{"id":133346,"date":"2018-01-17T06:37:45","date_gmt":"2018-01-17T11:37:45","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/?p=133346"},"modified":"2018-01-18T16:08:04","modified_gmt":"2018-01-18T21:08:04","slug":"jeff-sessions-doesnt-understand-medical-marijuana-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/2018\/01\/jeff-sessions-doesnt-understand-medical-marijuana-2\/","title":{"rendered":"Op-ed: What Jeff Sessions Doesn\u2019t Know About Medical Marijuana"},"content":{"rendered":"

On Jan. 4, Attorney General Jeff Sessions rescinded\u00a0the Cole memo<\/a>, a 2013 document that limits federal enforcement of marijuana laws.<\/p>\n

This opens the door for\u00a0a crackdown in the nine states<\/a>\u00a0with legal recreational marijuana.<\/p>\n

The Cole memo is one of two documents that prevent the U.S. Justice Department from treating marijuana as\u00a0a Schedule I drug<\/a>, defined as a substance with no accepted medical treatment and high potential for abuse. The other is the 2014\u00a0Rohrabacher\u2013Farr amendment<\/a>. This legislation bars the Department of Justice from spending any funds to keep states from implementing their own laws about \u201cthe use, distribution, possession or cultivation of medical marijuana.\u201d<\/p>\n

The amendment\u2019s language needs to be reinserted into law each year \u2013 and it\u2019s currently set to expire on Jan. 18. That would leave patients in the 29 states with legal medical marijuana without their treatments and at risk of prosecution.<\/p>\n

I have researched a number of drugs of abuse and natural products for safety and effectiveness. Just because a drug has abuse potential doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s always bad and just because it\u2019s natural doesn\u2019t mean it\u2019s always safe. While I\u2019m no fan of legalizing recreational marijuana use, I believe there has to be special dispensation for patients with a legitimate medical need.<\/p>\n

Medical marijuana works<\/strong><\/p>\n

\n

The research on medical marijuana is clear: Marijuana has legitimate medical uses. <\/cite><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

There are approximately\u00a01.2 million users of medical marijuana<\/a>\u00a0in these 29 states.\u00a0Some of the most common ailments<\/a>\u00a0include pain or muscle spasms, nausea and vomiting, cancer, PTSD, seizures and glaucoma.<\/p>\n

The body has a system of receptors that can be stimulated by the chemicals in marijuana, called cannabinoids. In animal studies,\u00a0cannabinoids have been used<\/a>\u00a0to treat symptoms like harmful weight loss, vomiting, seizures and fluid pressure in the eyes.<\/p>\n

There isn\u2019t much human research on medical marijuana, thanks to the product\u2019s illegal status and a lack of federal research funding. Large trials are nearly impossible to conduct, since products are\u00a0often adulterated<\/a>and the concentrations of cannabinoids\u00a0vary from plant to plant<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Even so, human trials from around the world and pockets of the U.S. offer modestly strong\u00a0evidence of marijuana\u2019s benefits<\/a>\u00a0in a number of disorders, such as intractable nausea and vomiting, chronic pain and severe muscle spasms and epilepsy.<\/p>\n

For example,\u00a0a study published in May<\/a>\u00a0looked at the effects of cannabadiol \u2013 an active marijuana compound that does not cause euphoric high or hallucination \u2013 on children with Dravet syndrome, a rare genetic disorder characterized by frequent, severe drug-resistant seizures. Those who took cannabadiol cut their median number of convulsive seizures per month in half, from 12 to six. These findings may be applicable to\u00a0other people with hard-to-treat seizures<\/a>.<\/p>\n

I bring up this example because it uses the highest quality study design. Also, seizures are not subjective symptoms like pain or nausea that critics may be skeptical of.<\/p>\n

When patients become criminals<\/strong><\/p>\n

In my home state of Connecticut, medical marijuana is legal. Doctors are required to certify that\u00a0potential medical marijuana users<\/a>\u00a0have a disease for which there is adequate medical evidence for marijuana\u2019s benefit. The patient then visits a licensed dispensary facility, where a pharmacist helps to select the type of product that would work best.<\/p>\n

In such a dispensary, pharmacists know the exact amount of the active chemicals that each product contains. Unlike illegal marijuana, their products\u00a0aren\u2019t contaminated<\/a>\u00a0with heavy metals, bacteria, fungi, herbicides or pesticides.<\/p>\n

What if patients can no longer access these products? They will either have to go without and lose the benefits of their treatment, leading to moderately intense\u00a0marijuana withdrawal symptoms<\/a>, such as insomnia, chills, shakiness and stomach pain.<\/p>\n

Or, they might try to switch to the black market, where products may be inconsistent and prosecution is possible. In so doing, they would be supporting organized crime and exposing themselves to additional dangers. I especially worry about children with epilepsy who might have to use illegal marijuana that gives them a high due to the tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) rather than a legal version with little to no THC.<\/p>\n

A balanced approach<\/strong><\/p>\n

Since 2014, the Rohrabacher-Farr amendment has been routinely included in the appropriations language with support from both parties. But in the past year, things have broken down. So far,\u00a0the amendment has survived<\/a>\u00a0through resolutions to extend government spending, but it\u2019s unclear whether it will appear in the new federal budget.<\/p>\n

Sessions has\u00a0already written to members of Congress<\/a>\u00a0asking them not to support this amendment, saying it inhibits the department\u2019s authority.\u00a0A new subcommittee<\/a>\u00a0at the Department of Justice plans to assess the legalized use of marijuana.<\/p>\n

Legal recreational marijuana comes with potential benefits and drawbacks to society, and I\u2019m not sure yet that we know what the impact will be over the long term. But the research on medical marijuana is clear: Marijuana has legitimate medical uses. It should not be a Schedule I drug and should not be denied to patients. There\u2019s virtually no upside to banning a potentially effective therapy for patients with diseases like cancer, multiple sclerosis and epilepsy.<\/p>\n

This commentary originally ran in The Conversation<\/a>.<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Research on medical marijuana is clear: Marijuana has legitimate medical uses, writes UConn pharmacy professor C. Michael White. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":76,"featured_media":133364,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"_crdt_document":"","wds_primary_category":0,"wds_primary_series":0,"wds_primary_attribution":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2231,1864,2225],"tags":[],"magazine-issues":[],"coauthors":[175],"class_list":["post-133346","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-health-well-being","category-pharm","category-uconn-storrs"],"pp_statuses_selecting_workflow":false,"pp_workflow_action":"current","pp_status_selection":"publish","acf":[],"publishpress_future_action":{"enabled":false,"date":"2026-04-12 14:27:44","action":"change-status","newStatus":"draft","terms":[],"taxonomy":"category","extraData":[]},"publishpress_future_workflow_manual_trigger":{"enabledWorkflows":[]},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133346","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/users\/76"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=133346"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133346\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":133479,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/posts\/133346\/revisions\/133479"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media\/133364"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=133346"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=133346"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=133346"},{"taxonomy":"magazine-issue","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/magazine-issues?post=133346"},{"taxonomy":"author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/today.uconn.edu\/wp-rest\/wp\/v2\/coauthors?post=133346"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}