Pubdate: Wed, 27 Feb 2013
Source: Metro Times (Detroit, MI)
Column: Higher Ground
Copyright: 2013 C.E.G.W./Times-Shamrock
Contact:  http://www.metrotimes.com
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/1381
Author: Larry Gabriel

WHAT ABOUT THE PATIENTS?

Stubborn Legal Questions Vex Patients' Search for Medicine

When it comes to medical cannabis, there is a lot of attention paid 
to legal issues: Is it legal? Who can have it? Where can you have it? 
How much can you have? Can you buy it? Can you sell it? What's legal? 
What's not?

There's a reason for this uncertainty: Cops keep busting people, and 
prosecutors keep trying to shut down their operations and put them in jail.

It seems that folks in law enforcement can't change their thinking; 
this is a medical issue that's still being addressed with a drug-war mentality.

This kind of approach isn't just wrongheaded: it is incredibly 
hurtful. Instead of limiting access and making people jump through 
hoops before they can get relief from their ailments, the primary 
concern should be about helping patients at every level possible.

"The focus on businesses and whether they are legal has not put 
patients and their needs in the forefront," says Brandy Zink, 
director of the Michigan chapter of Americans for Safe Access. "This 
is not criminal defense; this is patient advocacy. We need our 
Legislature to become patients' advocates."

Are some people abusing the system? Probably, but those people should 
not be the focal point when determining regulation and use. It should 
be the patients.

Here's one way to look at it: New drivers pretty quickly figure out 
that most people break traffic laws on a regular basis. They drive 
too fast. They don't come to a complete halt at stop signs. They 
switch lanes without signaling. As a result, there are horrible 
traffic fatalities every day - about 32,000 per year in the United 
States. Yet no one is calling for an end to driving.

Here's another example: Millions of families serve wine or other 
alcoholic beverages to their underage children on special occasions. 
And many Christian churches serve small amounts of wine to underage 
people at Sunday services. I seriously doubt that the drink many have 
to celebrate their 21st birthday is their first. In many social 
situations it's normal to have someone shove a drink into your hand. 
If everyone else is drinking, the peer pressure to imbibe is 
tremendous. Yet 2 million people are diagnosed with alcoholic liver 
disease in the United States each year, and 27,000 people die from 
it. And there are numerous other ailments directly associated with 
alcohol use, from heart disease to high blood pressure and dementia. 
Nobody dies from toxic marijuana poisoning. There are problems 
associated with marijuana use, but none of them are inherent in the 
plant the way that they are with alcohol and tobacco - two substances 
that are in common and legal use in the United States.

The biggest blockade against the medical use of marijuana is the U.S. 
Drug Enforcement Agency's official designation of marijuana as a 
Schedule 1 drug with no accepted medical use. That pretty much cuts 
most scientific study off at the knees. How can anyone claim a 
medical use for marijuana when the government says there is none? It 
certainly stops almost any nongovernmental study from getting funded. 
And almost all government studies are looking for the bad effects of 
marijuana on adults. So far they haven't found much.

Mostly there are government contradictions. The same government that 
says there are no medical applications for marijuana has been running 
the Compassionate Investigative New Drug Program since 1976. There 
were 13 patients in the program when the government closed it to new 
applicants but continued to provide about 300 joints per month to 
each patient. Today only four of them are still alive, but they 
continue to receive their federal pot, grown at the University of Mississippi.

Not only is the government supplying medical marijuana to patients, 
but since 2003 it has held a patent titled "Cannabinoids as 
antioxidants and neuroprotectants." The patent claims finding 
"cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety 
of oxidation associated diseases ..." Cannabinoids are active 
substances in marijuana, such as THC and CBD, that have effects in 
the human body.

A third piece of evidence belying the government position comes from 
the National Cancer Institute (NCI), a component of the U.S. National 
Institutes of Health. In 2011, the NCI posted a notice on its website 
that concluded: "Cannabinoids appear to kill tumor cells but do not 
affect their non-transformed counterparts and may even protect them 
from cell death."

Marijuana is indeed medicine. That said, starting this week, the next 
few Higher Ground columns will focus on the medical end of cannabis. 
I will be looking at what people are using it for and the results 
they claim to be getting. I'll still report legal issues as they 
arise, but not in depth unless something really, really big happens.

So let's get to it.

Under the Michigan Medical Marihuana Act, the conditions that qualify 
a patient to use the plant are: cancer, HIV/AIDS, glaucoma, hepatitis 
C, ALS, Crohn's disease, agitation of Alzheimer's disease and nail 
patella syndrome, and a chronic or debilitating disease or medical 
condition that produces nausea, wasting syndrome, severe or chronic 
pain, seizures and muscle spasms.

A panel convened by the state Department of Licensing and Regulatory 
Affairs (LARA) is considering adding Parkinson's disease and Post 
Traumatic Stress Disorder to the registry. During a meeting in 
January, the panel recommended Parkinson's but rejected PTSD. 
However, the final vote won't be until late March.

Dave Brogren, president of Cannabis Patients United, a nonprofit 
dedicated to maintaining the core principles of the MMMA, sits on 
that panel. Early on after the MMMA was passed, Brogren was active in 
the demonstrations around what many saw as officials trying to 
subvert the act. But he wasn't comfortable with the way some of those 
things went, so he and a few others organized CPU in order to more 
quietly work on the issues.

"I thought my place was better being on the panel and dealing with 
legislative issues than being an activist," Brogren says. "Those are 
all positive things you can do to help patients."

CPU is not one of the groups you will see officially at public 
demonstrations, although some of its members might be there. The 
group takes no official position on many of the issues being fought 
over, such as dispensaries and pending legislation, and generally 
doesn't speak to the press.

Here is his description of the process the panel took in considering 
Parkinson's disease and PTSD.

Some weeks before a meeting each panel member receives a binder with 
the petition for adding a condition along with supporting materials, 
generally a few hundred pages, such as studies and anecdotal evidence.

For the doctors on the panel the "scientific studies aren't good 
enough because they're usually not American," Brogren says.

The panel meets after members have had time to review the materials 
and takes a preliminary vote on the condition, then it hears 
testimony from patients and others concerned with the condition. It 
seems weird to me that they vote before hearing any testimony, but 
the preliminary vote is not final. In the case of PTSD the panel 
voted 4-3 against adding it, with two members abstaining. However, 
after hearing testimony, one of the members who abstained wanted to 
reopen the vote.

"This nurse testified and her testimony was just haunting," Brogren 
says. "She had seen so much trauma she couldn't sleep any more. The 
marijuana helps her sleep."

However, under Roberts Rules of Order, the vote could only be 
reopened if a member of the winning side requests it. The vote stands 
until a final vote is taken in late March. Even then it's not 
binding. Ultimately the head of LARA decides whether to add the 
condition to the registry. In the meantime, the state panel has 
received petitions to consider adding asthma and autism to the MMMA 
registry. Those will be considered at upcoming meetings.

Most of the medical uses of cannabis are to alleviate symptoms 
associated with disease or side effects of the treatments for some 
illnesses. But as the NCI statement reports, there is growing 
evidence that the plant may be helpful in curing some cancers. In the 
next Higher Ground I'm going to discuss some of the science that has 
concluded that, and look at Simpson oil, the substance that some 
folks claim cures cancer, and talk to a couple of local patients who 
are using the oil.
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom