Doctors Urge Reduction of Criminal Penalties for Cannabis Medical Use and Research

By: skip

Philadelphia, PA — In a move it hopes will spur research into medical uses of marijuana, the nation’s second-largest physicians’ group is calling on the government to ease criminal penalties for doctors who study and recommend the plant, and patients who smoke it.

The American College of Physicians says several nonmedical factors – a fierce battle over legalization of the drug, a complicated approval process, and limited availability of research-grade marijuana – has hobbled scientists from looking into its full benefits.

“A clear discord exists between the scientific community and federal legal and regulatory agencies over the medicinal value of marijuana, which impedes the expansion of research,” the Philadelphia-based organization states in a 13-page policy paper.

A White House official dismissed the report yesterday as a “political act” that contained no new science, and noted that other doctors’ organizations think differently.

Researchers generally agree that there is some medicinal benefit to the drug. The policy paper reviews evidence that its psychoactive ingredient – tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC – is useful for the treatment of glaucoma, multiple sclerosis, nausea and pain.

But the report also argues that marijuana in its raw form may be helpful in ways that THC alone is not. It explains, for example, how patients who experience nausea and vomiting during chemotherapy may prefer smoked marijuana’s milder effects over those obtained from its active ingredient in approved pills.

The paper was three years in coming, and the organization knew it would be controversial, said its president, David C. Dale, a Seattle internist and professor at the University of Washington.

“In terms of advocating for the public good and the good of medicine, this was the right thing to do,” he said.

“We recognize that this is a drug that may be able to help and harm,” he said, noting that medicines often work at that interface. “But the prejudices of the past shouldn’t limit research into the good it can do.”

Of concern to many physicians is the patchwork of state laws on the issue, and federal agencies’ power to prosecute them regardless, making physicians reluctant to pursue research.

“If it’s permissible by state law, patients and physicians should not be guilty of a crime for marijuana and its uses,” Dale said.

To encourage study, the college wants the federal government to downgrade the drug from its status as a schedule 1 controlled substance – the same as heroin, crystal meth, LSD, and other drugs with no clear medicinal value.

A dozen states – Pennsylvania and New Jersey are not among them – have approved the use of medical marijuana or offered some protection to patients. The Food and Drug Administration has also approved two medicines containing THC.

Medical-marijuana advocates hailed the paper as a breakthrough.

“This is 124,000 doctors that have just told the federal government they are wrong,” said Bruce Mirken, spokesman for the Marijuana Policy Project, a Washington group that lobbies for medical use of marijuana.

“The question about whether this is useful has been studied, and it’s time to move on and figure out how to use it.”

The White House Office of National Drug Control Policy said it changed nothing.

“This is not medical science,” said chief scientist David Murray. “This is a policy paper. A political act calling for political response.”

“It says, ‘We want more research,’ and we generally support more research as well.”

Murray noted that other medical organizations – the 240,000-member American Medical Association, the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society, and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society – do not support the smoked form of marijuana as medicine.

He acknowledged that compounds in marijuana, mainly cannabinoids, have some value with certain illnesses, such as when treating neurological disorders or used as an analgesic.

Research into those applications should be pursued, but drugs given to patients must be only isolated, purified compounds proven in clinical trials and approved by the FDA, Murray said. “Whatever it looks like, it will not be the raw, crude weed delivering a stew of chemicals that are demonstrably harmful and toxic.”

The American College of Physicians is hoping the paper will encourage the government to help science thoroughly investigate a plant that, after 40 years of study, researchers still know less about than they would like.

Source: Philadelphia Inquirer

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