Margaret Kopala: What we know about marijuana Options

[medpot]

The Ottawa Citizen

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR


What we know about marijuana



Margret Kopala, The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Saturday, May 31, 2008


Leading the recent National Post debate on cannabis, columnist Barbara Kay can't have anticipated Vancouver's safe injection site, rather than legalized cannabis, would be the Trojan Horse for the legalization of all addictive drugs.

This week, the right of addicts to continue use of illicit drugs was upheld by the B.C. Supreme Court even though no treatment of which I am aware uses the substance that caused the problem to cure it. Smokers use nicotine gum, not more cigarettes, to kick the habit, don't steal to feed their habit and if heroine and cocaine are so helpful, why aren't doctors prescribing them in pill form?

At least we know something about cannabis. In fact we know a lot. And now a paper published in Nature places the medicinal, the harmful and the recreational aspects of cannabis in a perspective that has implications for how we treat all addictive substances.

According to The Independent, research in the United Kingdom of an estimated 500,000 cannabis addicts shows some 26,000 sought treatment in 2006. Findings from Europe's largest psychiatric research facility, London University's Institute of Psychiatry, establish a clear connection between cannabis use and psychosis. Though no user is immune, vulnerable adolescents are at particular risk for developing schizophrenia, a progressively disabling form of psychosis producing hallucinations, delusions and bizarre behaviour, in young adulthood.

Research from the institute using MRI scans has demonstrated how two active ingredients in cannabis affect the brain. The first, called cannabidiol (CBD), relaxes it while the other creates temporary hallucinations and feelings of paranoia. Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), we now know, switches off a regulator in the inferior frontal cortex by disrupting neuronal signalling.

"Cannabis, the mind and society: the hash realities" synthesizes these and other findings. Lead author and the Institute's authority on marijuana and psychosis, Robin M. Murray, confirmed to me by e-mail that it remains the most current on the subject.

It is also the most important. Not only does it provide much-needed perspective, it also demonstrates how, irrespective of the number of individual peer reviewed studies, each with inherent limitations, no full understanding of a subject is possible without the contextualization that meta-analyses and overviews provide. Health Canada's advisory committee on Insite, for instance, showed how such limitations produced a lukewarm endorsement.

If brain function is affected by CBD and THC, "Hash Realities" considers how causality is further suggested by the fact psychotic symptoms worsen with continued use and how while family history is a factor, so are the associated genes, and a quarter of the population has them. And while cannabis is addictive and its use commonly precedes the use of hard drugs, the "gateway" theory, formerly discredited, is now being scientifically verified.

The paper also references the past and exposes the confusions of the present. "The classical Greek term pharmakon indicates that a substance can be a remedy as well as a poison," it says. Cannabis based medicines have a future but, in a "rational world," these would not be influenced by attitudes toward recreational use where real problems do exist. Most problematic? Four per cent of the global population uses cannabis; world production has doubled since the early 1990s and THC concentrations have escalated. The number of children using the drug is rising. By 2010, one study predicts, "a substantial increase in the incidence of schizophrenia should be apparent." Legalized cannabis presented few problems in the Netherlands where it is being reconsidered, but highly restrictive Sweden presented fewer problems still.

In Canada, this picture is complicated by the fact marijuana use is the highest in the industrial world. The trade, worth $6 billion in British Columbia alone, finances the import of guns and hard drugs, whose victims land in Canada's urban centres where health communities then seek desperate solutions.

"Hash Realities" concludes that public education is more effective than legislation but given the evidence, the British government recently made cannabis possession punishable by up to five years in prison.

Now where are the comparable perspectives on heroine and cocaine use?

Margret Kopala's column on western perspectives appears every second week.




© The Ottawa Citizen 2008

[Kegan]

sent


To The Editor, RE: What we know about marijuana

We know that the “link” between marijuana use and mental illness is a merely a correlation, not a cause. The “studies” in the UK even mention this, but almost none of the news stories about them do. Once again Kopala cherry-picks information to suit her anti-marijuana agenda.

For example, both Kopala and Barbara Kay have repeatedly ignored the fact that recent science out of Germany shows how cannabinoids stimulate the body's production of TIMP-1, which helps healthy cells resist cancer invasion:

www.salem-news.com/articles/january112008/cancer_treatment_11008.php
www.webmd.com/cancer/news/20071226/pot-slows-cancer-in-test-tube

Odd how they find anecdotal information against marijuana so deeply compelling, yet laboratory science showing how chemicals found in marijuana trigger anti-cancer chemicals in the human body are not even mentioned.

They also fail to answer any of the questions presented to them about these facts, choosing instead to simply obfuscate. The only arguments that these writers seem able to use to justify prohibition are the quasi-moralistic ideologies based on their personal dislike of people having the kind of fun that they don't approve of.

They have also ignored repeated requests for public debates, either in print or in person, which should tell you something about how sure they are of their arguments.

They also brush aside the notion that licensed medical users like myself, my epileptic wife, and many others across the country, consider this sort of non-factual articulation of their position to be discrimination. They ignore the fact that publicly linking marijuana and mental illness in such a way paints all marijuana users as potentially “crazy”. In their circular minds, I am sure all of our arguments and laments about discrimination are merely the rants of pot-damaged minds. They seem more interested in stirring up the ire of marijuana users than they are reaching a resolution on the issue.

I fully respect that they are entitled to their wilfully ignorant opinions, but I am deeply puzzled as to why respectable publications like the Post and the Citizen would continue to allow this discrimination to be published in their papers and forums. As editors, they are the ones ultimately responsible for what is published, so maybe accusations of discrimination might better be levelled at them, not the writers.

Russell Barth
Federal Medical Marijuana License Holder
Patients Against Ignorance and Discrimination on Cannabis
(PAIDOC)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pCdNX_k71iw
www.rata.ca/paidoc.html

[420eh]

just sent in....

When I read the article by Margret Kopala ( What we know about marijuana. 5/31) it really made me wonder why she only concentrates on one or 2 articles to get her facts. The internet is full of information that puts allot of doubt into everything she writes about when it comes to marijuana.

When she writes "even though no treatment of which I am aware uses the substance that caused the problem to cure it. Smokers use nicotine gum, not more cigarettes, to kick the habit, don't steal to feed their habit " she really does a double talk very well. Cigarettes are addictive because of nicotine and when a person uses nicotine gum to help curve their smoking, they are infact using the same substance that they are addicted to help them kick their habit. As far as the stealing, sure it happens. Why do the border police catch cigarette smugglers? Are they not stealing money from the government by not paying taxes on their illegal smokes?

When she says "if heroine and cocaine are so helpful, why aren't doctors prescribing them in pill form?" I have to inform her that they are. they are called percocet and oxy-cottin. Both are very highly addictive and found on the street very easily.

I could comment more on her article but that's for another day...


420eh

[medpot]

The Ottawa Citizen

LETTERS TO THE EDITOR

Letter


Reducing habit



The Ottawa Citizen
Published: Wednesday, June 04, 2008


Re: What we know about marijuana, May 31.

Margret Kopala claims that "smokers use nicotine gum, not more cigarettes, to kick the habit," but, because cigarette smokers are addicted to nicotine, when they use gum or patches they are actually using the substance that caused the problem to cure it.

Similarly, when people are addicted to pharmaceutical drugs, they slowly reduce the dosage to quit. Reduction is part of harm reduction.

Ms. Kopala also states that cigarette smokers "don't steal to feed their habit" but fails to consider that drug addicts have to steal because their drugs are illegal, and cannot be prescribed or sold through pharmacies.

Ritalin or Paxil users would never need to steal for their drugs because they can legally, safely obtain them.

Our drug problems of addiction and gang crime get worse every year, yet police and politicians keep advocating for the same prohibitionist approach. It seems they benefit the most from prohibition because prohibition means guaranteed funding for them and for the drug dealers.

Drug prohibition and abstinence are not solving our drug problems.

How many more prohibition-fuelled deaths are needed before we commit to trying something radically different?

Jodie Joanna Emery,

Vancouver




© The Ottawa Citizen 2008

[Alison Myrden]

My LTE just sent.

Love and stuff,


Alison
xx


To the Editor:

I am a legally licensed cannabis patient here in Canada and I take complete offence at an article you printed for your readers regarding the NEEDLESS necessity of Safe Injection Sites like INSITE and the HARMS of cannabis.

"What we know about marijuana" May 31, 2008 By Margret Kopala.

For over six thousand years cannabis has been used to treat some of the most disabling disorders known to medicine, one from which I suffer called tic douloureux, a devastating side effect of multiple sclerosis, presents itself as a stabbing pain in the face. I have it twenty four hours a day and it IS excruciating.

If people would like to know the facts about cannabis as medicine, Google search some dear friends of mine and their incredible work over the years: Incredibly brilliant scientist who found THC in marijuana Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, MS Specialist who also specializes in tic douloureux Dr. Ethan Russo, Well known Harvard Psychiatrist Dr. Lester Grinspoon and Canadian MS Pain specialist Dr. Mark Ware. Or, just bookmark our website, The Medical Marijuana Mission at http://www.themarijuanamission.com

Cannabis is the ONLY medicine besides Physician prescribed heroin and cocaine that has given me ANY relief medically.

I carry one of the largest prescriptions for cannabis in the Country because of this. When I don't have cannabis for relief, I resort to over thirty-two pills including heroin and cocaine and up to two thousand milligrams of morphine a day and have for over sixteen years.

Doctor's tell me there is nothing else for my pain and chronic symptoms of MS. Having tried every medicine known in North America to treat my illness, medical studies and ALL of my practitioners and my own investigations have told me - cannabis works the fastest AND helps the most with ALL of my symptoms from MS. I can actually eliminate two thirds of my pharmaceuticals when I have enough cannabis. Shouldn't people who find relief with other illicit drugs get the same respect?

I must mention as well, I have NEVER been on an anti-depressant or mind altering drug for mood or psychiatric issues at any time in my life and have used cannabis as medicine for over twenty years.

I think also you can tell by now that my mental acuity is not at all in jeopardy.

The only real answer to this age old question of whether our World should legalize and regulate all drugs is simple really.

Prohibition fuels violence, drug overdoses and gangsterism among other terrible things. There were no heroin overdoses before heroin became illegal. Addicts would watch out for each other not run and hide from any authority figure who became suspicious of their behaviour. In a legalized and regulated environment like INSITE in British Columbia, Canada - overdoses just don't happen.

When will Canada and the World learn that the answer to this question is full and complete legalization and age restriction for all illicit drugs?

This is how we will keep our children safe, our critically and chronically ill in full legal prescriptions and will keep our streets from being in TOTAL control.

I know - I'm one of millions of people living the opposite.

Thank you for taking the time to listen.

THIS is exactly how we will win the War on Drugs.

Sincerely,


Alison Myrden
Leading Female Speaker for LEAP
Law Enforcement Against Prohibition
http://www.leap.cc
Burlington, Ontario
905.681.8287