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Fact 4. Smoked marijuana is not scientifically
approved medicine. Marinol, the legal version of medical marijuana, is
approved by science.
Medical marijuana
already exists. It’s called Marinol.
A pharmaceutical
product, Marinol, is widely available through prescription. It comes
in the form of a pill and is also being studied by researchers for suitability
via other delivery methods, such as an inhaler or patch. The active
ingredient of Marinol is synthetic THC, which has been found to relieve
the nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy for cancer patients
and to assist with loss of appetite with AIDS patients.
Unlike smoked
marijuana—which contains more than 400 different chemicals, including
most of the hazardous chemicals found in tobacco smoke—Marinol
has been studied and approved by the medical community and the Food
and Drug Administration (FDA), the nation’s watchdog over unsafe
and harmful food and drug products. Since the passage of the 1906 Pure
Food and Drug Act, any drug that is marketed in the United States must
undergo rigorous scientific testing. The approval process mandated by
this act ensures that claims of safety and therapeutic value are supported
by clinical evidence and keeps unsafe, ineffective, and dangerous drugs
off the market.
There are no
FDA-approved medications that are smoked. For one thing, smoking is
generally a poor way to deliver medicine. It is difficult to administer
safe, regulated dosages of medicines in smoked form. Secondly, the harmful
chemicals and carcinogens that are byproducts of smoking create entirely
new health problems. There are four times the level of tar in a marijuana
cigarette, for example, than in a tobacco cigarette.
Morphine, for
example, has proven to be a medically valuable drug, but the FDA does
not endorse the smoking of opium or heroin. Instead, scientists have
extracted active ingredients from opium, which are sold as pharmaceutical
products like morphine, codeine, hydrocodone or oxycodone. In a similar
vein, the FDA has not approved smoking marijuana for medicinal purposes,
but has approved the active ingredient-THC-in the form of scientifically
regulated Marinol.
The DEA helped
facilitate the research on Marinol. The National Cancer Institute approached
the DEA in the early 1980s regarding their study of THC’s in relieving
nausea and vomiting. As a result, the DEA facilitated the registration
and provided regulatory support and guidance for the study. California,
researchers are studying the potential use of marijuana and its ingredients
on conditions such as multiple sclerosis and pain. At this time, however,
neither the medical community nor the scientific community has found
sufficient data to conclude that smoked marijuana is the best approach
to dealing with these important medical issues.
The most comprehensive,
scientifically rigorous review of studies of smoked marijuana was conducted
by the Institute of Medicine, an organization chartered by the National
Academy of Sciences. In a report released in 1999, the Institute did
not recommend the use of smoked marijuana, but did conclude that active
ingredients in marijuana could be isolated and developed into a variety
of pharmaceuticals, such as Marinol.
In the meantime,
the DEA is working with pain management groups, such as Last Acts, to
make sure that those who need access to safe, effective pain medication
can get the best medication available.
 
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