MEDICAL MARIJUANA

Medical Marijuana

Medical Marijuana

Introduction

Medical marijuana (cannabis sativa) refers to the medically controlled use of marijuana or tetrahydro-cannabinol (THC, the main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana) by patients seeking a means to address medical problems including nausea, vomiting, weight loss, multiple sclerosis, asthma, inflammation, glaucoma, poor appetite, spasticity, chronic pain, and acute pain. There is a consensus that marijuana's medical use developed first in China, spreading to India, Rome, and Greece by the 1st century and eventually reaching Europe and Africa. The use of marijuana as medicine finally spread to the European colonies in North America sometime in the 18th century.

Thus, the use of medically controlled marijuana in the United States predates the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act, which rendered cannabis illegal even with a physician's prescription. Moral crusades condemning the use of marijuana for any purpose prior to the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act and widespread illegal use of marijuana since the passage ofthat law contributes to the contemporary controversy over developing clinical studies to assess the efficacy of medical treatments using marijuana. Although a few states did enact legislation (primarily in the 1970s and 1980s) that allows physicians to prescribe marijuana, federal law prohibiting this practice prevents physicians from prescribing marijuana as medication. Currently, the federal government of the United States does not recognize marijuana as serving any legitimate medical function. However, some synthetic cannabinoids, for example, dronabinol, fall into the Schedule III drug category. These synthetic cannabinoids mimic some of marijuana's medical effects while costing considerably more. However, because they have a standardized dosage, regulators consider these to have a low potential for abuse.

The contemporary debate over medical marijuana consists of two opposing arguments. One side of the debate suggests that medical marijuana is unnecessary because existing drugs address all conditions that medical marijuana may ameliorate. Opponents suggest that medical marijuana is more effective and less expensive than existing legal drugs. Although in the United States medical marijuana legislation is limited to compassionate use laws in approximately 13 states, global legislation (and attitudes) toward both marijuana and medical marijuana vary greatly, and there is a social movement industry centered around marijuana use, particularly decriminalizing-legalizing the medical use of marijuana.

Contemporary Debate

Many studies conducted in the 1970s, some of which resulted in follow-up studies in the 1980s and 1990s, confirm that cannabinoid drugs are effective in treating appetite loss, glaucoma, nausea and vomiting, pain, spasticity, and weight loss. Opponents of decriminalizing-legalizing marijuana for medical use contend that legal drugs, such as dronabinol, alleviate medical conditions as efficiently as marijuana. To this argument, supporters of medical marijuana reply that the presence of an existing treatment does not preclude developing and approving alternative treatments. For example, there is more than one drug therapy approved for the treatment of depression and more than one kind of pain medication.

In addition, the legal cannabinoid drug dronabinol, which mimics the effect of marijuana, has more side effects than inhaled marijuana, costs more, takes longer for a patient to experience the beneficial effects, and presents ingestion difficulty for both vomiting ...