quote:Your link says: There are no FDA-approved medications that are smoked. For one thing, smoking is generally a poor way to deliver medicine. It is difficult to administer safe, regulated dosages of medicines in smoked form. Secondly, the harmful chemicals and carcinogens that are byproducts of smoking create entirely new health problems. There are four times the level of tar in a marijuana cigarette, for example, than in a tobacco cigarette
Marijuana is unique in that the cannabinoids are released especially by smoking. It isn't just THC that is in marijuana that has anti-nausea and pain-fighting properties. Additionally, when smoked, relief can come in as little as 7 seconds, while it takes much longer in pill form.
quote:http://www.norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=4395 says: The main active substance in cannabis, 9-tetrahydrocannabinol (9-THC), has been available for limited purposes as a Schedule II synthetic drug since 1985. This medicine, dronabinol (Marinol), taken orally in capsule form, is sometimes said to obviate the need for medical marihuana. Patients and physicians who have tried both disagree. The dosage and duration of action of marihuana are easier to control, and other cannabinoids in the marihuana plant may modify the action of 9-THC. The development of cannabinoids in pure form should certainly be encouraged, but the time and resources required are great and at present unavailable. In these circumstances, further isolation, testing, and development of individual cannabinoids should not be considered a substitute for meeting the immediate needs of suffering people.
There's no reason to ignore Marinol as part of a solution, but it is not the ideal form of the medicine. (I'm not saying smoking is the perfect way to take it either.) Marinol could be a step along the way to an adequate smoking-replacement THC delivery method, but it is not there yet. There needs to be more research and development in the area, but testing is largely not allowed in the US. (Despite what the DEA claims on that page, there has been very little research into medicinal uses of THC.) To this end, some companies have experimented with THC-based drugs outside of the US and preliminary results look promising.
One product, Sativex looks very encouraging:
quote:http://www.cannabis.net/articles/sativex.html However, GW executive chairman Geoffrey Guy has said the cannabis-derived spray [Sativex] will not get patients high since it is sprayed under the tongue, rather than smoked or swallowed. "They see the benefit without getting stoned."
I think that THC (in several forms) provides a good source of medicine, especially for many people for whom no other medicines work. I know several medical marijuana patients here in Oregon who are on the program for Multiple Sclerosis. MS really doesn't have an ideal medicine on the market, and nobody is really developing one. One major symptom of MS is "pain without apparent cause, burning, itching and electrical shock sensations." Essentially your nerves all hurt, and there are no medicines that directly address this sort of pain. Of the drugs usually prescribed (Dilantin, Elavil, Neurontin, Pamelor, Klonopin, or Tegretol), none really address the pain well enough. Consequently, MS patients turn to alternative solutions like marijuana in large numbers, even in states that don't have medical marijuna programs. The drug in marijuana seems specially formulated for their symptoms and has few negative side effects.
There is little reason to force these people to use an inferior medicine (Marinol or traditional medications) when they can have something that works much better. In the future, I expect to see more drugs developed so that they (and their doctors) can choose something that is not as potentially damaging as smoking.
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