conference of Commissioners on Uniform State Laws, was designed to make state laws more compatible with the new federal law. Like the federal act, the Uniform Act recommended reducing penalties for marijuana possession... 

Laws about marijuana have been the subject of controversy for many years. When marijuana use spread to the middle class in the 1960s and 1970s, public attitudes toward it softened. In 1970, President Richard Nixon created the National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse. In 1972, the Commission issued its report, "Marijuana A Signal of Misunderstanding." This report recommended the elimination of criminal penalties for possession of small amounts of marijuana.,—... 

In 1977, President Jimmy Carter recommended federal marijuana decriminalization because of the harm being done to young people arrested for its use. However, even the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML), endorses the statement that adolescent marijuana use should be a legitimate concern for all Americans. 25... 

Late in 1997, a group of experts who reviewed all the research available to date reported to the National Institutes of Health about marijuana s therapeutic value. In their forty-five-page report, they indicated that marijuana may counteract weight loss in people with AIDS, spasticity in those with multiple sclerosis and spinal cord injuries, and nausea among patients who are undergoing chemotherapy. They recommended controlled studies to find out if marijuana is useful, for whom, and how to use it. —... 

Marijuana was first mentioned as a medicine in an American medical text in 1843 and in 1854 was listed in the U.S. Dispensatory. The latter year also marked the first written description by Bayard Taylor in The Atlantic Monthly of cannabis intoxication. In the 1850s, recommended medical uses for marijuana included the treatment of gout, rheumatism, tetanus, opiate and alcohol withdrawal, loss of appetite, dysmenorrhea, convulsions, depression, insanity, and asthma. Although its suggested uses were widespread, marijuana never actually achieved popular use in the medical community. The reasons for this include variations in potency of commercial preparations, variability in patients responses, slow onset of oral action, and lack of solubility preventing administration by injection. However, the drug was included in many patent medicine preparations and was officially recognized as a medicine in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia until 1937. In 1937 there were 28 pharmaceuticals that contained cannabis. 

After the enactment of the CSA there followed a period of uncertainty as the use of illicit drugs increased. Because of conflicts between the philosophy of enforcement and that of treatment or toleration, a presidential National Commission on Marijuana and Drug Abuse (NCMDA) was established in 1972. Its task was to report within a year on marijuana, its highest priority, and within 2 years on drug abuse in general. The committee s first report recommended that possession of small amounts of marijuana should be decriminalized (i.e., a finable offense not subject to incarceration). The final report appeared in March 1973 and reconfirmed its original recommendation. Despite these recommendations, President Nixon remained opposed to decriminalization. 

The panel did find short-term effects on "immediate memory, "oral communication and "learning, and said that it sometimes "may trigger temporary confusion and delirium. Noting that "about a quarter of the entire [U.S.] population has tried it at least once, Reiman reported the study group s recommendations (1) more work to produce marijuana derivatives with increased therapeutic action and less side effects, (2) a high-priority national effort to find out more about this drug, and (3) the decriminalization of penalties for personal marijuana use. 

A survey of oncologists on the use of marijuana (on smoking) as an antiemetic drug has indicated that about 50% are willing to recommend it to their patients, and considered it somewhat more effective than dronabinol (oral administration) [122], It is therefore surprising that A9-THC has not been administered so far by inhalation. 

John Kaplan s Marijuana The New Prohibition (New York Meridian Books, 1970) is a balanced study oi mariiuana policy thai concludes with a recommendation for legalization. Also sue Jerome L. Himmelstein s The Strange Career of Marihuana Politics and the Ideology of Control in America (Westport, Connecticut Greenwood Press, 1983) fora thoughtful historical analysis... 

As you know, there is a commission that is supposed to make recommendations to me about this subject, and in this instance, however, I have such strong views that I will express them. I am against legalizing marijuana. Even if this commission does recommend that it be legalized, I will not follow that recommendation... I do not believe that legalizing marijuana is in the best interests of our young people and I do not think it s in the best interests of this country. 

Marijuana use and sale, and arrest and imprisonment of people involved to these ends, has created a situation today which has close parallels with the alcohol prohibition days in America. The solution proposed is decriminalization for use, in many cases, and sale of marijuana on an alcohol-based tax and distribution model, as an alternate recommendation. It is a clear fact that the mere cost involved with enforcement, prosecution and imprisonment today is so phenomenal that it is completely paralyzing the judicial system. 

For quantity planting, one farmer recommends a hill-drop planter which scatters five to ten seeds in a group about every three feet. The crop is later thinned to the best two plants in each oup an ordinary soy bean or corn planter with a fine seed attachment for hill-drop planting will work. As soon as the plants begin to crowd each other they should be thinned out, leaving about four feet for each female to branch out. A large, fully- own female may yield one-half to one pound of marijuana, depending on how many seeds are present. Austrian winter peas or vetch, planted in October and turned under in March... 

There are some limited circumstances in which we recommend smoking marijuana for medical uses.. . . The accumulated data indicate a potential therapeutic value for cannabinoid drugs, particularly for symptoms such as pain relief, control of nausea and vomiting, and appetite stimulation.. . . For patients such as those with AIDS or who are undergoing chemotherapy and who suffer simultaneously from severe pain, nausea, and appetite loss, cannabinoid drugs might offer broad-spectrum relief not found in any other single medication. ... 

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 ... 

Judge Francis L. Young, Marijuana Rescheduling Petition, Docket No. 86-22, Opinion and Recommended Ruling, Findings of Fact, Conclusions of Law and Decision of Administrative Law, September 6, 1988. www.calyx.net/olsen/MEDICAL/YOUNG/ young.html. 

In 1999, the Institute of Medicine (lOM) published a review of the available scientific evidence in an effort to assess the potential health benefits of marijuana and its constituent cannabinoids. The review concluded that smoking marijuana is not recommended for any long-term medical use, and a subsequent lOM report declared, marijuana is not a modern medicine. ... 

The lOM report contained six recommendations. Five of these recommendations involved research, including clinical trials involving marijuana. In a 2004 editorial in Scientific American, the editors stated ... 

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