More research is available on cannabis than many FDA-approved drugs

[RainDog]

There's more research available on cannabis than many FDA-approved drugs

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/fda-drug-approvals-based-on-varied-data-study-finds/2014/01/21/b12d0712-82be-11e3-8099-9181471f7aaf_story.html

The Food and Drug Administration must bless any new drugs as “safe and effective” before they wind up in pharmacy aisles or prescribed to patients. But the ways in which the agency arrives at those approvals “vary widely in their thoroughness,” according to an analysis by researchers at Yale University’s School of Medicine.

“Not all FDA approvals are created equally,” said Nicholas Downing, lead author of the study, which examined nearly 200 new drug approvals between 2005 and 2012.

Researchers found broad differences in the data it took to get a thumbs up from FDA. For instance, the agency required that many new drugs prove themselves in large, high-quality clinical trials. But about a third won approval on the basis of a single clinical trial, and many other trials involved small groups of patients and shorter durations. Only about 40 percent of approvals included trials in which the new drug was compared with existing drugs on the market.

For cannabis?

20,000 published studies or reviews in the scientific literature referencing the cannabis plant and its cannabinoids, nearly half of which were published within the last five years, according to a keyword search on PubMed Central, the government repository for peer-reviewed scientific research.

Of these, more than 100 are controlled clinical trials assessing the therapeutic efficacy of cannabinoids for a variety of indications.

A 2006 review of 72 of these trials, conducted between the years 1975 and 2004, identifies ten distinct pathologies for which controlled studies on cannabinoids have been published

In fact, a 2008 meta-analysis published in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association reported that cannabis-based drugs were associated with virtually no elevated incidences of serious adverse side-effects in over 30 years of investigative use.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/24615512-452/pot-holds-no-medical-mysteries.html#.U1nRFK1dXQU

At least 10 nations have made cannabis medicine legal for certain conditions (not a synthetic - whole cannabis plant medicine in the form of Sativex). This has been reality since 2010.

Cannabis has been used by humans for religious, health and recreational purposes for more than 5000 years. It was available to humans long before alcohol - it doesn't require processing, such as fermentation, and the history of humans indicates that cannabis spread throughout the world via the migration of humans - not by nature.

It, not alcohol, remains part of the pharmcopeia - yet alcohol is legal while cannabis is not.

This is nothing more than corruption on the part of lawmakers, and part of the history of the Republican Party's attacks on liberal voters - from its inception, through Nixon targeting "Jews, psychiatrists and hippies" by disregarding the opinion of Nixon's appointed judge to recommend policy on the subject - and the judge recommended decriminalization, fwiw, to the current prison industrial complex with sentencing law and LEO policy meant to target minorities.

There's nothing more to discuss about whether or not cannabis should be legal. It should be.

The issue now is how to get rid of any politician who does not recognize this reality.

[JEFF9K]

1. WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Here is a transcript of a recent Diane Rehm Show: http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2014-04-21/business-legalized-marijuana-and-ongoing-health-concerns/transcript

Pay special attention to the remarks from Dr. Robert DuPont:

DUPONT
10:11:29
What we're seeing is the addition of a third drug to the two that we've had legal for a long time, alcohol and tobacco. Those two drugs are the leading cause of preventable illness and death in the country. We're now adding a third drug, marijuana, to that list. And we're watching this development in Colorado with much interest and high ambivalence and a sense that this is history being made, there's no question about it.


DUPONT
10:13:01
You know, the way we started this program it was kind of a joke about 4/20 and it's kids having fun. Well, I think it's more than that. It's really adding a very major drug, the drug that causes 60 percent of all the drug dependency in this country is from marijuana. It's more than all the other drugs put together. It's a serious step that we're taking with a kind of giggle and a wink and that's pretty scary.


DUPONT
10:28:38
Well, I think that there -- it's a very curious argument to look at the legal drugs and to say this one is less bad than those and therefore we should do it. That's a very weird argument to make. But I want to go back to what Beau said about alcohol use and marijuana use. There is no doubt in my mind how that's going to play out. The data -- we will see going forward.

DUPONT
10:29:04
Beau says are they substitutes or are they complimentary? The data is extremely clear that the more a population -- a person uses alcohol the more likely that person is to use marijuana. The more the person uses marijuana the heavier their alcohol use, not the less. So I think that -- to me the -- it's clear to me what's going to be found but we need to see it, and there are others who are not so convinced, and that is they are not substitutes. They are complimentary. Increasing marijuana use will increase alcohol use and tobacco use.

DUPONT
10:29:39
Marijuana is a gateway drug to cigarette smoking in the United States today. So rather than stopping smoking cigarettes, when you smoke marijuana the rates of smoking go up with marijuana use. But we'll watch that all and I agree with Beau, that's going to be a very important statistic to study.

[RainDog]

2. People are already using marijuana

as DuPont acknowledges.

At the moment it's just not taxed and regulated.

That's the difference.

At first I wondered if your post was ironic, with the whole history of the DuPont family opposing mj for their own purposes. I'll just assume this isn't a joke, tho, and respond with some other information.

The "gateway" claim is bullshit and this has been known for a while now. Anyone who employs it, to me, is a vile propagandist with nothing valid to add to the national conversation. The neuroscience journalist at Time magazine calls it : the myth that will not die. Why? Because propagandists use it over and over again... like they're, I dunno, addicted to lying. It's another one of those correlation/causation lies we get from govt. approved studies - that we've seen at least two of recently.

http://healthland.time.com/2010/10/29/marijuna-as-a-gateway-drug-the-myth-that-will-not-die/

Rates of cigarette smoking are declining overall in the U.S. To try to use marijuana as a scare tactic that it leads to cigarettes is just simply a joke. Rates of marijuana use, fwiw, have remained relatively stable since the 1980s.

The CDC says cigarette smoking prevalence has been dropping steadily among Americans 18 and older since it began keeping records in 1965, when 42.4% smoked. The proportion dropped below 30% for the first time in 1987, when 28.8% of Americans smoked.

http://www.webmd.com/smoking-cessation/news/20081113/smoking-rate-is-declining-in-us

Among teens - California, with the most liberal laws for the longest time, reports that:

Marijuana use been declining to stable ever since passage of California's medical marijuana law in 1996. According to the latest report, "Since 2003, use in the past six months has remained stable at 7% in 7th grade, 20% in 9th and 31% in 11th grade."

http://www.safestate.org/documents/css03mainfindings.pdf

Marijuana use is associated with better blood glucose and cholesterol levels and lower weight (obesity is one of the major killers of Americans and accounts for nearly one of every 10 American deaths, and drain our society of $223 billion a year.)

http://www.amjmed.com/article/S0002-9343(13)00200-3/abstract

Alcohol consumption, but not marijuana, is linked to domestic violence.

http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2014/01/140127112733.htm

anyway, that's all for now. Once I read that bullshit about marijuana as a gateway, it was obvious the person interviewed was either a liar or too stupid to discuss the topic.

eta: also anyone who doesn't understand the idea of harm reduction approaches (which is one reason why mj is compared to alcohol) doesn't seem to understand much about this issue either, from a medical/health stand point.

The other reason people compare, of course, is that mj is far less addictive than alcohol, yet receives far more scrutiny and societal disapproval from those in power. Maybe they should put down their shot glasses and deal with the reality that the majority of alcohol users are not alcohol abusers, either - even tho alcohol is a more addictive substance.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/156770/majority-drink-alcohol-averaging-four-drinks-week.aspx

[JEFF9K]

3. Please re-read the transcript more carefully.

The difference isn't just that one is taxed and one isn't. And what would be Dr. Dupont's motivation for lying?

[RainDog]

4. The difference has to do with "value"

I don't know DuPont's motivation for lying.

[RainDog]

5. My guess as to his motivation

I assume Dr. DuPont may be like Sanjay Gupta before the "scales fell from his eyes."

As Gupta noted - he was propagandized by the DEA/NIDA propaganda mills with their filtering of information to deny reality about cannabis. When Gupta actually read research, rather than relying on the federal agency tasked with telling the truth - he realized our own govt. is lying to us about the facts concerning marijuana.

I assume DuPont hasn't taken this step yet.

Why do you defer to propaganda when research has indicated the things DuPont is saying are lies? If you have a youtube news program, which you claim in your profile - it would behoove you not to spread lies in defense of the indefensible.

Otherwise you, too, will be implicated, by those with more knowledge about this subject, who disdain those who continue to spread propaganda to, in effect, continue racially biased policies that serve as ways for Republicans to reduce voter rolls and give law enforcement agencies cheap and easy ways to fluff arrest stats.

You ought to consider your own reputation, if nothing else, and learn more about the topic rather than rely on a mouthpiece for the liars at the DEA.

[JEFF9K]

6. Your comments don't pass the smell test.

And, on a personal level, I have known many people whose lives, by all appearances, have been ruined by marijuana and the related lifestyle. Conversely, I know of no one who appears to have benefited.

[RainDog]

7. LOL

Maybe you just don't know the right people.

If all you want to do here is spout propaganda - you will find many others here know far more about this subject than you do.

You don't have a "smell test" because you don't know enough about the subject to have developed one, fwiw.

[RainDog]

8. However, I have often sought to alleviate ignorance

So allow me to share with you some of those who claim they benefitted from cannabis use

Louis Armstrong - inventor the the jazz solo
Hoagy Carmichael - who wrote the most recorded song in the American songbook, "Stardust Melodies"

...both mention their use of cannabis early in their musical careers - and after...plus tons of other musicians who use cannabis and find its ability to heighten sensitivity to music is a positive for their profession - this includes musicians from every genre - which you can seek out for yourself if you want to have a clue about the reality of who uses cannabis.

Carl Sagan noted this as well, when he said:

"The cannabis experience has greatly improved my appreciation for art, a subject which I had never much appreciated before," he wrote. "The understanding of the intent of the artist which I can achieve when high sometimes carries over to when I’m down. This is one of many human frontiers which cannabis has helped me traverse."

He also said:

I can remember one occasion, taking a shower with my wife while high, in which I had an idea on the origins and invalidities of racism in terms of gaussian distribution curves. It was a point obvious in a way, but rarely talked about. I drew the curves in soap on the shower wall, and went to write the idea down. One idea led to another, and at the end of about an hour of extremely hard work I found I had written eleven short essays on a wide range of social, political, philosophical, and human biological topics. Because of problems of space, I can’t go into the details of these essays, but from all external signs, such as public reactions and expert commentary, they seem to contain valid insights. I have used them in university commencement addresses, public lectures, and in my books.

iow, he created original work that he acknowledges came about by the benefit of cannabis use.

http://marijuana-uses.com/mr-x/

Margaret Mead - one of the most famous cultural anthropologists in American history. She also gave testimony in favor of decriminalization before federal officials.
Francis Crick - who discovered the structure of the double helix with Watson (actually, Crick credits LSD with the actual visualization of the structure of DNA.)

Ralph Abraham - Professor of Mathematics at the University of California, Santa Cruz, since 1968. He has written over a dozen books and is an editor for the International Journal of Bifurcations and Chaos. Abraham is an acknowledged leader in the emerging field of "dynamical systems theory," also called "chaos math." - Who also talks about the benefits of LSD, fwiw.
Richard Feynman - physicist (He writes about this in his biography Surely You're Joking Mr. Feynman. (Also LSD)

Kary Mullis - 1993 Nobel Prize in chemistry. In his biography he states: "I think I might have been stupid in some respects, it if weren't for my psychedelic experiences." He is, as you will note, YET ANOTHER AWARD WINNING, PATH BREAKING SCIENTIST who also thinks LSD has useful purposes for scientists.
Oliver Sacks - neurologist and popular science writer. He notes his marijuana use in his book, An Anthropologist on Mars (Sacks also has no problems with LSD usage within set/setting.)

Michael Pollan - UC Berkeley Prof. and one of the most highly regarded popular science writers working today. (His sister is married to Michael J. Fox, famous for MS - and, yes, MS responds well to cannabis to relieve spasticity.
Susan Blackmore - psychologist and mathematician and author of many articles and papers, and the book, The Meme Machine (and she has also appeared on camera smoking marijuana in a documentary about the same.)

Stephen J. Gould - scientist/writer who also wrote about marijuana here: http://www.stephenjaygould.org/library/gould_marijuana.html Gould used marijuana medically, as an adjunct to cancer treatment - he claims it saved his life. During that time of his marijuana use (which he feared would blur his brain), he wrote The Structure of Evolutionary Theory - all 1400 pages.
Robert Hooke - friend of Newton who publicized the value of marijuana at a Royal Society meeting in the 1600s.

Steve Jobs (he also credits LSD for the design of Apple.)
Richard Branson - founder of Virgin Records, etc. one of the richest men in the world who is starting up a space shuttle tourism venture, last I heard.

Barbara Ehrenreich (biologist and feminist writer)

Rick Steves - travel writer and PBS tourism guy
Richard Burton - considered one of the finest linguists ever, he translated texts from Arabic, Farsi, Urdu and more - he had mastered 29 languages. He wrote about his cannabis usage in Pilgrimage to Al-Madinah and Meccah

Aaron Sorkin (writer/producer - actually, marijuana use is so common among those working in creative industries it would take pages to list them all - and that's just the ones who publicly discuss it.

Not to mention all the Democratic officials who have admitted to use earlier in life - that would include the President - who, as far as I can tell, wasn't harmed - but the law could've harmed him if he had been arrested. The Clintons, The Gores, etc.. iow, just about anyone who has been alive since the 1960s and attended college... on both sides of the aisle.

The point, however, is that it is the USER, not the use, that determines the value of marijuana for themselves or their work. If someone isn't a scientist, getting high won't make them one - but getting high won't prevent them from becoming one, either.

These are only a few examples - and only those who choose to publicly talk about this issue.

I'm sick of the stoner stereotype - it's just a right wing lie. I don't expect to see it posted on a liberal site with the consistency that it is, frankly.

[JEFF9K]

10. I've seen very few posts on this site ...

that are anti-drug, or even neutral.

[RainDog]

11. that's because it's full of liberals

who, even if they don't use something - are willing to look at evidence about usage and not immediately align with authoritarian thinking - authoritarian thinking is a personality trait of conservatism.

And more liberals have probably experimented in the past who don't turn around and become hypocrites once they're older. (Tho some do, of course - depending upon the political winds)

I'm an outlier at the moment - because I think all drugs should be legal and regulated. This is a harm reduction approach to the problem (b/c, yes, it can be a problem for a minority of people) who use illegal substances.

Rather than incarceration, I prefer medical treatment for people using harmful substances such as heroin or meth.

You know what's really tragic about meth use? So much of it is attributed to low-income people who are working two jobs, etc. - so, what's the problem at the bottom of such meth use? To me - it's that someone has to work two jobs to merely get by.

Some low income people in rural areas turn to producing meth to sell to other low income people with two jobs. It reminds me of Moore's documentary, Roger and Me, that noted when the factories closed in Flint, the town was often divided b/t those who got jobs in prisons and those who got arrested for one thing or another.

That's the drug war model.

in fact, the drug war redistributes populations from urban to rural areas (even tho felons lose the right to vote). This, however, increases population numbers in rural areas, while taking votes away from liberal areas. And, even tho there is no difference between groups for mj use - it's African-Americans and Latinos who are arrested at far greater rates than whites doing exactly the same thing.

iow, the drug war is racist to its core.

that was also its foundation.

[RainDog]

9. smell this

Dr. Sanjay Gupta said:

I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance because of sound scientific proof. Surely, they must have quality reasoning as to why marijuana is in the category of the most dangerous drugs that have “no accepted medicinal use and a high potential for abuse.”

They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true. It doesn’t have a high potential for abuse, and there are very legitimate medical applications. In fact, sometimes marijuana is the only thing that works. Take the case of Charlotte Figi, who I met in Colorado. She started having seizures soon after birth. By age 3, she was having 300 a week, despite being on seven different medications. Medical marijuana has calmed her brain, limiting her seizures to 2 or 3 per month.

...We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that.

(pssst - systematically misled means that the U.S. govt. has engaged in a propaganda campaign aimed at American citizens to make them stupid - it's the propaganda, not the marijuana, that has made people stupid regarding this subject.)

Not because of sound science, but because of its absence, marijuana was classified as a schedule 1 substance. Again, the year was 1970. Egeberg mentions studies that are underway, but many were never completed. As my investigation continued, however, I realized Egeberg did in fact have important research already available to him, some of it from more than 25 years earlier.

http://www.cnn.com/2013/08/08/health/gupta-changed-mind-marijuana/index.html?hpt=hp_c4

my journal here on DU is mostly devoted to this issue b/c I decided to follow it here on DU.