Brookhiser on Medical Marijuana
Radley Balko | November 29, 2006, 5:08pm
Brian's post below reminds me of something Rick Brookhiser
wrote at National Review Online last year:
Chemotherapy, which I had in 1992, wasn't all bad. I looked very cool
bald; it gave a nice grey perm when my hair came back (why couldn't it
bring more hair back? can't they cut it with menoxydil?); and it did
stop my unpleasant visitor.
But the nausea was not cool, and only the illegal drug worked once the legal ones had failed.
[ONDCP Director] John Walters says there is no medical evidence for marijuana's effects. He is a liar or an ignoramus, probably both.
Brookhiser, a credentialed conservative, has in fact long been an eloquent supporter of medicinal marijuana. I like this quote, pulled from Wikipedia, that apparently came from Congressional testimony he gave in 1996:
My support for medical marijuana is not a contradiction of my
principles, but an extension of them. I am for law and order.
But crime has to be fought intelligently and the law disgraces itself
when it harasses the sick. I am for traditional virtues, but if
carrying your beliefs to unjust ends is not moral, it is philistine."
Given that according to our unnamed
Weekly Standard writer, marijuana "provides no health benefits, especially for sick people," and that supportera of medical marijuana laws are nothing more than corn chip-munching, Cheech & Chong-watching radical hippies, I wonder what he'd say to a guy like Brookhiser? Would the
Weekly Standard argue that Brookhiser was wrong about his own illness? That it was all in his head? That they, more than he, know what made his nausea go away?
Perhaps they'll argue what drug warriors
usually fall back on when they run out of arguments -- that he's part of an elaborate scheme concocted by
George Soros.
tarran | November 29, 2006, 10:18pm | #
Poor Dr DCS,
Rent seeking is *so* hard. He really must be suffering.
The problem is that doctors have made this bed, and they damn well had better lie in it.
From its inception, the AMA has sought to ensure that aleopaths (practicing ones anyway) were able to rake in money by shielding them from competition and forcing people to do business with them.
Part of this was the enactment of laws requiring a doctor's prescription before people could buy certain substances. Of course, then people have to go an pay the aleopath for the visit and the consult, which is quite a nice revenue stream.
Once again, the solution to the problems caused by government oppression (doctor shortages, prescription drug laws) is not more government oppression (tougher drug laws, fewer permitted medicines), but rather ending the original oppression.
Then they can go about treating sick people who *want* their help rather than being besieged by supplicants who are told to go to you to get the stuff they want.
* A couple of notes. The early AMA was quite blatant in its desire to put homeopaths, osteopaths and I think one other class of medical practitioner that I can't remember out of business. think this is reprehensible and condemn them for it. However, this does not mean that I think aleopathy is wrong. I don't know much about osteopathy, so I can't speak to it, but I know that homeopathy has been thoroughly discredited scientifically through repeated experiments. I think the aleopaths are, for the most part, on the right track.
** I assert that people have a moral right to put whatever they want into their bodies, just as you have a moral right to put whatever you want, including water into your gas tank. This is not an argument that people should avoid seeking expert advice on how to treat ailments.
Robert Goodman | November 30, 2006, 12:41am | #
"So how is an injestible pill like Sativex supposed to work when it's trying to cure nausea? If you're extremely nauseous from chemo, wouldn't you just throw the pill back up?"
It's not a pill. You spray it under your tongue. Absorbed a lot faster than swallowing, though still a little slower than inhalation, but without the smoke.
Anyway, it's going to be a long process, but here's how it should go. It will first be licensed for a narrow range of indications. Then the sponsor will get marketing approval for more label indiciations, and there will be pressure on doctors to prescribe it more widely. Slowly, over many years, its use will increase. In maybe 20 years it will have piled up a remarkable record of safety. At that point, its sponsor, seeking to capture a wider market for a drug gone off patent, will seek to have it converted from Rx to OTC. That will actually require an act of Congress, for cannabis is written into the FFDCA as a drug ingredient requiring a prescription. Possibly FDA will act on an application for OTC marketing contingent on a bill's being signed into law, in which case FDA's favorable review will spur Congress to act. However, if FDA says they won't act on such an application until Congress & the prez allow OTC marketing, the whole process may halt, because then Congress won't have FDA's stamp on the evidence. Even after all that, individual states will have to change their laws to allow OTC sales.
The whole process will take several decades, but once it's done, doctors will no longer be pestered for cannabis scrips. Until then, expect them to be squeezed very hard between the large number of patients who will want Sativex, etc., especially once the TV & magazine ads start -- much larger than the number who want narcotics or the TV-advertised sleeping pills, and the state & federal controlled substances authorities who will be looking for overprescribing. This will be a very contentious issue, much more than it is with narcotic analgesics, and expect the epndulum to swing back & forth for years, with doctors never on firm ground as to whether they'll be considered to be underprescribing or overprescribing Sativex and other cannabis preps.
