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Patients should be allowed freedom to access better quality cannabis
By Hempology | June 28, 2007
Vue Weekly, AB
Jun 28, 2007
Connie Howard
MS sufferers are still enduring reefer madness
News that medical marijuana user and activist Grant Krieger has been sent to prison on a trafficking charge is no real surprise, but it is profoundly disappointing. Krieger has a marijuana licence for his multiple sclerosis (MS), and in March of this year the judge had ruled his sentence be delayed until details around access to his medicine behind bars was ironed out. But as of last week, Alberta’s solicitor has general turned down the judge’s earlier request that Krieger have access to marijuana while serving his sentence, even though he has legal permission to use pot as medicine.
He’ll be in agony without his medicine, and in a wheelchair because of his pain.
A study published earlier this year in Neurology found smoked marijuana to be a safe and effective medicine for the very treatment-resistant kind of pain caused by damage to nerves (the kind found in HIV and MS patients.) The biggest drawback is smoke inhalation, one which is easily rectified with vaporization options.
So why is this still a big deal for the severe my-legs-are-on-fire kind of pain many MS sufferers talk about? Why do activists and compassion clubs still need to worry about prison sentences?
Not that access to government pot, in or out of prison, is anything to cheer about, from what users and others in the know say. According to research done by Canadians for Safe Access a few years ago, the pot provided by Health Canada is of pretty pathetic quality.
For one thing, it’s weak—three per cent tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) compared to over 12 per cent for the samples from the Vancouver Island Compassion Club Society, which means much more needs to be used to gain medicinal effect. Levels of arsenic were more than double that found in compassion club supply (a little detail that might just explain the headaches users complain of), and while compassion club pot is grown organically, government pot is irradiated and grown with phosphate-based chemical fertilizers, exposing those already ill to yet another carcinogen.
There are, of course, sanctioned pharmaceutical remedies for MS pain, but they are, according to many MS patients, not anywhere near as desirable as high quality marijuana is.
Neuropathic or nerve pain, the kind of MS pain most resistant to treatment, is often treated with tricyclic antidepressants (a class of antidepressants now largely replaced by newer ones). They’re used for this kind of pain because they’re sedating, which means life must be put on hold, something MS sufferers are often unwilling to do anymore than they’ve already had to. Other options include muscle relaxants and antispasmodic drugs such as baclofen (Lioresol), but baclofen affects muscle tone and balance and comes with a risk of withdrawal symptoms that include seizures, hallucinations, high fevers and extreme rebound spasticity and muscle rigidity.
And there is Marinol, a synthetic form of THC that has been available by prescription for a long time but isn’t very popular with patients either. They insist that it isn’t nearly as effective or side effect free as marijuana and is difficult to keep down when severe chemo-induced nausea is the reason for treatment. Inhalation of marijuana, on the other hand, provides immediate relief, and a growing collection of scientific literature confirms that inhaled marijuana does in fact work better and with fewer side effects.
Narcotics such as codeine and OcyContin are often used for severe pain also, but marijuana is infinitely less addictive than these. Long-acting formulations of OcyContin provide sustained pain relief when properly used, but if chewed or snorted or injected, they produce a fast and potentially lethal high, and have consequently been linked to many deaths.
The best of the pharmaceutical option for MS pain seems to be Sativex, a close cousin of pot. Approved by Health Canada in 2005 and applauded by the MS society, it is an extract of cannabis compounds from the marijuana plant, making it chemically very similar. It is sprayed under the tongue and its medicinal effects are more rapid than those of a pill (though not as rapid as those of inhaled cannabis). Side effects such as dizziness are fairly common, possibly because higher doses are used in the desperation for fast relief.
But if Sativex, which contains the chemical essence of marijuana, is considered safe, why the tight regulation around marijuana? Maybe it has something to do with the power of Big Pharma, with their very marketable, very patentable and very profitable offerings of pain relief? V
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