Press Release
Patients Out of Time would like to call attention
to the annual meeting of the Society for Neuroscience
held in New Orleans in October 1997. On the 27th of
October a press conference was called to announce that
this group had concluded that cannabis used as a therapeutic
substance was a great aid in the elimination or control
of pain in humans.
New research shows that substances similar to or
derived from marijuana, known as cannabinoids, could
benefit the more than 97 mi11ion Americans who experience
some form of pain each year. In the past, the majority
of evidence suggesting that cannabinoids could crush
pain without causing a loss of touch was anecdotal.
Now careful studies are showing that cannabinoids not
only act as an analgesic but further, controls an enhanced
sensitivity to pain which often accompanies tissue
injury and inflammation and is called hyperalgesia.
"The results suggest that marijuana-like drugs
may be useful as an adjuvant in combination with other
therapies for treating certain types of pain," says
Ian Meng of the University of California at San Francisco.
Another researcher, Kenneth Hargreaves did work at
the University of Minnesota on hyperalgesia. Collectively
the research shows that the cannabinoid administered
at the site of injury works locally to produce analgesia
with limited side effects," says Hargreaves.
There are now 43 professional health care and support
organizations calling on the federal government to
end the medical marijuana prohibition. Mary Lynn Mathre,
RN, spokesperson for the Virginia Nurses Association
on this subject and co-founder of Patients Out of Time
commented that these recent research findings are "further
validation that the clinical experience of patients,
doctors and nurses with therapeutic Cannabis as a remedy
for some ailments, are not whimsy or politically based,
but rather a successful medical treatment."
The federal government's meanspirited attacks on
those who are arguing for a lifting of medical marijuana
prohibition by charging them with deception and hidden
agendas appear to be as vacuous as the claims made
by this administration that marijuana is the "reefer
madness" described by the prohibitionists of the
1930's. We would hope that a sensitive and compassionate
public would realize that basing the marijuana prohibition
on lies and faulty science initiated 60 years ago has
run its course. Placing therapeutic Cannabis under
the control of the health care community, instead of
leaving it under the law enforcement bureaucracy for
60 more years of prohibition, will solve this national
demonstration of intolerance.
12/97
