Tagged: Pharmacology

Illinois lawmaker pushes for medical marijuana bill

Illinois lawmaker pushes for medical marijuana bill

An Illinois sponsor of a medical marijuana measure says he may have enough votes to pass the bill in the Statehouse, the Chicago Tribune reports. Rep. Lou Lang, D-Skokie, says his ”nose count” has him near the 60 votes needed for approval of a three-year trial medical marijuana program called the Compassionate Use of Medical Cannabis Pilot Program Act, which would be a first for Ill.

“If members vote their consciences, I’ll have the votes,” said Lang, who fell short a handful of votes last year, although the Senate approved similar previous legislation in 2010.

This season may be different, however, because three dozen lawmakers in the House and Senate are not coming back in the next General Assembly, making them lame ducks, Ray Long reports. “Their votes are more likely to be up for grabs given that they are not expected to face the voters again.”

CBS News reports that advocates of medical marijuana are in Springfield to lobby state lawmakers to approve the use of medical marijuana with strict limitations. The drug would only be prescribed by doctors, in small amounts, to qualifying terminally ill patients or their designated caregivers. Individuals suffering from AIDS, cancer, multiple sclerosis or a “debilitating medical condition” may qualify.

A qualifying patient or caregiver would only be able to legally possess 6 cannabis plants and 2 ounces of dried usable cannabis during a two-week period.

State Rep. Jim Durkin, R-Countryside, opposes the measure because he fears it will make the drug more available. “Just in the last two weeks in DeKalb, there was a 10-pound traffic stop of medical marijuana that came from Oregon,” Durkin said.

The AP reports that Rep. Jim Sacia, R-Freeport, acknowledges that Lang may have enough votes to pass the measure, but the former FBI agent still plans to fight it. “I just see it as a tremendous mistake,” said Sacia.

Lang may bring the measure to vote this week at the General Assembly. He told the AP that there are ”a whole bunch of people who are wavering.” He will work over the weekend before putting the measure to vote, although he may be close to the 60 votes needed.

Medical marijuana supporters have already won local approval for medical use in 18 states and D.C. Voters in Colorado and Washington chose to legalize marijuana, although, the federal government currently lists marijuana as a Schedule I controlled substance, meaning it has no medically accepted use and high potential for abuse.

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Massachusetts Question 3: Medical Marijuana

This Election Day, Massachusetts voters will decide on whether to allow suffering and chronically ill patients the freedom to use medical marijuana. If controversial Question 3 passes, it would allow physicians to prescribe 60-day supplies of the drug to qualifying patients that could benefit.

Question 3

“This proposed law would eliminate state criminal and civil penalties for the medical use of marijuana by qualifying patients,” according to the Secretary of State of Massachusetts. “To qualify, a patient must have been diagnosed with a debilitating medical condition, such as cancer, glaucoma, HIV-positive status or AIDS, hepatitis C, Crohn’s disease, Parkinson’s disease, ALS, or multiple sclerosis. ” A patient must then receive written certification by a physician who deems the drug beneficial.

Qualifying patients would be allowed a 60-day supply of marijuana for their personal medical benefit. Each patient could designate a caregiver to assist with the prescription, and both patient and caregiver would register with the Department of Public Health.

Upon approval, not-for-profit medical marijuana centers would be allowed to sell the drug to patients. It would be legal for patients to grow their own 60-day supplies.

A statement approved by Associate Justice Robert Cordy in the Concord Journal states: “Under the medical marijuana law, patients would be able to get marijuana ‘produced and distributed by new state-regulated centers or, in specific hardship cases, to grow marijuana for their own use.’ ”

The Boston Globe reports the law “would allow up to 35 state-regulated, nonprofit centers to grow and sell marijuana to registered patients.” Only fifteen states allow medical marijuana.

An August 2012 Public Policy Polling (PPP) survey found that 58 percent of Massachusetts voters supported ending state and civil penalties for medical marijuana use among qualifying patients. PPP surveyed more than 1000 likely voters by phone.

Medical marijuana remains controversial

The initiative remains controversial. In a guest post for the Globe, Dr. James B. Broadhurst, chairman of the Vote No on Question 3 Coalition, writes that as a physician specializing in addiction, the vote is concerning. “In Massachusetts the explosion of the narcotics supply, associated with increased pressure to treat pain more aggressively coupled with the decreased sense of risk related to these drugs prescribed by a physician, has led to greater use by our young people,” he writes.

CBS News reports that opponents to Question 3, including Heidi Heilman of the Massachusetts Medical Society, assert safeguards aren’t strong enough to prevent abuse among young people. “We just opened our fourth recovery high school in Massachusetts, and the number one drug that kids are in treatment for in those high schools is marijuana,” she says.

Some proponents of medical marijuana want an even more expansive law. “The crucial problem with Question 3 is that it addresses a half-measure, medicalization, rather than the real issue, legalization,” writes Jeffrey A. Miron, Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute, in The Huffington Post. ”Marijuana prohibition makes no sense.”

Medical marijuana in Massachusetts isn’t the only movement proponents of medical marijuana are watching. Life Matters Media recently reported on patient and physician-based organization Americans for Safe Access, which in October urged a federal appeals court to ease regulations on marijuana. The drug is classified as a Schedule I substance, meaning it has no medically accepted use and high potential for abuse.

The official blog for the Americans for Safe Access reports that the court has ordered supplemental briefing on the issue of ‘standing,’ which the organization describes as a rare move.

Massachusetts ballot initiatives results

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Some doctors still believe in psychedelic drugs

Psychedelic drugs could prove beneficial to terminally ill patients suffering from anxiety and depression. The New York Times’ Lauren Slater outlines researchers’ optimism that such drugs can allay fears of death and dying. Psychedelics are undoubtedly controversial. The stain of the 1960s experimental phase remains with many American physicians, but some believe the drugs can help.

It’s been fifty years since many doctors became enamored with the drugs, known for causing hallucinations and vivid sensory experiences. The use of such psychedelics as LSD was skyrocketing. Slater writes how “psychedelics were embraced by many and used in a host of controversial studies, most famously the psilocybin project run by Timothy Leary.” President Richard Nixon called Leary “the most dangerous man in America.”

Researchers like Charles Grob, psychiatrist at Harbor-U.C.L.A. Medical Center, believe that drugs should be reconsidered as treatment options. Grob believes that a mystery remains surrounding drugs’ effectiveness against anxiety. “I don’t really have altogether a definitive answer as to why the drug eases the fear of death, but we do know that from time immemorial individuals who have transformative spiritual experiences come to a very different view of themselves and the world around them and thus are able to handle their own deaths differently.”

Psychedelic researcher Oliver Sacks recounts his own tumultuous relationship with the drugs for The New Yorker, describing his abuse of LSD and morning-glory seeds- and their inherent appeal.

Image: Flickr, SantaRosa OLD SKOOL
Image: Flickr, SantaRosa OLD SKOOL

He writes: “Many of us find Wordsworthian ‘intimations of immortality’ in nature, art, creative thinking, or religion; some people can reach transcendent states through meditation or similar trance-inducing techniques, or through prayer and spiritual exercises. But drugs offer a shortcut; they promise transcendence on demand. These shortcuts are possible because certain chemicals can directly stimulate complex brain functions.”

The transcendence would eventually help 55 year-old Pam Sakuda with her cancer diagnosis. “Shortly after having a tumor removed from her colon, she heard the doctor’s dreaded words: Stage 4; metastatic. Sakuda was given 6 to 14 months to live. Determined to slow her disease’s insidious course, she ran several miles every day, even during her grueling treatment regimens. By nature upbeat, articulate and dignified, Sakuda — who died in November 2006, outlasting everyone’s expectations by living for four years — was alarmed when anxiety and depression came to claim her after she passed the 14-month mark, her days darkening as she grew closer to her biological demise,” writes Leary.

She would take treatment from Grob. “As her fears intensified, Sakuda learned of a study being conducted by Charles Grob. . . who was administering psilocybin — an active component of magic mushrooms — to end-stage cancer patients to see if it could reduce their fear of death.”

Sakuda is quoted as saying, “I started to cry. . . . Everything was concentrated and came welling up and then . . . it started to dissipate, and I started to look at it differently. . . . I began to realize that all of this negative fear and guilt was such a hindrance . . . to making the most of and enjoying the healthy time that I’m having,” after the drugs.

“We may seek, too, a relaxing of inhibitions that makes it easier to bond with each other, or transports that make our consciousness of time and mortality easier to bear,” writes Sacks. Sakuda may have experienced her mortality in a different way, which was unique to her.

Researcher David Nutt, professor of neuropsychopharmacology at Imperial College London, told The Guardian: “Psychedelics change the brain in, perhaps, the most profound way of any drug, at least in terms of understanding consciousness and connectivity. Therefore we should be doing a lot more of this research.”

Learn more about psychedelics at NPR

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