Medical marijuana research does not have sufficient funds because it is an illegal substance at the federal level
Anthony Guarisco was a young senator from Louisina when in 1978 he proposed the first medical marijuana project in the state. At that time Guarisco did not suspect that 41 years later he himself would have to use the herb to treat the severe glaucoma he contracted in 2013. At that time he never imagined that there would be so many problems for medical marijuana research.
In fact, what prompted him to propose the medical marijuana project in 1978 was to meet the mother of a child with seizures who told him that cannabis was the only thing that relieved her son.
Medical marijuana is now approved to treat glaucoma and other conditions in Louisiana. Guarisco said his doctor is confident that medical cannabis keeps the pressure in his eyes stable and reduces inflammation to stop, and even stop, the disease that can turn into blindness.
Recently, Guarisco joined other patients at Willow Pharmacy, in Madisonville, to get medical marijuana, which is only available in drops that are administered orally. It is the first time that medicinal cannabis drops have been available to patients since the drug was approved in the state.
The reality is that patients with debilitating diseases line up to buy medical cannabis. The acceptance of marijuana as medicine by people has surpassed the scientific evidence that it is the best treatment available for some patients. It is a reality that marijuana generates hope although science is still catching up on some diseases due to legal problems for research.
Dr. Kevin Hill, director of addiction psychiatry at the Deathess Beth Israel Medical Center in Boston and professor of psychiatry at Harvard Medical School, believes that voters in most cases will always vote for cannabis medicinal because they do not want valuable medicines out of reach of patients who are suffering. But he also believes that doctors and researchers do not have as much scientific evidence as they would wish due to legal problems.
Although medical cannabis was approved since 1978, the Louisiana bill was not enacted until 2015, which meant that many patients had to resort to self-medication and even the black market. Hill believes that much of this is related to the polarizing effect of the cannabis issue.
While some doctors believe that cannabis is a medicinal panacea, others think it is a farce. The problem is that it is the patients who pay the consequences of the lack of scientific research.
Studies on the medicinal properties of cannabis do not have sufficient funds because it is still illegal under federal law and is classified as a substance in List 1, which implies that the federal government says that cannabis has a high potential for abuse and I don’t use medical.
Dr. Alfonso Romero-Sandoval, an associate professor at Wake Forest University in Winston-Salem, North Carolina, who studied the use of cannabis to combat chronic pain ensures that this classification has already been shown to be false and absurd. But the reality is that this classification makes legal marijuana very difficult to study.
According to Sandoval, cannabis is widely shown to reduce nausea and vomiting related to chemotherapy, and many doctors and patients say it reduces some types of pain. But since the federal government has done nothing to declassify the drug, the states have taken their own initiatives to legalize it. The problem is that it has often been legalized in a disorganized manner.
The consequence is that there is sometimes a shortage of scientific evidence for cannabis treatment of some of the approved diseases and yet many people are turning to marijuana products to treat a wide range of diseases.
Dr. Kevin Hill says that although investigations are underway, they are not going at the speed and scale they should. If there are millions of Americans queuing to buy CBD products that are not regulated, it is vitally important to investigate more about the safety and efficacy of these products.
There is a study that has been published in JAMA by researchers at Penn State University, which ensures that almost 70 percent of cannabis-derived products that contain CBD have labels that do not accurately indicate the amount they actually contain and almost a quarter part of them contained THC, the psychoactive component of marijuana.
CBD, the non-psychoactive ingredient in marijuana, is widely available in numerous products and is also provided as safe enough to be present in products such as bath bubbles, which leads to CBD being given to children.
Romero Sandoval warns that patients should not self-dose and that it is important to seek medical professionals who have experience with medical cannabis. According to Sandoval, the dose of cannabis that is effective for the treatment of pain is in the range of 5% THC. Recreational marijuana usually has about 15% THC and even more. Sometimes some people have problems with high concentrations of THC, such as psychosis, anxiety, memory problems, which can be more severe in adolescents.
“We need more research,” was Romero-Sandoval’s conclusion. You need to study cannabis better and better to provide an alternative to these patients who do not have medications available to treat their pain. But unfortunately, patients suffering from a chronic and debilitating disease do not have the time or resistance to wait for more research to provide evidence.
Claire Morgan, a woman from Covington who suffers from a rare autoimmune neurological disease called a “rigid person,” which is a syndrome that causes painful and potentially lethal muscle spasms, told her doctor that she had tried almost everything: essential oils, cupping, all kinds Acupuncture He said he even had the chakras aligned and had tried regular neurological medicine and medications for Parkinson’s. His doctor, Chad Domangue, is one of 80 doctors in Louisiana licensed to recommend medical marijuana.
Domangue believes that marijuana is another medicine in the medicine cabinet for patients who have exhausted all options. And the best part is that cannabis doesn’t have the side effects that all other medicines have. Domangue says that the idea of having an organic herbal medicine is exciting.
On the other hand, medical cannabis is an alternative to opiates, which have a high potential for abuse, according to the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.
Domangue says that marijuana also has possible adverse effects because it can cause sleep, affect the judgment at times and cause the patient to gain weight as it opens the appetite. He also insists that if you are taking medical marijuana you should not take other medicines with sedative effects. But these effects are unimportant compared to the risks associated with other legal substances. When looking at the alternatives and medicines found in pharmacies, it is amazing what the medical cannabis expert and politicians see as correct and not correct.
We can conclude that the investigation of the medicinal properties of cannabis still faces too many legal problems.
