MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Medical Marijuana

Medical Marijuana

Thesis Statement

Much has been written about marijuana use, including its economic and medicinal functions, negative consequences, and prevention or cessation.

Introduction

In 2001, Canada began a federal programme allowing use of marijuana by patients with terminal illnesses and serious medical conditions (cancer, AIDS, HIV, multiple sclerosis, spinal cord injury or disease, epilepsy and severe forms of arthritis). By August 2006, legal access had been granted to about 2,500 Canadians. Many would-be legal users still face obstacles however, due to an onerous, confusing application process that requires the cooperation of at least one physician.

Due to its discouraging and bureaucratic tenor, the legislation has been called 'unduly restrictive', even 'illusory', by some prominent observers (Canadian Medical Association, 2001; Senate Special Committee on Illegal Drugs, 2002). Family physicians have no guidelines for prescribing marijuana and have been deterred by their governing body from participating in Health Canada's medical marijuana programme. The Canadian Medical Protective Association in addition recommends that doctors ask their patients to sign a release from liability when making application for the use of marijuana.

When marijuana first appeared on the radar of Canadian physicians in the early 1900s, it did not excite a great deal of concern. Of greater interest was tobacco, which, though not yet understood as the killer it would prove to be, did provoke objections of a moral nature. The widespread use at the time of preparations in various tinctures and remedies gave marijuana an air of familiarity.

Discussion

Family physicians of the day were slow to panic and never supported wholesale prohibition of the drug. At the same time, doctors trained in the conventional (allopathic) tradition - ever since the evidence of respiratory damage became irrefutable in the 1960s - have taken the position that any form of smoking is hazardous to health. The possibility that smoke from combusted marijuana might be different qualitatively from tobacco smoke carries little weight for most physicians.

Although studies have shown that smoking marijuana deposits many of the same tars and particulates as tobacco, so far there is no evidence that even very heavy marijuana users develop lung cancers (Kaufman, 2006).

Politics trumps scientific evidence, however. In Canada, where marijuana medicine is concerned, moral sanctimony reigns and 'Reefer Madness' politics prevails. The minority conservative Harper Government has no appetite for offending its traditional base and moving forward with the half-hearted legal reform advanced by several previous federal governments, and the drumbeat of prohibition sounds as loudly from south of the border as it ever has. Senate (Nolin, 2002) and House of Commons (Tornsey, 2002) analyses have come and gone. They excite a few days of media interest - mainly on how they agree with previous studies on the inefficacy of marijuana prohibition - and then the issue is eclipsed by more urgent matters, like softwood lumber disputes. Paralysis or indifference at the highest policy level induces ambivalence and a 'see/hear no evil' disposition among Canadians. There are highly visible and vocal reformers, but, from the standpoint of serious reform, things are stalled ...