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Chris Chiodo
Prof. Silva
ENG 3010
December 20, 2010
Medical Marijuana
Summary
This essay concerns the controversy of medical marijuana and aims to dispel
many of the myths surrounding marijuana and show that marijuana can be a safe and
effective medicine. Arguments are made against many of the negative myths about
marijuana and evidence is shown to support these arguments. Then evidence is presented
to show the beneficial effects of using marijuana medically and the various aliments
marijuana treats. Finally, it is argued that medical marijuana is safer and more effective
than many prescription and OTC drugs that are used today. The goal of this paper is to
give the audience a deeper understanding regarding the truth about marijuana and its
medicinal use.
Biography
Christopher Chiodo is a student at Wayne State University that hopes to get a
degree in nursing to go on to become a psychiatric nurse. He has taken several courses
about the nature and effect of drugs both legal and illegal. He has been a strong supporter
of medical marijuana ever since he first tried it and found it to be an effective treatment
to his depression, anxiety, and eating problems. Since then he has devoted much of his
time to the study of marijuana.
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The issue of medical marijuana has become a hot button issue lately. There is
much controversy surrounding the thought of using an illicit substance that is widely
thought as being bad for you as medicine. However, more and more information is
coming out about marijuana. In addition to studies showing that marijuana has medicinal
benefits, there is much information showing that marijuana isn’t as bad for you as most
people think. Medical marijuana can be an effective form of medicine because it has
many medicinal benefits, such as relief from pain and nausea, while having few negative
side effects.
In light of all the information and controversy surrounding medical marijuana, it’s
hard not to have an opinion about medical marijuana, especially given marijuana’s
popularity as an illicit drug. Considering that over 83 million Americans over age 12
have smoked marijuana at least once, is hard not to encounter marijuana at some point in
your life. If you’re a person that supports medical marijuana, you most likely believe that
marijuana is harmless and might even use marijuana on a regular basis. However, if
you’re like the average American that opposes marijuana, you probably believe that
marijuana is a harmful, dangerous drug. As a person that opposes marijuana, you’ve
probably been offered marijuana at once in your life and you probably either refused or
tried it a few times or maybe ever used it on a regular basis for a period of time, but in
either case you refused or stopped using marijuana because you didn’t want to get in
trouble or, more likely, you didn’t want your health to deteriorate. If you oppose medical
marijuana, you probably think that medical marijuana supporters are people who have
been brainwashed by marijuana that they just want an excuse to get high. You might even
have a condition that medical marijuana is used to treat or be a doctor that has patients
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that could benefit from medical marijuana, but as a person that opposes medical
marijuana you believe using marijuana for medicinal reasons to be extreme. Well if you
are one of these people then I have something that may surprise you: according to many
major health and scientific organizations opposing the use of medical marijuana puts you
in the extreme. These organizations not only endorse the medicinal use of marijuana, but
recognize marijuana as being relatively harmless and they’ve believed this for decades.
These organizations know that most of the negative beliefs about marijuana are nothing
more than myths.
The main obstacle for medical marijuana legalization is the widely held belief that
marijuana is a dangerous and addicting drug and that because of this there is no possible
way for marijuana to have any medicinal value and as such should not be allowed to be
used as medicine. This belief is held because of the propaganda spouted by marijuana
opponents for over 80 year, touting this propaganda as “fact”. In reality, these are nothing
more than myths with little to no scientific evidence with some of them being out right
lies propped up by dishonest “scientific” studies. These myths are the justification that is
used to keep medical marijuana illegal. The average person actually knows either nothing
about the way marijuana impacts health or believes one of these false myths. In fact in
the documentary The Union random people on the street were asked to name some of the
dangers of using marijuana (The Union). The overwhelming majority of these people
either couldn’t name one or spouted one of the classic myths about marijuana. The most
popular marijuana myth is that marijuana kills brain cells. This myth has been used time
and time again to condemn marijuana and its use as medicine. This myth is used to
reason that a medicine that causes brain damage could never be safely used as a
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medicine. The myth has its roots in a study conducted by Dr. Robert Heath in 1974
(Hager). In the study monkeys that were pumped full of the equivalent of 30 joints a day
for a year (The Union). After 90 days the monkeys began to atrophy and die. Brain
damage was determined by counting the dead brain cells of monkeys would have been
given marijuana and those that have not. Marijuana opponents claimed that this study
proved that marijuana kills brain cells and was used as the basis for the claim by the
government and special interest groups. The premise of the study in and of itself was
completely ridiculous. No one is going to sit down and smoke 30 joints a day for months
on end. The average marijuana smoker will smoke one or two joints a day over a period
of several hours and doesn’t smoke everyday. A study in which such a massive amount of
marijuana was given to subjects does not paint an accurate picture of the reality of
marijuana use. Also monkey brains have a different reaction to the chemicals in
marijuana than humans and as such this study cannot be used to effectively gauge the
effect that marijuana will have on humans. Furthermore, there were other problems with
the study such as its “insufficient sample size (only four monkeys), its failure to control
experimental bias, and the misidentification of normal monkey brain structure as
‘damaged’” (Hager). But the most damning part of this study is that Dr. Heath lied about
how he actually conducted the study. In actuality, instead of giving the monkeys 30 joints
a day for a year, he used a gas mask on the monkeys to pump the equivalent of 63 pure
Columbian joints over a period of 5 minutes a day for 3 months (The Union). Because
there was so much marijuana pumped into the gas mask the monkeys were suffocated.
This lack of oxygen to the brain caused the monkeys brain cells to die. People since then
have quoted this study over and over again not knowing that the study was actually
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conducted. Studies on the effect of marijuana on actual human brains have shown no
evidence of brain damage, For example, in 1977 the American Medical Association
published two studies that showed no evidence of brain damage in heavy marijuana
smokers (Hager). Later that same year the American Medical Association officially came
out in favor of the decriminalization of marijuana, which isn’t exactly something you
would think they would do if they thought that marijuana caused brain damage. Another
popular myth about marijuana causes cancer and as such medical marijuana would cause
cancer in the patients that use is. This means that it can’t be used to relieve the pain of
people going through chemotherapy because it would cause the cancer to get worse.
There is absolutely no scientific evidence that suggests that marijuana causes cancer.
Study after study has shown that marijuana does not cause cancer. Recently, a study done
by Dr. Donald Tashkin at the UCLA verified that marijuana does not cause cancer (The
Union). In fact, there is not a recorded case of cancer attributed to marijuana use alone.
The most absurd myth about marijuana though is that marijuana use is more dangerous
than tobacco use. Another myth regarding marijuana and tobacco is that smoking one
joint is like smoking 16 cigarettes and these myths form the basis of each other. These
notions are completely and totally ridiculous and people believe them using circular
logic. Why do you think marijuana is worse than tobacco? Because smoking one joint is
like smoking 16 cigarettes. Why do you think that smoking one joint is like smoking 16
cigarettes? Because marijuana is worse than tobacco. These are assumptions that are
made without looking up any statistics based on the assumption that since marijuana is
illegal that marijuana must be as bad for you as other illegal drugs and that since tobacco
is legal it must not be as bad (this assumption is also based on the myth that you can
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overdose on marijuana but we‘ll get to that one later). It is incorrect to judge the health
effects of a drug based on its legality. Let’s discuss the myth that smoking one joint is
like smoking 16 cigarettes. This myth has it’s roots in a study done by Dr. Tashkin which
found that “daily pot smokers experienced a ‘mild but significant‘ increase in airflow
resistance in large airways greater than what is seen in persons smoking 16 cigarettes a
day“ (NORML). What people ignore from this study, however, is that marijuana smokers
faired much better than tobacco smokers in regards to other, more important aspects of
lung health (NORML). In fact, “Dr. Tashkin himself disavows the notion that one joint
equals 16 cigarettes“ (NORML). Opponents of marijuana, who believe this myth, as well
as the myth that marijuana use is more dangerous than tobacco use, fail to take many
factors into account. Marijuana smoke and tobacco smoke affect different parts of the
respiratory differently (NORML). Tobacco smoke tends to affect the smaller, peripheral
passages of the lungs, while marijuana smoke tends to affect the larger, central
passageways (NORML). This is the main reason behind the finding of Dr. Tashkin’s
study, and not because marijuana causes more damage to the lungs than tobacco as
people against marijuana believe. This is also the reason that marijuana does not cause
emphysema like the way tobacco does (NORML). Another factor is that existence of
drug paraphernalia laws that make it difficult to smoke marijuana in a safer way while
cigarettes have filters in them that filter out some of the carcinogens and irritants in them
making cigarettes appear safer. In this case it is directly because of laws against
marijuana that inhibit the safe use of it and thus give tobacco an unfair advantage in
appearing not as bad for you. Smoked marijuana does contain the same amount of
carcinogens as an equivalent amount of tobacco (Hager). However, a user of tobacco
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consumes much more tobacco than a marijuana user consumes marijuana, meaning that
tobacco users inhale far more irritants and carcinogens than marijuana users do. This is
directly because of tobacco’s 90% addiction rate, as opposed to marijuana which is nonaddictive. Also there are ways of consuming marijuana without ingesting carcinogens and
irritants that eliminate risk of damage to organs entirely, as opposed to smokeless tobacco
which cause cancer of the mouth and throat (Hager). Let’s look at the numbers, tobacco
use is estimated to kill 400,000 Americans a year. That is several times more than all the
deaths caused by all illegal drugs combined. Thousands of people die every year from the
uses of caffeine and OTC and prescription drugs and yet they are considered safe with no
major effort being made to make them illegal. How many people does marijuana kill? A
big fat whopping zero. In fact, in all of recorded history there has not been a single death
contributed to marijuana use. Marijuana is one of the least toxic substances in the world.
The idea that a substance that doesn’t even have conclusive evidence that it’s bad for you
is worse then a substance that we know for a fact kills millions of people each year is
lunacy. Another myth about marijuana is that it is easy to overdose on marijuana and get
sick or die. This is another assumption that is made because marijuana is illegal. It is
assumed that since marijuana is an illegal drug that it must be possible to overdose on it
like other illegal drugs. This myth also provides some basis for the myth that marijuana is
worse than tobacco, since it is assumed that you can’t overdose on tobacco. People say
that marijuana can’t be used as a safe medicine because it would be easy to use too much
of it and get sick, but in fact it’s not only not easy to overdose on marijuana, it’s
physically impossible. In fact, it’s nearly impossible to get sick on marijuana period. The
fact that it is physically impossible to overdose on marijuana is something that sets
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marijuana apart from other drugs. In order to get a toxic level of THC (the major
psychoactive compound in marijuana), someone would have to smoke several times their
own body weight in marijuana in a matter of minutes (The Union). This is physically
impossible because a person would most likely end up passing out after smoking a few
grams of marijuana within this timeframe. What makes the danger of overdosing a
problem is when it’s easy to accidentally do it. Just because it’s merely possible to
overdose on a substance doesn’t mean that it’s automatically dangerous and should be
avoided. Besides, to say that marijuana has no medicinal value and shouldn’t be used
because its possible to overdose on it is completely inconsistent with the way we view
medicine. It’s possible to overdose on many accepted forms of medicine including
prescription and OTC drugs but these are still considered to have medicinal value. All of
these facts suggest that marijuana is not nearly as bad for you as people think. The worst
harm that marijuana could cause it mild lung irritation from smoking it and that’s only
because you’re inhaling smoke, not because of anything in marijuana itself.
Marijuana is currently classified as a Schedule I drug, meaning that it has a high
potential for abuse and has no medical value. However, more and more information is
coming out that marijuana does indeed have some medical value. As such many
organizations, including medical ones, have petitioned that the classification of marijuana
as a Schedule I drug be changed. On January 30, 1997, The New England Journal of
Medicine wrote that “federal authorities should rescind their prohibition of the medical
use of marijuana for seriously ill patients and allow physicians to decide which patients to
treat. The government should change marijuana’s class from that of a Schedule I
drug…to that of a Schedule II drug…and regulate it accordingly” (NORML). It is
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estimated that there are over 200 medical conditions that respond favorably to marijuana
(The Union). For hundreds of years the medical community has recognized the medicinal
benefits of medical marijuana. Records showing the medicinal use of marijuana have
been around for thousands of years dating back to China nearly 5,000 years ago where it
was prescribed for the treatment of gout, rheumatism, malaria, and poor memory (Time).
The use of it as a medicine then spread throughout Asia, the Middle East, and the eastern
coast of Africa while certain Hindu sects in India used it for religious purposes and stress
relief (Time). “Ancient physicians prescribed marijuana for everything from pain relief to
earache to childbirth...By the late 18th century, early editions of American medical
journals recommended hemp seeds and roots for the treatment of inflamed skin,
incontinence, and venereal disease” (Time). Irish doctor William O’Shaughnessy is
responsible for the popularization of the medical use of marijuana in England and
America. A physician for the British East India Company, he found that marijuana eased
the pain of rheumatism and helped fight against discomfort and nausea in rabies, cholera,
and tetanus (Time). By the beginning of the 20th century, there were more than 100
papers published in Western medical literature that recommended the use of marijuana in
a variety of disorders. However, by 1937, 23 states had outlawed marijuana and Congress
passed the Marijuana Tax Act, which made the non-medical use of marijuana illegal and
severally hampered the ability of physicians to prescribe it. “The American Medical
Association (AMA) was one of the most vocal organizations to testify against the ban,
arguing that it would deprive patients of a past, present, and future medicine” (NORML).
Dr. William C. Woodward was Chief Counsel to the American Medical Association and
was both a lawyer and a doctor and testified at the hearing for the Marijuana Tax Act in
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1937. He is quoted as saying “The American Medical Association knows of no evidence
that marijuana is a dangerous drug” and “the obvious purpose and effect of this bill is to
impose so many restrictions on the medicinal use [of cannabis] as to prevent such use all
together…It may serve to deprive the public of the benefits of a drug that on further
research may prove to be of substantial benefit” (NORML). Modern research suggests
that marijuana can be used in a wide range of clinical applications. “These include pain
relief – particularly of neuropathic pain (pain from nerve damage) – nausea, spasticity,
glaucoma, and movement disorders. Marijuana is also a powerful appetite stimulant,
specifically for patients suffering from HIV, the AIDS wasting syndrome, or dementia”
(NORML). Some research also suggests that marijuana may protect against some kinds
of malignant tumors and is neuroprotective (NORML). According to the Medical
Cannabis Research Foundation (MCRF), medical marijuana could bring a dramatic
improvement in the quality of life in people with: AIDS wasting syndrome, Alzheimer’s
disease, arthritis, asthma, brain injury or stroke, Crohn’s disease or colitis, depression or
other mental illnesses, eating disorders, epilepsy, fibromyalgia, glaucoma, hypertension,
multiple sclerosis, Nail Patella Syndrome, nausea from chemotherapy, pain, phantom
limp pain, migraine, spinal cord injury, or Tourette’s syndrome (ProCon). Tod Mikuriya,
a psychiatrist and addiction medicine specialist, posted a list of 259 medical conditions
that he believed could be treated with medical marijuana (ProCon). Currently there are
over 60 U.S. and international health organizations such as the American Public Health
Association, Health Canada, and the Federation of American Scientists that support the
supervised medicinal use of marijuana. The vast majority of the medical community
recognizes that medicinal benefits of marijuana, despite what the opponents of medical
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marijuana would want you to believe.
One of the main arguments against medical marijuana is that it is pointless
considering that we already have prescription drugs that already have been proven to be
safe and effective and that using medical marijuana would be an unnecessary risk
considering that the FDA hasn’t conducted and studies about the safety and effectiveness
of medical marijuana, but if you’re going to judge whether the medicinal use of a drug
should be allowed based on government conducted studies concerning the safety and
effectiveness of it then it the prescription and OTC drugs that should be illegal and not
marijuana. Contrary to popular belief, the FDA does not conduct any of the studies used
for the approval of prescription drugs (MMEC). These studies are financed, constructed,
and supervised by drug companies using doctors they hire (MMEC). The actual
controlled scientific studies last only – in the case of Prozac – four to six weeks and are
very flawed. Let’s use the widely popular anti-depressant Prozac as an example. After the
controlled study, anecdotal evidence is collected from long-term patients, but for Prozac
only 63 patients were followed for two years before the drugs approval (MMEC). Many
of these studies were so flawed that they compromised the data. For example, suicidal
patients and hospitalized patients were excluded and many of the included patients were
allowed to take sedatives and mild tranquilizers to combat Prozac’s stimulant-like side
effects (MMEC). “After weeding out the most badly flawed studies, the FDA found that
only four of the studies were adequate enough to consider. One of these studies showed
that Prozac was no better than placebo. Three others supposedly showed Prozac to be
somewhat superior to the sugar pill, but not as good as older antidepressants. However,
due to adverse drug effects and lack of the drug’s effectiveness, the dropout rates in most
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of these studies was very high” (MMEC). The total amount of patients receiving Prozac
when the trials started was more than 5,000, however after the four to six weeks trials,
only 286 remained. Only 286 patients finished the trials used to determine Prozac’s
effectiveness (MMEC). Prozac is not a special case. Many drug companies do the same
thing that was done with Prozac and because of this many people die from prescription
drugs every yeah. “In 1998, the Journal of the American Medical Association published a
study that stated that prescription medications were the fourth leading cause of death in
America” (MMEC). Another study said there are over 100,000 deaths per year from
adverse effects from medication and it is estimated that 2.2 million Americans are
significantly injured by prescription medication (MMEC). OTC drugs are not necessarily
safe either. Acetaminophen is the most commonly used painkiller in the U.S. and is easily
available over the counter. It is also in sleep aids and in strong prescription narcotic pain
killers. Recent studies show that acetaminophen is the leading cause of liver damage and
is estimated to be responsible for 1600 causes of liver failure each year (MMEC). The
drug is thought to be safe at the recommended dose, however because it is in so many
different kinds of medications people end up taking many multiple doses if they are on
different medication. How exactly can these drugs be considered safe and effective when
people die from them and many different kinds of the drug are needed to get the desired
effect? Now, back to the issue of studies concerning the safety and effectiveness of
medical marijuana. The idea that the government has never conducted a study on the
safety of marijuana is flat out wrong. The government has conducted a mountain of
studies concerning the safety of marijuana and all of them have found marijuana to be
relatively harmless and that its dangers have been greatly overstated. Also many studies
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have come out preformed by various medical associations showing the effectiveness of
marijuana. It has been shown that medical marijuana can treat a wide variety of medical
problems that you would need multiple pills and prescriptions to treat. Lester Grinspoon,
MD, a professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, wrote in his March 1, 2007
editorial in the Boston Globe titled “Marijuana as Wonder Drug” that “Marijuana is
effective at relieving nausea and vomiting, spasticity, appetite loss, certain types of pain,
and other debilitating symptoms. And it is extraordinarily safe – safer than most
medicines prescribed everyday. If marijuana were a new discovery rather than a well
know substance carrying cultural and political baggage, it would be hailed as a wonder
drug” (ProCon). If medical marijuana really did such adverse side effects and wasn’t
effective as its opponents say, then there wouldn’t be such a high demand for it and
people would want to just stick with the regular prescription and OTC drugs that we have
today.
Because of the laws in many states, many people do not have access to a medicine
that could greatly help their health. In fact, in states were medical marijuana is legal such
as California, many medical marijuana patients and dispensaries are being arrested and
prosecuted by the Federal Government because although the state says it’s legal, in the
eyes of the Federal Government marijuana is still an illegal substance. These laws exist
because of the mistaken beliefs that marijuana is bad for you, has no medicinal benefits,
and that the prescription and OTC drugs that we currently have are better. By not
allowing people to get this medicine it is actually harming people in the community and
ruining the lives of innocent people. Medical marijuana can greatly benefit doctors and
patients because of its multiple medicinal benefits and few side effects.
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Works Cited
Hager, Paul. "MARIJUANA MYTHS." Drugtext. Web. 20 Dec. 2010.
<http://www.drugtext.org/sub/marmyt1.html>.
"Medical Marijuana: Safer than Prescription and OTC Drugs." Marijuana
Medicine Evaluation Centers. 12 July 2009. Web. 20 Dec. 2010.
<http://blog.marijuanamedicine.com/?p=50>.
Marijuana Law Reform - NORML. Web. 20 Dec. 2010. <http://norml.org/>.
"For Which Symptoms or Conditions Might Marijuana Provide Relief? - Medical
Marijuana - ProCon.org." Medical Marijuana ProCon.org. 16 June 2008. Web. 20 Dec.
2010. <http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.answers.php?questionID=000087>.
Stack, Patrick, and Claire Suddath. "A Brief History of Medical Marijuana TIME." Breaking News, Analysis, Politics, Blogs, News Photos, Video, Tech Reviews TIME.com. 21 Oct. 2009. Web. 20 Dec. 2010.
<http://www.time.com/time/health/article/0,8599,1931247,00.html>.
TheUnion. The Union: The Business Behind Getting High. Web. 20 Dec. 2010.
<http://www.theunionmovie.com/TheUnionWeb.html>.