US Supreme Court rejects attack on physicians discussing marajuana with patients

fable · Post by **fable** » Tue Oct 14, 2003 10:47 am

WASHINGTON (AP) - Justices turned down the Bush administration's request to consider whether the federal government can punish doctors for recommending or perhaps even talking about the benefits of the drug to sick patients. An appeals court said they cannot.

Nine states have laws legalizing marijuana for patients with physician recommendations or prescriptions: Alaska, Arizona, California, Colorado, Hawaii, Maine, Nevada, Oregon and Washington, and 35 states have passed legislation recognizing marijuana's medicinal value. But federal law bans the use of pot under any circumstances.

The case gave the court an opportunity to review its second medical marijuana case in two years. This one presented a more difficult issue, pitting free-speech rights of doctors against government power to keep physicians from encouraging illegal drug use. A ruling for the administration would have made the state medical marijuana laws unusable.

Some California doctors and patients, in filings at the Supreme Court, compared doctor information on pot to physicians' advice on "red wine to reduce the risk of heart disease, Vitamin C, acupuncture, or chicken soup." The administration, which has taken a hard stand the state laws, argued that public heath - not the First Amendment free-speech rights of doctors or patients - was at stake.

Vicsun · Post by **Vicsun** » Tue Oct 14, 2003 11:54 am

Coming from a country where marijuana is semi-legal I have to say I find the fact that Bush is trying to punish doctors who are recommending marijuana to patients in order to help them absurd. Restricted use can hardly be considered the same as abuse, not to mention that pot has no long lasting negative effects.

Scayde · Post by **Scayde** » Thu Oct 16, 2003 4:22 pm

@Vicsun, Your facts aren't exactly correct about the no long lasting negative effect....but I agree, the drug laws in this country are archaic and boarder on absurd.

@fable: You are getting into an area I am very passionate about. State's rights vs Fedral. IMO this is just another example of how the fedral government has bullied its way into the states sovereign territory ever since the Civil War. Damn shame really.

fable · Post by **fable** » Thu Oct 16, 2003 4:30 pm

Go for it, @Scayde.

I'm with you on this one.

Scayde · Post by **Scayde** » Thu Oct 16, 2003 4:38 pm

Originally posted by fable
Go for it, @Scayde. I'm with you on this one.

LMAO.....mark it in red folks, fable and I are on the same side for this one !!!

Vicsun · Post by **Vicsun** » Thu Oct 16, 2003 4:58 pm

Well in this case, just to spark the fire I'll play the devil's advocate

In general I think it's better for the federal government to have more power than separate states, since a single state might not always be long-sighted enough to solve it's problems completely in a way not harmful to everyone else. In other words what is beneficial for one state might be a deterrent for the country as a whole or even a deterrent to that state in the long run.
Just like a fisherman has an incentive to catch as much fish as possible but unless something above him restricts all fishermen in some way, fish will become limited and fishermen as a whole will be worse off.

OK, I don't think that made a lot of sense, and I'm not versed in US politics, so if I just made a fool out of myself just ignore me.

Oh yeah, and about the long-lasting-effects, could you perhaps elaborate? I've heard a lot of different things (from harmless, to hallucination inducing). What do you know about the subject?

Beldin · Post by **Beldin** » Fri Oct 17, 2003 12:23 am

Originally posted by Scayde

@fable: You are getting into an area I am very passionate about. State's rights vs Fedral. IMO this is just another example of how the fedral government has bullied its way into the states sovereign territory ever since the Civil War. Damn shame really.

On a sidenote - The EU is starting to do the same with its member states...

Worries !

Beldin

C Elegans · Post by **C Elegans** » Sun Oct 19, 2003 3:29 pm

I think it is totally ridiculous to reject a substance totally, any substance, when it has been demonstrated in controlled studies to have beneficial medical effects when used as prescribed by a physician. Marijuana can have side effects and harmful long-term effects (see below), like most other prescription drugs. The active substance in marijuana is tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) which is neurotoxic and can cause cell death. However, acting on the central nervous systems cannabinoid receptors, it can also have effects beneficial for certain diseases. Symptom relieve has been reported in controlled studies of patients with MS, cancer and AIDS. The pain relieving effects aside, THX neuromodulating effects has been demonstrated to have other potential beneficial effects in animal studies, such as anti-inflammatory effects and protective effects when the nerve cells are affected by toxic effects for instance by other substances or lack of oxygen or glucose. Discussing the mechanisms of action pharmacologically will be a long and mostly boring topic for most of you, but here are two abstracts (summaries of scientific studies) worth reading:

A recent study demonstrating the pain relieving effects:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

And here is a study discussing effects seen in animal models, that IMO should be further investigated in humans:
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/quer ... t=Abstract

I see no reason to threat marijuana different that other prescription drugs. All prescription drugs (and many non-prescription drugs) share the feature that the effects are a trade off between beneficial effects and unwanted side effects. Non-prescription headache pills, conception pills, antibiotics or antidepressants also have potentially long term side effects. It is merely illogical to treat marijuana different - either the beneficial effects weight heavier in this trade off, or they don't for a certain condition or disease.

Originally posted by Vicsun
Oh yeah, and about the long-lasting-effects, could you perhaps elaborate? I've heard a lot of different things (from harmless, to hallucination inducing). What do you know about the subject?

I take the liberty to reply to this question although I am not an expert on THC:

Cannaibis contains 4 times more tar and other cancerogenic substances that tobacco, which means smoking cannabis induce the same health risks as smoking cigarettes. Like cigarettes, those risks are related to long term frequent use - smoking one ordinary joint a week would simply be equivalent to smoking 4 cigarettes a week in terms of effect on the respiratory system. The active substances differ between tobacco and cannabis, but the 4000 other substances, some of which are unhealthy, are the same.

Other long lasting effects are on cognitive performance. Lower performance in tests of memory and attention has been demostrated in long term cannabis users compared to short time users and control subjects who did not use cannabis. Lower global IQ has been demonstrated in people who smoked more than 5 joints/week. The negative effect on cognitive functions could be related to the decrease in blood flow in the frontal lobes that cannabis induce. Also, there it at least one study showing marijuana related decrease in male fertility.

Regarding hallucinations and psychosis, THC is a psychotropic drug and alters perception more or less. Real hallucinations (ie seeing, hearing or feeling something when nothing is there) are very rarely reported as an effect of THC. It is highly unlikely that THC in itself can cause psychosis, although it may trigger off psychosis in individuals already prone for psychosis disorders.

HighLordDave · Post by **HighLordDave** » Sun Oct 19, 2003 7:13 pm

Part of the reason why marijuana is illegal in the United States has nothing to do with its effects, but rather the power of the tobacco lobby, which helped get marijuana outlawed because they didn't want competition.

It seems to me that we tolerate a fair amount of legalised drugs (ie-alchohol and tobacco) which have demonstrated harmful short and long-term effects, but have outlawed pot on a seemingly arbitrary basis. I'm not an advocate of recreational marijuana use (I rarely drink and don't smoke either), but I don't believe the criminalisation of THC is necessarily the answer.

I read the other day (from a reputable popular, but not scholarly, source) that there are more abusers of prescription drugs in the United States than heroin, crack and marijuana combined. It seems to me that some people within the DEA are making a bigger deal out of medical marijuana than it merits to draw attention away from other problems.

On a side note, a friend of mine who is a doctor was passing out pens he had received from a sales rep for one of the medical marijuana companies; I figured they'd be passing out bags of chips instead.