On Thu, 08 Aug 2013 07:54:14 -0700, Carol DeVolder wrote:
I wonder what impact this more or less open letter will have:
http://edition.cnn.com/2013/08/08/health/gupta-changed-mind-marijuana/
I've read Gupta's article and the follow-up posts on Tips and I'd like
to make a couple of points:
(1) Here is the text of what constitutes a Schedule I narcotic according
to the DEA:
|Schedule I
|
|Schedule I drugs, substances, or chemicals are defined as drugs
|with no currently accepted medical use and a high potential for
|abuse. Schedule I drugs are the most dangerous drugs of all the
|drug schedules with potentially severe psychological or physical
|dependence. Some examples of Schedule I drugs are:
|
|heroin, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), marijuana (cannabis),
|3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (ecstasy), methaqualone, and peyote
Anyone who has any experience with marijuana will appreciate
the absurdity of having it identified as a Schedule I drug. Why
alcohol is not listed here is the real question. Oh, and cocaine,
methamphetamine (for "Breaking Bad" fans), oxycodone/OxyContin,
adderall, and fentanyl are all Schedule II, that is, are considered
less dangerous drugs than marijuana. Here is the DEA page:
http://www.justice.gov/dea/druginfo/ds.shtml
(2) Back when I was in graduate school at Stony Brook, the famed
psychiatrist Max Fink (at SB's Med School's Psychiatry Dept) gave
a colloquium in the psychology department on the effect of marijuana
on cognitive processes (I forget what specifically he had done but a
Google Scholar search for "Max Fink" and marijuana gets a lot of hits
from the 1960s and 1970s. I spoke to Fink after his presentation and
asked him if he had considered studying the effects of marijuana use
on priming effects on the lexical decision task (Roger Schvaneveldt
who was one of the original researchers on this topic was still at
Stony Brook at this time). Fink said it would be an interesting thing to
do but it was a great big pain in the butt getting funding for
any research involving marijuana and if you did get funding, there were
all sorts of regulations that one had to follow that really discouraged
people from using it in research. He said the really foolish and scary
thing was that there was research using new drugs that was far easier
to get permission to do and with far less oversight and regulations but
the drugs could be far more dangerous than marijuana (how dangerous
was unknown but if one checks the side effects/adverse effects of
drugs in PDR or one's favorite drug reference, one should not be
surprised to see how often death, stroke, cardiac arrest, etc., are listed
as side effects).
Others have pointed out that U.S. legal policies concerning drugs were
not rational, did not really rely upon scientific data, and which drugs
were considered "safe" and which were considered "dangerous" often
involved sociocultural and racial considerations. Draw your own
conclusion about the race-drug connection.
There is an entry on Fink on Wikipedia and it is mostly concerned with
his work with ECT/Electroshock which, as we all know, is far safer
than using marijuana. ;-)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Fink
For people considering a classroom exercise on the Pro's and Cons
of marijuana for medicinal purposes, see the following handout:
Http://sciencecases.lib.buffalo.edu/cs/files/marijuana_notes.pdf
The U.S. can benefit from a more rational drug policy and legislation.
That it took this long for Sanjay Gupta to realize this about marijuana
is disappointing because that means that there are probably many more
physicians who have some unsubstantiated beliefs about pot but
what else is new?
-Mike Palij
New York University
[email protected]
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