So today I went with the Mrs. to see her Epileptologist, for what was a standard check-up, but with the pending surgery, there was lots to talk about. (FYI, Surgery still scheduled for August 31st, and we’re going forward with good feelings)
While we were there the Doc sent in via some sort of electronic system a prescription for the Mrs. Seizure meds…and then printed up a script for Lorazipam which is used to halt seizure activity if you find yourself into a repetitive cycle. (As in multiple seizures over-and-over again…its also used for epileptics who stop breathing during seizures, which thankfully the Mrs. isn’t one)
I asked why the scripts were handled differently, and was informed that Lorazipam is a controlled substance. This makes sense when you go off of the baseline cultural thinking, the effects of the drug are similar to that of Valium or Alcohol. You can get high off of it, and you can get addicted.
But seriously, its hardly some hardcore street drug we’re talking here. I just don’t get all the hoopla.
Now on the other side, across the nation we’re de-regulating marijuana, and overall I’m 100% cool with that.
But….
“Medical Marijuana” is a fucking sham. Its a sham, and any doctor who writes a prescription to smoke a dried herb should loose their license to practice medicine removed.
Marijuana is NOT a medication!!! It may have medicinal values, but in no way does it resemble a regulated medication. Its a PLANT, you can’t regulate the active ingredient, nor the inactive ingredients (and that’s not even counting the compounds generated by burning the weed) and regulating exact dosages is also nearly impossible.
We already have “Medical Marijuana” and this stuff the compounds you are ingesting are 100% regulated and you can fully regulate the dosing regime, and the produced batches are required to be identical in content and quality.
You cannot do that with any growing plant. This is the reason why people handle their produce before buying it. You can get a bad tomato, or apple, or head of lettuce.
Again, there might be medicinal values to smoking a jeeb at the end of the day, just the same way that the tea I drink in the morning (and damn near most of the day) has medicinal value both in the caffeine and in the anti-oxidants in it…not to mention the values of staying hydrated. This does NOT make my morning tea a “Medication”.
Frankly when I see “Medical Marijuana” rallies, I see lots of people greasing the slippery slope so they can get high, and using cancer patients and other sick people as the grease.
I have NO problem with people getting high, and I think Marijuana should be as legal as alcohol and tobacco, I have a HUGE problem with people LYING to get their agenda pressed.
You’re good Weerd. I have wondered why the Medical Marijuana crowd was never convincing to me. You hit the nail on the head. A good analogy would be the “Medical Willow Bark” crowd from the Middle Ages. Sure chewing on willow bark was helpful (to varying degrees), but it wasn’t until some chemist actually isolated the chemical (salicylate) that was doing the good stuff, that the term medicine applied. Then improvement could be made and aspirin was born (acetylsalicylic acid). In other words, we started with a plant that had some medicinal properties and progressed to a medicine that could be precisely manufactured to allow study of dosage and effects. Interesting, that is how a lot of our medicines came to be.
Legalize marijuana, but shoot the “Medical Marijuana” liars.
And the “Problem” they’re protesting DOESN’T EXIST! Gran Ma is loosing weight at a dangerous rate because of chemo nausea, she can treat it with marinol, and it can be administered in a variety of ways to best ensue proper dosing….and she doesn’t have to worry about the lung and throat cancer one can pick up from inhaling smoke.
The problem is you can’t buy a joint, or grow some pot. Sure the stuff works for various afflictions, but not as well as regulated prescription meds do, which is the elephant in the room for these liars.
You can get high off the pharma too, only your prescription is being monitored so that will be hard to do….you can always plant some seeds, or go see a dealer on the side and get high as a kite, and hide behind your illegitimate “prescriptions” if the cops raid you.
Its a frustrating fight too, because I know its wrong to regulate the silly little plant in the first place, but I don’t want to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with a group who essentially uses Brady Campaign tactics to further their cause…no matter how right said cause is.
Lorazepam also known as Ativan is pretty widely used.
For anxiety and seizures.
Also works as an anti emetic(nausea) in fact my wife liked it better then Zofran during her chemo a few years ago.
We use it in EMS for patients that are bit out of control, but it takes time.
Ketimine works much faster.
Your wife should have no problems with it.
As for “medicinal Mary Jane” it is not! It does provide some relief from nausea. It has been found “helpful” for end of life Hospice patients.
But medical?
Big flippin lie and those touting the “medicinal” value should be horsewhipped for lying.
Good luck to you and the wife.
I have had many a patient in the back of my Ambulance, experiencing seizures and it can be frightening. Besides life threatening.
Not sure if you beleive , but I’ll send a prayer her way anyhow!!
For what it’s worth, Zofran makes everything taste WEIRD in a sorta metallic fashion and Phenergan doesn’t. Within seconds of Zofran going in a vein your mouth goes weird and nothing tastes right. Oral, it takes about 5 minutes to ruin the taste of a good bacon and egg breakfast! BUT, it does keep you from puking.
Ativan is so-so for anxiety, truthfully, if somebody is going to be on a regular regimen, librium is probably still one of the kings, because it has a long half life so people don’t go “bouncing up and down” depending on when their last benzo dosage was like people do with ativan and xanax…
I’m no authority but I’ve been a patient and from a medical family that has dealt in such things.
As for W33d, there are useful agents in it but there is NOTHING HEALTHY ABOUT INTENTIONALLY INHALING SMOKE OF ANY KIND. It’s a shame that a lot of research has been cut off as to how to make medications based on it because of the legal hassle. I used to know a fellow that had a LEGAL prescription for Marinol, for muscle spasms related to MS and he said it didn’t work a quarter as well as if he smoked dope. There’s more to it than THC, but research is limited because of legal constraints.
The SIGNIFICANT CRUX OF THE ISSUE is that it’s LUDICROUS to OUTLAW NATURE.
People should be respected or punished based on their behaviors.
Back to the Old Saw from Jeff K. of “Regulating tools is not a proper response to bad behavior.”
But here’s a reason whey people shouldn’t smoke dope:
“Obama analyzed and integrated Einstein’s theory of relativity, the Heisenberg uncertainty principle, as well as the concept of curved space as an alternative to gravity, for a Law Review article that Tribe wrote titled,”The Curvature of Constitutional Space.”–WashPo
Rest here: http://www.americanthinker.com/2010/07/barack_hussein_einstein_at_har.html
Hey Weer’d I’ll agree with you on all but one point and the one point I’m taking exception to I may be wrong on because my information is dated.
Pharmaceutical THC used to be (1980’s) called Marinol. Marinol was used to treat nausea, as a side effect of chemotherapy, and was administered orally. Because it was used to treat nausea the dosage and the timing had to be just right prior to the chemotherapy for it to work effectively. If the dosage was too low, or the dosage was right but administered too early or too late, it did not work and no amount of orally administered Marinol after the fact would help as the patient would simply vomit it back out.
Another hindrance on the doctor selecting the correct dosage of Marinol is the doctor cannot prescribe a specific dose, specific to the patient, but has to choose from the dosages the manufacture of the pharmaceutical offers.
The advantage of smoked marijuana over the pharmaceutical stuff for chemo patients experiencing nausea is that they can enjoy the anti-nausea effects without having to worry about not being able to hold down the anti-nausea medication.
I believe the weed should be legalized and taxed just like alcohol and tobacco. I believe 99% or more of the medical marijuana prescriptions are bullshit. I also believe there are at least a few people out there who have medically valid reasons for smoking marijuana.
If you’re more current than I on the state of pharmaceutical marijuana I would like to hear about it.
CH
Since we already know it can be absorbed through the lungs, I’m sure that a nebulized form of Marinol could be created very easily. This would allow the same benefits without the negatives of actually inhaling smoke and the poisons created by burning it.
We used to have a list of drugs we could give through the breathing tube in a cardiac arrest situation. The only reason we don’t do that anymore is that studies have shown that they aren’t absorbed effectively under those circumstances (decreased blood flow through the lungs – no kidding! – and insufficient nebulization).
And that illustrates the stupidity of the system, and is the only source of my lukewarm support for the Medical MJ crowd.* Yes, Medical MJ isn’t, for all the reasons Weer’d mentioned, but if they can break the stalemate and get the FDA to approve some real research instead of restricting it to practical non-existence, then some good will come of their stupidity. Right now, marijuana is illegal because there hasn’t been sufficient research to show real evidence of any medical benefits, but little to no research on the possible medical benefits of marijuana and its compounds is approved, because marijuana is highly illegal.
Something has to break that circle, and right now the Medical MJ crowd seems to have the greatest chance of success.
* I am in full agreement with Weer’d on the recreational use aspects.
The thing that kicks me is that here in CO you can buy marijuana with a “prescription” but you can’t get it at a pharmacy. It is at special dispensaries. The hypocrisy is built into the system. If you want to call it medical marijuana, it should be available (with a real prescription, from a real Dr.) at a real pharmacy.
There has been plenty of dishonesty and deception in The War On Drugs–I don’t have a problem with some trickery as a step towards legalization.
I also don’t necessarily believe that something has to be run through a pharmaceutical company to be useful. Also, it is likely that a pharmaceutical company would reject a delivery method with as much harm as smoking, even if that harm was more than offset by the benefits.
“I also don’t necessarily believe that something has to be run through a pharmaceutical company to be useful.”
And with that we have herbal and holistic medicine. It just doesn’t involve doctors and prescriptions. That’s where I have my issues.
At the end of the day, it’s still ludicrous to make nature illegal.
At the end of the day Prohibition never works, and never has, EVEN if you are like Malaysia and Singapore and have THE DEATH PENALTY FOR DRUG OFFENSES. They’re still executing people so they haven’t stopped drug use, have they?
Humans have always liked to alter their consciousness. Animals do too.
One hunting trip, monkeys broke into the bar and downed all the beer and a sizable amount of scotch.
I’ve personally seen a drunken zebra that had eaten fermented amarula fruit.
I used to have a chow that could tell if I was getting out of the car with a 12 pack of dr pepper or beer, and if it was beer, he’d beg for a beer…
capture code MDWD, can’t make that up, your capture code generator has a sense of humour!
Keeping people from destroying their lives with drugs and harm reduction makes a lot more sense than the current legislation.
Abstinence education doesn’t prevent teen pregnancy. Prohibiting (especially naturally growing plant based) substances will not keep people who want them from getting them. The experiments have been run enough that it’s obvious.
But there’s a huge vested interest in law enforcement and dealer/grower finances.
In Humboldt County, CA you see bumper stickers that say “Keep Weed Illegal” on vehicles driven by growers and I read an interview on the web the other day with an Oklahoma Chief of Police that said “It’s sort of a waste of our resources to prosecute marijuana offenses and I would rather do other things, but on balance, the Federal aid money we get for pursuing that part of the drug war buys us a lot of equipment we couldn’t otherwise afford, as does asset forfeiture, so our budget would take a huge hit if we stopped enforcing marijuana laws.
Entrenched economic interests and a Pharm industry that isn’t sure how to make money off of it…
In other “valiant drug war” news:
Booms for Boomer Lad?
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/07/16/AR2010071606252.html?wprss=rss_print
Neat video. Some things I agree with, some I disagree with, certainly my time wasn’t wasted!
Thanks!
BTW: This THREAD Needs a MOVIE (NSFW if you work around sensitive people who can’t stomach words they heard when they were five)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4cefoV_A878
I still think stoners are annoying but the war is more annoying.