Medical Uses Of Marijuana
For several decades, researchers have sought to determine whether marijuana has legitimate medical uses, and narcotics control agencies have discouraged them from finding out. Now a new round of federally funded research may provide some answers-or will it? The latest skirmish between scientists and police comes on the heels of two popular referenda, in California and Arizona, legalizing the medical use of marijuana. But since it remains a federal crime to grow, sell, or prescribe cannabis, the referenda have created only a legal morass. Barry McCaffrey, director of the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, derided the propositions as "hoax referendums," and insisted that ...
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including Republican William Weld of Massachusetts, openly endorse medical legalization. The editor of the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine, Jerome Kassirer, lambasted the Clinton administration in an editorial entitled, "Federal Foolishness and Marijuana," that received national attention. "To prohibit physicians from alleviating suffering by prescribing marijuana for seriously ill patients," Kassirer wrote, "is misguided, heavyhanded, and inhumane."
In January, Director McCaffrey, finding himself knee-deep in a debate in which he was little qualified to participate, tried to defuse criticism with an announcement that the Institute of Medicine (IOM) would be given $1 million to conduct an 18month review of the current literature on marijuana. Later that month Harold Varmus, director of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), announced that the NIH would convene a workshop on the medical utility of marijuana. "We have no rationale for not looking into it," ...
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The medical marijuana movement emerged with the rise of recreational marijuana use in the 1960s. Marijuana had long been known to promote appetite, and a few studies in the first half of the twentieth century showed that it aided in alleviating nausea. Many chemotherapy patients found that smoking marijuana not only relieved their nausea and vomiting better than any of the legally available medications, but also enhanced appetite and relieved anxiety. For many, the relief from smoking pot was so strikingly better than from the use of Compazine, the rise of recreational marijuana use in the 1960s. Marijuana had long been known to promote appetite, and in a 1980 ...
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Medical Uses Of Marijuana. (2004, March 28). Retrieved November 22, 2024, from http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Medical-Uses-Of-Marijuana/5325
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"Medical Uses Of Marijuana." Essayworld.com. March 28, 2004. Accessed November 22, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Medical-Uses-Of-Marijuana/5325.
"Medical Uses Of Marijuana." Essayworld.com. March 28, 2004. Accessed November 22, 2024. http://www.essayworld.com/essays/Medical-Uses-Of-Marijuana/5325.
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