Medical cannabis

[Lance Kennedy]

Reference : New Scientist, 4 August 2018, page 28.

If someone smokes cannabis, or ingests it in some other way, that person will take into his or her body some 400 different chemical compounds, including 200 classified as cannabinoids. They interact with the nervous system in a wide range of ways. No one really knows what is going on medically. This means that unchanged raw cannabis is not really suitable for medical use.

There are especially two major components, known as tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol (CBD). The former appears to be harmful (THC is the active that gives the high), while the latter may have some benefits. THC can, if too much is ingested, cause mental illness, and a drop in IQ, and can cause a kind of drug dependency. CBD to a degree counters that harm. However, both THC and CBD are made from the same precursor, so that if there is more THC there will be less CBD, making the cannabis more harmful. Drug growers and sellers busily breed strains of cannabis with more THC, making their drug more harmful and less useful medically. In fact, street sold drug contains little or no CBD.

On the other hand, legitimate growers for medical cannabis are cultivating strains with very little THC and a lot of CBD. So you cannot get a high off that product. Nor will you get any form of addiction, and no mental illness. But is it useful medically ?

In most cases, where proper comparative trials have been run, conventional drugs work better. Of course, with several hundred cannabinoid chemicals to test, there may be treatments yet to be developed which may be superior. It appears that the current situation where medical cannabis is permitted, that permit comes more from public pressure than from medical research findings.

My own view is that cannabis should be legalised, regulated, and taxed. The regulation would prevent drug being sold that had too much THC and too little CBD. It could also be costed in such a way as to drive the illegal drug pushers out of the market.

[scrmbldggs]

Medical cannibals must be some sickness, eh.

[TJrandom]

On a cancer site I visit, some of those who use it medically for pain relief - say they use extracts that have been compounded, are in capsule form, and are available thru a pharmacy. One poster said that it permitted lesser use of opioids. For people dealing with the pain from cancer in their bones, if they think it helps them, I wouldn`t care what the medical research says.

[Lance Kennedy]

One of the interesting things I encounter on the skeptic forum is skeptic weakness. There are people who are intelligent and educated, and competent skeptics, but still with certain intellectual weaknesses in their thinking. Oleg, for example, has a good mind and is worthy of respect, but has a weakness in that he continues to accept certain ideas that are politically correct, but otherwise bull-{!#%@}.

Interesting to see you, TJ, on this topic saying you do not care what medical research discovers, but you will stick with your emotion based view. We all have our weak points, I guess, in spite of the fact, TJ, that you are normally a very rational debater.

[TJrandom]

Wow, just WOW... you do selectively paraphrase, and then build upon that. That I don`t care, with the caveats given, is certainly not an emotion based view - rather just a fact. I neither defended the use of cannabis nor promoted it – nor will I ever use it, and have no dog in it. Rather I offered additional information as it pertains to a certain segment of users and with those indeed, based upon medical research. What would you have – everyone kowtowing to your wisdom from on high?

[Lance Kennedy]

TJ

The research shows that cannabis as medicine is not as effective as conventional therapy. What would I have ? From a man like you, who shows from previous good posts that he is rational, an acceptance that medical research gives a better answer than subjective opinions on the part of certain patients. There are others on this forum who consistently post nonsense, but that is not you.

I suspect that a lot of the positive views towards cannabis therapy is placebo. If placebo is all that you have got, then fine. But if there is a superior alternative, I will promote that.

[TJrandom]

My point was that for some patients, cannabis is acceptable, and I suspect far effective more than a placebo. But placebo or not, I would not restrict use.

Clinical Practice Guidelines…

… use in a small subset of medical conditions for which there is some evidence (neuropathic pain, palliative and end-of-life pain, chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, and spasticity due to multiple sclerosis or spinal cord injury).