Therapeutic Uses of Cannabis: Fact or Fiction?

 By:  Joel Wind Fox Boyle, Certified Clinical Herbalist

 

    This paper is dedicated to everyone out there who has been forbidden a safe, natural medicine with a world of benefits far greater than most other medications known to date.  It has also proven to be safer than any other alternate medication (including any over-the-counter medications currently available), and most of these alternatives are not even half as useful as this plant.  I am talking about the plant which is known by the medical community as Cannabis, which is its rightful name.  This paper will explain the true, supported facts from both sides of the issue and I leave it up to you, the reader, to figure out for yourself what may be either right or wrong, hopefully based on the facts and not a pre-set opinion.

I will begin by stating that with cannabis as with any other medication there are no free rides, in other words there are some minor side effects.  A small percentage of people may have allergic reactions to cannabis.  Heart patients could have problems, even though cannabis generally relieves stress, dilates the arteries, and in general lowers diastolic pressure.  A small percentage of people get especially high heart rates and anxieties with cannabis - these persons should not use it.  Some bronchial asthma sufferers benefit from cannabis; however, for others it may serve as an additional irritant.  These are the actual and only side effects (besides getting "high") as reported by the American Medical Association (AMA).  (Cohen, Dr. S. & Stillman, R., Therapeutic Potential of Marijuana)

 THE CASE AGAINST CANNABIS

Now I will present a quote from Say it Straight: The Medical Myths of Marijuana and article put out by the DEA and Community Anti-Drug Coalitions of America: 

*  There are over 10,000 scientific studies that prove marijuana is a harmful addictive drug.  There is not one reliable study that demonstrates marijuana has any medical value.

*  Marijuana is an unstable mixture of 425 chemicals that convert to thousands when smoked.  Many of these chemicals are toxic, psychoactive chemicals that are largely unstudied and appear in uncontrolled strengths.

*  The harmful consequences of smoking marijuana include, but are not limited to the following: premature cancer, addiction, coordination and perception impairment, a number of mental disorders including depression, hostility, and increased aggressiveness, general apathy, memory loss, reproductive disabilities, and impairment to the immune system.

*  The Food and Drug Administration, the Drug Enforcement Administration, and the U.S. Public Health Service have rejected smoking crude marijuana as a medicine.

*  Medical marijuana has been promoted for "compassionate use" to assist people with cancer, AIDS, and glaucoma.  Scientific studies show the opposite is true; marijuana is damaging to individual with these illnesses.  In fact, people suffering with AIDS and glaucoma are being used unfairly by groups whose real agenda is to legalized marijuana.

·  AIDS: Scientific studies indicate marijuana damages the immune system, causing further peril to already weakened immune systems.  HIV-positive marijuana smokers progress to full-blown AIDS twice as fast as non-smokers and have an increased incidence of bacterial pneumonia.

·  Cancer: Marijuana contains many cancers-causing substances, many of which are present in higher concentrations in marijuana than tobacco.

·  Glaucoma: Marijuana does not prevent blindness due to glaucoma

*  Marijuana is currently up to 25 times more potent than it was in the 1960's, making the drug even more addictive.

*  Americans take their medicine in pills, solutions, sprays, drops, creams, and sometimes in suppositories but never by smoking.  No medicine prescribed for us today is smoked.

*  The main psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, THC (Tetra Hydrocannabinol), is already legally available in pharmaceutical capsule form by prescription from medical doctors.  This drug, Marinol, is less often prescribed because of the potential adverse effects, and there are more effective new medicines currently available.

*  While a biomedical or causal relationship between marijuana and the use of hard drugs has not been established, the statistical association is quite convincing.  Twelve to 17 year-olds who smoke marijuana are 85 times more likely to use cocaine than those who do not.  Sixty percent of adolescents who use marijuana before age 15 will later use cocaine.  These correlations are many times higher than the initial relationships found between smoking and lung cancer in the 1964 Surgeon General's report (nine to ten times higher).  [ed note - I am assuming the report they refer to is the one that relates cigarette smoking to lung cancer, since they did not specify]

*  Major medical and health organizations, as well as the vast majority of nationally recognized expert medical doctors, scientists and researchers, have concluded that smoking marijuana is not a safe and effective medicine.  These organizations include: the American Medical Association, the American Cancer Society, National Sclerosis Association, the American Glaucoma Association, American Academy of Ophthalmology [ed note - was spelled Opthamology - I assume it was a misspelling], National Eye Institute, and the National Cancer Institute.

*  In 1994, a U.S. Court of Appeals ruled that marijuana should remain a Schedule I drug: highly addictive with no medical usefulness.  The court noted that the pro-marijuana physicians had relied on non-scientific evidence.

  Thus ends the quote from the Drug Enforcement Administration.  While they do seem to present a good argument, I looked into their "facts", to which they gave me no backing reference to, and found many of them to be baseless or without support.  So I started to search deeper into where they came from and found the following information.

                              

THE FACTS ABOUT THE CASE AGAINST CANNABIS

I found that there were only two major scientific research studies done that found cannabis to be harmful.  The first, the Dr. Heath/Tulane University study in 1974, showed that Rhesus monkeys ("spider monkeys"), smoking the equivalent of only 30 joints a day, began to atrophy and die after only 90 days.  Heath killed the half-dead monkeys, opened their brains, counted the dead brain cells and then took control monkeys, who hadn't smoked marijuana, killed them and also counted their dead brain cells.  The pot-smoking monkeys had enormous amounts of dead cells as compared to the "straight" monkeys.  In 1980, Playboy and NORML finally received for the first time - after six years of requests and suing the government - an accurate accounting of the research procedures used in Dr. Heath's infamous report.  Playboy discovered that Heath had administered 63 Colombian strength joints in five minutes, through gas masks (losing no smoke), during a period of just three months; instead of administering 30 joints per day over a one-year period.  The Heath monkey study was actually a study in animal asphyxiation and carbon monoxide poisoning.  As anyone should know three to five minutes of oxygen deprivation causes brain damage - therefore the dead brain cells (Red Cross Lifesaving and Water Safety manual).  Also, carbon monoxide, a deadly gas that kills brain cells, is given off by any burning object, especially at those concentrations.  All researchers agreed the findings in Heath's experiment regarding marijuana were of no value, because carbon monoxide poisoning and other factors had not been considered in the report.  (Downtown News, Los Angeles, CA, "Letters: DARE to tell the Truth" - July 31, 1989)

The other major scientific studies proving cannabis to be harmful were done by Dr. Gabriel Nahas of Columbia University in 1972.  His studies showed that cannabis created chromosome damage, testosterone damage, and countless other horrible effects which suggested the breaking down of the immune system.  However, in December 1983, under ridicule from his peers and a funding cut-off from NIDA (National Institute on Drug Abuse), he renounced all his old THC metabolite build-up and unique chromosome petri dish tissue damage studies, conclusions, and extrapolations.  This was seven years after the National Institute of Health (NIH) specifically forbade Dr. Nahas from getting another penny of U.S. government money for cannabis studies because of his embarrassing research in the early 1970's.   In fact, Dr. Nahas refuted THC petri-dish studies on the immune system have never been able to be replicated.  However these unreliable results are still taught, while honest researchers face prison if they attempt to test any thoughts about the medical use of cannabis.  (Same - Downtown News,  July 31, 1989;  Gehringer, Dale, "Inside the DEA", Reason Magazine, December 1986)

OTHER STUDIES OF CANNABIS USE

In 1976, Dr. Tashkin, M.D., UCLA, reported to a conference in Rheims, France that only in one of the 29 areas of the human lung studied - the large air passageway - did he find cannabis to be more of an irritant (by 15 times) than tobacco.  This figure is insignificant, however, since Dr. Tashkin also notes that tobacco has almost no effect on this area.  Therefore, 15 times almost nothing is still almost nothing.  Dr. Tashkin continued his research in the large air passageway of the lung, and in 1986 he reported to the New England Journal of Medicine that cannabis smoke caused as many or more pre-cancerous lesions as tobacco in "equal" amounts.  Most people do not realize, nor are the media told, that any tissue abnormality (abrasion, eruption, or even redness) is called a pre-cancerous lesion.  However, unlike the lesions caused by tobacco, the THC-related lesions contain no carcinogenic activity.  Also, when asked in December of 1997 about cannabis and lung cancer, he stated that there was not yet one single case of lung cancer in someone who only smoked cannabis that has been reported.  It should be remembered that he and other doctors had predicted 20 years ago their certainty that hundreds of thousands of cannabis smokers would by now (1997 - date of the interview) have developed lung cancer.  (Tashkin, Dr. Donald, UCLA studies, 1969-1997; UCLA Pulmonary Studies 1969-1997; and information from a personal interview with Jack Herer in 1997 - From: Herer, Jack,  The Emperor Wears No Clothes)

Some other studies have been done regarding cannabis, however these are not talked about as much.  One is the Coptic Study in 1981, of members of the Coptic religion residing in Florida, who smoked 16 high potency spliffs (generally equal to five American joints) a day.  They were studied by two doctors from UCLA and showed absolutely no brain differences between them and non-smokers (Coptic Studies, U.S. 1981 - Dr. Ungerlieder and Shaeffer).  Another study is probably the most exhaustive study of cannabis smoking in its natural study; this study being Ganja in Jamaica - A Medical Anthropological Study of Chronic Marijuana Use by Vera Rubin and Lambros Comitas.  This study, sponsored by the National Institute of Mental Health (NIMH) Center for Studies of Narcotic and Drug Abuse, was the first intensive, multi-disciplinary study of cannabis use and users to be published.  The effects of smoking, as described by the subject, made them lively, merry, more responsible, and conscious.  They reported it was good for meditation and concentration, and created a general sense of well-being, self-assertiveness, and other positive social attitudes.  In the study they also found no relation of cannabis to crime (except marijuana busts), no impairment of motor skills, and smokers and non-smokers alike had identical work records or adjustment.  Marilyn Bowman, in the same book, did a battery of psychological tests on chronic cannabis users in Jamaica in 1972, found no impairment of physiological, sensory and perceptual-motor performance, tests of concept formation, abstracting ability and cognitive style, and tests of memory.  And as for the Stepping Stone/Gateway Effect - the study found that the use of hard drugs is unknown among the working class Jamaicans.  Actually, in America during the late 1800's cannabis was used in treating addiction.  Opiate, chloral hydrate, and alcohol addicts were successfully treated with potent cannabis extracts; some patients recovered with less than a dozen doses of cannabis extract. 

These Jamaican studies were largely confirmed by another Carribean study, the 1980 Cannabis in Costa Rica - A Study in Chronic Marijuana Use edited by William Carter for the Institute for Study of Human Issues.  Again in this study researchers found no discernible damage to the native population's chronic cannabis smokers.  However, alcoholic social problems, evident on neighboring cannabis-free islands, are not found in Costa Rica.  And finally, we have the Amsterdam model - which shows a substantial reduction in cannabis consumption among teenagers and a 33% drop in the number of heroin addicts, since they adopted a policy of tolerance and non-prosecution of cannabis and hashish smokers.  Their strategy of separating cannabis sales from hard drug dealers by bringing it above ground has been quite successful.  (Meiseler, Stanley, "Nothing Works", L.A. Times, August 1989)

THE THERAPEUTIC USES OF CANNABIS

Now I will go over the various benefits that have been found for Cannabis, the first of which is that it would be beneficial for 80% of asthma sufferers, more so than any other present legally prescribed medication (Tashkin, Dr. Donald, UCLA Pulmonary Studies - 1969-1997; Ibid., Asthma Studies - 1969-1976; Cohen, Sidney, and Stillman, Therapeutic Potential of Marijuana).  Another benefit is for Glaucoma (a progressive loss of vision) because of cannabis' extreme effectiveness for reducing ocular pressure  (National Eye Institute - Records of Bob Randolph/Elvy Musika, 1975, 1998).  Researchers at the Medical College of Virginia have discovered that cannabis is an incredibly successful remedy for reducing many types of tumors, both benign and malignant (cancerous).  According to Dr. Thomas Ungerleider (who headed California's Marijuana for Cancer research program from 1979 to 1984) cannabis is the best agent for the control of nausea in cancer chemotherapy.  Cannabis is definitely the best treatment for many, but not all types of epilepsy, and for victims' post-seizure mental traumas.  Similarly, smoking cannabis has proven to be a major source of relief for multiple sclerosis, which affects the nervous system and is characterized by muscular weakness and tremors.  Also, cannabis, whether applied as an herbal pack or poultice, is also the best muscle relaxant, back spasm medicine, and general antispasmodic medication currently available.  The cannabidiols, extracts from the un-budded hemp plant, have many antibiotic uses such as treatment of gonorrhea and herpes.  Cannabis can also be used as a topical anesthetic, in fact until 1937 virtually all corn plasters, mustard plasters, muscle ointments, and fibrosis poultices were made from or with cannabis extracts; And rheumatism was treated throughout South America (until the 1960's) with hemp leaves and/or flower tops heated in water or alcohol and placed on painful joints. (Cohen & Stillman, Therapeutic Potential for Marijuana;  Mikuriya, Tod H.,  M.D., Marijuana Medical Papers -1839-1972)

Cannabis is the best natural expectorant to clear the human lungs of smog, dust, and the phlegm associated with tobacco use.  It effectively dilates the airways of the lungs, the bronchi, opening them to allow more oxygen into the lungs.  It is also the best natural dilator of the tiny airways of the lungs, the bronchial tubes - making cannabis the best overall bronchial dilator for 80% of the population (the remaining 20% sometimes show minor negative reactions).  (Tashkin, Asthma studies - UCLA, 1969-1997)

Cannabis also lowers blood pressure, dilates the arteries, and reduces body temperature an average of one-half degree, thereby relieving stress.  Evening cannabis smokers in general report more restful sleep.  Using cannabis has been shown to allow most people to have a more complete rest with a higher amount of "alpha time" during sleep as compared with prescription or sleep-inducing patent sedatives.  Medical research also indicates that light cannabis smoking might be useful for a majority of mild emphysema victims.  It would improve the quality of life for millions of sufferers and extend their life spans.  All research into the oxygen blood transfer effects caused by cannabis indicates that the chest (lung) pains, extremity pains, shallowness of breath, and headaches we may experience on a heavy smog day are usually alleviated by cannabis smoking throughout the day.  (Cohen & Stillman, Therapeutic Potential of Marijuana; Tashkin, Pulmonary Research - UCLA, 1969-1997)

While tobacco restricts the arteries, cannabis dilates them.  Because migraine headaches are the result of artery spasms combined with over-relaxation of the veins, the vascular changes cannabis causes in the covering of the brain (the meninges) usually make migraines disappear.  However, unlike most other drugs, cannabis has no apparent effect on the vascular system in the rest of the body, except for the slight increased heart rate during the onset of the high.  (Ibid. - both sources)

Users of cannabis often (but not always) experience a stimulated appetite for food, which makes cannabis the very best medicine currently available for anorexia.  Cannabis smoking can also help dry out your mouth for the dentist and could probably replace highly toxic Probathine compounds (this could also indicate that cannabis could have uses in treating peptic ulcers).  The fact that cannabis promotes a sense of well-being, along with a healthier appetite, and better rest could help people feel not so much like they are "dying of" AIDS or cancer but "living with" them instead.  It also eases small pains and some big ones and helps senior citizens live with aches and pains like arthritis, insomnia and debilitating infirmities, and enjoy life in greater dignity and comfort.  Medical evidence indicates that cannabis is the best overall treatment for dementia , senility, and maybe Alzheimer's disease, for long-term memory gain and hundreds of other benefits.  Every U.S. commission or federal judge who has studied the evidence has agreed cannabis is one of the safest drugs currently available.  With all its therapeutic uses, it has only one side effect that has been exaggerated as a concern: the "high".  (Cohen & Stillman, Therapeutic Potential of Marijuana; Mikuriya, Tod H., M.D., Marijuana Medical Papers, 1839-1972)