<p>Medical marajuana should be legal in every state. I think once you see how it imrproves the appetite of chemo patients and reduces the negatve effects it is hard to say there is no medical use for it. I would not think twice about using it if I was on chemo again.</p>
<p>Pain killers are addictive and far more dangerous.</p>
<p>The ridiculous thing is that marijuana is currently classified federally as a schedule I drug, which means that the government considers it worse than cocaine, anabolic steroids, and barbiturates , and on the same level as heroin. Marijuana and heroin are not equivalently bad recreational drugs. </p>
<p>As far as the gateway theory goes, the idea that marijuana is worse than any other drug is pretty much discredited. The studies that people quote (if they bother to do any research at all, rather than just parrot what they’ve been told) show that teens who use marijuana are more likely to use other drugs as an adult. Well great- there’s our smoking gun. But wait! Further research shows that teens that use alcohol and or tobacco as youths have similar adult drug usage rates as the marijuana cohort. Well, that’s not nearly as much fun to say. </p>
<p>In addition, the gateway theory places drugs into a hierarchy that has very little to do with reality. In actual cases, the adult drug users didn’t have any set of progression and the drugs they used were related mostly to what was most readily available, i.e. they don’t go from marijuana to amphetamines to LSD to cocaine and then to heroin. The reason drug users tend to have used marijuana at some point is that it is usually the first illegal drug people run into in the United States.</p>
<p>What the data really shows is that using any substance as a youth slightly- emphasis on slightly- increases a person’s chance of using “hard” drugs later, it doesn’t matter whether that drug is alcohol, tobacco, or marijuana, and the numbers show that alcohol and tobacco have higher rates of hard drug usage as adult in subjects who started as teens.</p>
<p>So what we really learn from all the data is that marijuana is like a bicycle. Most people in the U.S. have ridden a bicycle at least once in their life, but out of that population, very few of those people go on to regularly ride motorcycles. However, the people that ride motorcycles have almost certainly ridden a bicycle at some point in their life.</p>
<p>TL: DNR The “Gateway Theory” is bunk, believed by people who think Reefer Madness was a documentary.</p>
<p>Son of Opie,</p>
<p>Thanks for your post. I find it ludicrous that the Feds consider this on the levels of those other drugs.</p>
<p>As one of our posters mentioned, she said she works with patients who are terminal and the meds have to be picked up after the patient dies for fear that family members may use these highly addictive pain meds.</p>
<p>No problem. If you want another rant, ask me about the anti-vaccine movement ;)</p>
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<p>Are you sure about this? My understanding is that THC is detectable in the blood for only a matter of hours, whereas 9-carboxy-THC (a product of the body’s metabolism of THC) is detectable in the blood for at most 10 days to 2 weeks (and up to a month or so in urine).</p>
<p>Additionally, I believe that the levels of THC in the blood can reveal how recently the smoking took place. Seems like that could be of help in determining if a driver is impaired, but I don’t know for sure how infallible these tests would be for determining criminal or civil liability.</p>
<p>I don’t have anything against marijuana in general, and most certainly not for medical use specifically. My only worries are about adding to the already high amount of impaired drivers on the road.</p>
<p>We had a guy looking for office space in a suite of offices I share. We decided against it, because of concerns about the… clientele it would attract. We (a group of psychiatrists, a few therapists), met with him before forming an opinion. This doc had a sketchy work history, was not at all convincing about the quality of his evaluations, and we didn’t like the idea that he made a diagnosis, but did not follow the patients. That makes it hard to make a convincing argument about positive outcomes.</p>
<p>In California</p>
<p>Physician Responsibilities</p>
<p>The physician caring for the qualified patient must fulfill the following criteria and responsibilities: </p>
<pre><code>* Possess a license to practice medicine or osteopathy in California issued by the Medical Board of California or the Osteopathic Medical Board of California. This license must be in good standing.
<p>"diagnosis "
<p>Nobody wants more impaired drivers on the road, this is true.</p>
<p>I would highly doubt that marijuana users would be accelerating too fast, however. It would probably be fairly easy to spot them on the road - they would be the ones going REALLY SLOW. </p>
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<p>[DEA</a>, Driving While Drugged Factsheet](<a href=“http://www.justice.gov/dea/driving_drugged.html]DEA”>http://www.justice.gov/dea/driving_drugged.html)</p>
<p>The good news is that there probably won’t be high speed chases following a suspect under the influence of marijuana. </p>
<p>After the person in my family who uses medical marijuana smokes it, he can barely walk to the kitchen.</p>
<p>The funny thing is, the final determinant of the effectiveness of most treatments is simply whether the patient feels better.</p>
<p>Take depression. There is no test to determine whether Zoloft was the right drug to treat a given depressed patient. “Here’s some Zoloft. Does it make you feel better? Oh, good. That must have been the right treatment. Keep taking it.”</p>
<p>“You’re in chronic pain? Smoke this. Feel better? Great, keep smoking it.” Treatment complete.</p>
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<p>I don’t believe that speed is the only variable that would produce an unsafe driver. The person described above does not need to be behind the wheel of a car, and you can be sure that if MJ is legalized, we will be seeing even more of these impaired people on the road.</p>
<p>I don’t know that this is good enough reason on its own to keep MJ illegal, though. Alcohol is legal and can cause impairment, and narcotic pain killers and other drugs are legal with a prescription and can impair driving. So potential for causing driver impairment should not necessarily be the deciding factor on whether or not to make a substance legal. I guess I’m a little ambivalent about it.</p>
<p>When I was suffering from chronic debilitating migraines in my twenties and thirties, if the medical marijuana law was available to me, I probably would have sought out a prescription.</p>
<p>I would have the aura and within a couple of minutes, a full blown migraine with vomiting and nausea and dizziness.</p>
<p>The migraine meds available to me at the time were expensive, didn’t work like they should and I had side effects from them, and my headaches were getting more severe without warning. The docs tried all kinds of prescriptions for old school narcotics, which I hated taking because I felt so loopy and it would impact my ability to work or drive. I would try to manage the pain of the first day with prescription pain relief and then take OTCs the next couple of days so I could function without being medicated with addictive drugs.</p>
<p>I would feel bad for two to three days after having one. It was awful. Some months I would have 2-3. </p>
<p>You bet I would have tried this option if it was available to me at the time. It was no way to live.</p>
<p>I’m in favor of legalization and regulation, for many of the above stated reasons. Mostly, though, when somebody who is having chemo is able to eat, there is a huge increase in survival rates. Just that alone is a good enough reason for me.</p>
<p>Regarding #48</p>
<p>"Take depression. There is no test to determine whether Zoloft was the right drug to treat a given depressed patient. “Here’s some Zoloft. Does it make you feel better? Oh, good. That must have been the right treatment. Keep taking it.”</p>
<p>“You’re in chronic pain? Smoke this. Feel better? Great, keep smoking it.” Treatment complete." </p>
<p>Actually, in many psychiatric settings (as in one in which you want a third party to reimburse you) , you have to document measurable expected outcomes, like ability to work more days, take care of activities of daily living, or reduce episodes of aggression from 4 a day to 2 a week.</p>
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<p>Of course, I was oversimplifying, but this still relies largely on self-reported results.</p>
<p>That is true. </p>
<p>Interestingly, one of the more obvious measures, is the ability to maintain employment, since without it, your insurance options become more and more limited. What often happens is, if your patient doesn’t maintain employment, they lose their “private” insurance, and unless you accept the “public” option (sorry…), they soon drop out of your practice.</p>
<p>This is meant to be an example of an objective measure, as opposed to one based on self report. .</p>
<p>That’s an interesting point to ponder. I had never thought about that.</p>
<p>For those of you who did not realize that Medical Marijuana dispensaries even existed: as of January this year, there are more M. m. dispensaries in Los Angeles than there are Starbucks.</p>
<p>I’m just kind of sitting back absorbing the dialogue on this thread. Am learning some very interesting things and am trying to understand all sides of the issue. </p>
<p>Thanks to the poster who gave me an example of how it works in Montana.</p>
<p>^^ Ah, Teriwtt, but as always, there’s more to the story.</p>
<p>A patient with a card in MT(who either doesn’t have a green thumb or the patience to grow their own) can turn over their ‘rights’ to 6 plants to a ‘caregiver’ who then becomes the surrogate. These professional ‘caregivers’ can accumulate rights to 100s of plants and basically becomes a distributor. And if s/he has a bumper crop, well, I guess its a shame to waste it. There suddenly are many medical marijuana store fronts popping up. The finances of it all, I don’t know.</p>
<p>As I said, currently being severely abused and ticking off everyone who voted for it.</p>
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<p>Whoa. You can stand in almost any spot in L.A. and be within walking distance of at least one Starbucks.</p>
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<p>This has created a whole new meaning to the term ‘caregiver’. I don’t think any of the ‘caregivers’ I encounter at work have any clue what ‘caregiver’ in Montana means!</p>
<p>When I read the website about California’s medical marijuana laws, it, too, refers to caregivers. Until I read your post above, I assumed it meant the kind of caregiver that I’m familiar with.</p>