From the Marijuana Policy Project:
On Tuesday, a research team led by Dr. Donald Abrams of the University of California at San Francisco published a landmark study showing that marijuana provides unique medicinal benefits.
The report, which was published in the journal Neurology, found that smoking marijuana significantly reduced a specific type of pain that often afflicts patients with HIV/AIDS. Patients suffering from peripheral neuropathy can feel as if their hands and feet are on fire, or as if they're being stabbed with a knife. Neuropathic pain â€" that is, pain caused by damage to the nerves â€" is also common in several other illnesses, including multiple sclerosis.
In response, David Murray, the top "scientist" at the White House drug czar's office, said, "People who smoke marijuana are subject to bacterial infections in the lungs. Is this really what a physician who is treating someone with a compromised immune system wants to prescribe?" The White House never disappoints us with its firm commitment to avoiding reality.
In any case, Dr. Abrams' study has been generating widespread media coverage. Articles appeared in the Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, Houston Chronicle, Miami Herald, Seattle Times, Wall Street Journal, and Washington Post. And Bruce Mirken, MPP's communications director, was interviewed on ABC TV's Bay Area affiliate station, as well as on several radio stations across the country, and was quoted in an article in the San Francisco Chronicle, which you can read here.
Since the advent of AIDS, medical practitioners have been able to do very little to ease the suffering caused by neuropathy. Indeed, there are no FDA-approved treatments for peripheral neuropathy in HIV patients. Even powerful, dangerous, and highly addictive narcotic painkillers are often ineffective in mitigating this pain.
Yet in a randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial (the "gold standard" of scientific research), a majority of HIV/AIDS patients participating in the study experienced more than 30% pain reduction after smoking marijuana. By some measures, the pain relief was even greater. Considering that the study used government-supplied marijuana of notoriously poor quality, the benefits of medical marijuana could easily be greater than the study results indicate.
The study further underscores the need to change laws to allow for legal access to medical marijuana for seriously ill patients. MPP is currently working to pass such laws in Illinois, Minnesota, New Hampshire, and New York, as well as pursuing legislation on the federal level to protect patients in the 11 states that have already passed medical marijuana laws. Please visit www.mpp.org/2007plan (http://www.mpp.org/2007plan) for more information.