[SeniorBuzz]

NPR: Medicinal Marijuana: A Patient-Driven Phenomenon

Fourteen states and the District of Columbia have launched a medical experiment that doesn't follow any of the rules of science.

By approving the use of marijuana as a medicine — with varying kinds of restrictions — these jurisdictions are bypassing the federal government's elaborate processes for approving medicines.

That's highly unusual. In fact, it's only happened once in recent memory: In the late 1970s, about half the states legalized the use of laetrile, an extract of apricot pits, as a cancer treatment. At least 50,000 cancer patients took it before it was exposed as totally useless.

Nobody argues that marijuana is the new laetrile. For one thing, nobody's claiming it cures any fatal diseases. But it is a departure from the usual rules of evidence for drugs.

Struggling With Chronic Illness

If you want to understand why it's happening, you should spend some time with Ellen Lenox Smith of suburban Rhode Island: a lively, petite, 60-year-old grandmother, former schoolteacher and one-time master swimmer.

When you meet Smith, you don't suspect anything's seriously wrong with her health. But in fact, she has two incurable diseases: One, called sarcoidosis, is ravaging her lungs. The other makes her tendons and ligaments loose and fragile.

"My knee tore, and two weeks later the other knee tore," Smith says. "And the same thing with my shoulder. It was one shoulder and then the other shoulder. So I was tearing like tissue paper, and no one knew why."

After years of misdiagnosis and surgical repairs, Smith learned she has a rare genetic disease of connective tissue called Ehlers-Danlos syndrome.

"My condition causes pain throughout the entire body," Smith says. Most people with Ehlors-Danlos "live on morphine and OxyContin," she says, but she has bad reactions to these and nearly all other painkillers. "I can't tolerate them."

An Unlikely Prescription

Feeling desperate with pain and suffering sleepless nights, Smith consulted pain specialist Dr. Pradeep Chopra. This was about four years ago, just after Rhode Island became the 11th state to legalize medical marijuana. Chopra had never recommended marijuana to a patient, and he never imagined he would.

But in Smith's case, he says, "she had absolutely no other option. So very, very hesitantly, I said, 'Listen, why don't you try medicinal marijuana?' "

Smith says, "I can remember laughing and thinking, 'I wish my parents were alive to hear this conversation!' You spend your life being told to stay away from certain things, and here I have a doctor suggesting it could help me."

Smith appealed to one of her adult sons, who scrounged some pot from a friend. Because of her lung condition, she couldn't smoke it, so she soaked it in oil and stirred the oil into applesauce.

"I tried it that night — scared to death! I mean, I had no idea what to expect," she says. "The only time I'd ever tried marijuana was once in college, and it was so horrible. So I was really nervous about it.

"But it was so amazing! I took this oil, went to bed, and the next thing I know, it was morning," Smith says. "I had literally slept through the entire night for the first time in months."

Patient: Marijuana Saved My Life

She's used marijuana ever since — sometimes during the daytime, too — and says she's never gotten high from it.

"I wake up in the morning, my head is clear, I read the papers, do my Sudoku puzzles, and my mind is fine," she says. "Somehow this drug attacks pain, and I get pain relief but I don't get stoned."

This point is controversial. Some researchers believe patients who use marijuana medically do have psychoactive effects, but they have the effect of shifting patients' attention away from their pain, perhaps in addition to a direct pain-relieving effect. JoAnne Leppanen of the Rhode Island Patient Advocacy Coalition says: "What pain patients tell me is, 'Cannabis does not get rid of my pain. It's still there. But I don't care so much.' So it's affecting their mental attitude."

For Smith, relief is far from total, but she can deal with her pain now, especially since she sleeps well. Smith says marijuana has saved her life.

"My husband says it, too," she says. "I don't think I'd be here. I think I probably would have passed away if I didn't have this drug. There was nothing — nothing left to help me."

Click here to read the full story.

[Mr. Charlie]

Originally Posted by SeniorBuzz

NPR: Medicinal Marijuana: A Patient-Driven Phenomenon
By approving the use of marijuana as a medicine — with varying kinds of restrictions — these jurisdictions are bypassing the federal government's elaborate processes for approving medicines.

But it is a departure from the usual rules of evidence for drugs.

We are involved in a paradigm shift which will allow people to heal themselves with herbs/medicines that are not disease/illness or Dr. specific.
Power to the plant and to the people!
Now if we can change the terminology away from the word drug...

[OjoRojo420]

NPR is an incredibly powerful instrument.

There is another report in NPR about a Vet living in NM that treats his PTSD with Cannabis.

Totally normal, decent and honest people sharing a valuable personal and medical experience.

This is what media should be all about.

So next time Public Radio asks for donations, please, let us all be generous.

Thanks NPR

I love to listen "All things considered" first thing in the morning; sipping coffee after smoking a bowl.

LOL

[ballplayer 2]

^^^^ Yes indeed. NPR is very important, great to see they are keeping an open mind, looking at real evidence/personal experience, and reporting.

This movement toward legal/decrim really has to be driven home through the grassroots movement. No politician is going to do it for us, not unless they have something to gain from it. Doing "the right thing" is of no concern to them. WE have to defeat big pharma on this issue, better believe they, among others, are fighting us tooth and nail.

Right on about quitting using the term "drug" when describing Cannabis. The term drug is such a misapplication, I can think of many, many things to call Cannabis drug is certainly not one.

[j242]

You cant really compare MMJ to any other drug on the market. Name a drug that is used recreationaly that ALSO has theraputic properties AND can be grown by the average person?

Can you think of any? Me either!

[ibuster57]

Lots of controlled medications use natural ingredients as a base. We as a people have had this go to the doctor and buy this cure drummed into our heads for the last 100 years. It is a wonder civilization survived without the FDA. Thanks NPR