stuff to consider

• Our medical system relies on proven scientific research, not polling results. 

• About 100 years ago, leaders in this country created the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to make sure that medicine falls under the “safe and effective” standard before it is sold on the open market. 

• Research has not demonstrated that smoked marijuana is helpful as medicine.

• A component in marijuana—THC—has been approved in pill form by the FDA. It’s called Marinol, and though it is not frequently prescribed, the U.S. supports the right of doctors to prescribe this drug if they feel it would best serve their patients’ needs. The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) even lowered the scheduling on Marinol to make it easier for doctors to prescribe the drug. 

• Marijuana smoke contains more than 400 chemicals and increases the risk of cancer, lung damage, and poor pregnancy outcomes. 

• The U.S. continues to support research into the medical efficacy of certain isolated properties of marijuana. 

• Even if smoking marijuana makes people “feel better,” that is not enough to call it a medicine. If that were the case, tobacco cigarettes could be called medicine because they are often said to make people feel better. For that matter, heroin certainly makes people “feel better” (at least initially), but no one would suggest using heroin to treat a sick person. 

• Marijuana use causes precancerous changes in the body similar to those caused by tobacco use. Smoking pot delivers 3 to 5 times the amount of tars and carbon monoxide into the body. It also damages pulmonary immunity and impairs oxygen diffusion. 

How could changes such as these be good for someone dying of cancer or AIDS?