|
Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
|
|
Marijuana: Miracle Painkiller Better Than Almost All Opiates Dr. Phil Leveque Salem-News Friday 19 Nov 2010 (MOLALLA, Ore.) - First of all, primum non nocere. In other words, from the Latin, primarily do no harm. I use the term "marijuana" preferentially because almost everyone over 12 knows what I am talking about. Cannabis. Why it is referred to as marijuana in the United States is another story. Getting to the subject at hand, whether opium came first or cannabis/marijuana (C/MJ) I'm not sure. Some references say opium seeds from the white poppy plant were used as food in Neolithic times which seems to put them in use maybe 5,000 years before C/MJ, about 3000 BC in China. It makes little difference to what I am writing about. The opiates, that is, from opium, are Heroin (diacetyl morphine), very highly soluble, quick acting and very addicting. Dilaudid (Hydromorphone) is very potent and very much like Heroin. Oxycodone is notorious for Oxycontin, which is a semi-synthetic opioid, infamous for its long-acting form which is ground up so a patient gets an immediate, massive, lethal dose. It is one of the most dangerous and lethal drugs on the market. Fully synthetic opioids such as Fentanyl and Methadone, hardly fit in this class. Only two species of poppy out of 120 produce morphine, etc. All of the above classes are highly addictive and frequently lethal by accidental or purposeful overdose, which often cause death. Even the lower potency opiates such as Codeine can cause death. These are a mean bunch of drugs. While all this was going on, marijuana might have been accidentally found to be a great pain killer. Most of the aficionados discovered the euphoria or exalted good feeling and equated that with analgesia. Euphoria is also produced by strong opiates. Queen Victoria used C/MJ rather than morphine for obstetrical analgesia. She had 11 children so she became the first westerner practical pharmacologist (read article from Oct-16-2009). It is probable that our Vietnam veterans were among the first to bring marijuana "out of the closet" as an effective medicine for pain, battle exhaustion, battle terrors and PTSD. Almost nobody would believe them when they came home with this information! In 1968, John Steinbeck IV shocked America with an article he wrote for the Washingtonian magazine entitled, "The Importance of Being Stoned in Vietnam". After two million Vietnam veterans came home and continued to spread the word, the use of marijuana for a whole variety of ills literally exploded. The latest estimate by the US government is that maybe as much as 77,000,000 have used marijuana and maybe 10,000,000 use it daily. Jack Dalton, a Marine captain helicopter pilot was shot down 7 times in Vietnam. The last time he was in the hospital 31 months getting put together. He developed tolerance to morphine and was up to 460 mgs per day which is enough to stop an elephant (the usual dose is no more than 10 mg every six hours). He wanted to use Marijuana because of the horrible adverse side effects of morphine. The VA doctors refused to allow it, and were going to deny him further care if he used it. He demanded that he use it. He found me and by using marijuana was able to drop his morphine use from 460 mgs to 60 mg per day. I have heard similar stories by about 70% of my 5,000+ patients. It is most likely that marijuana, not Marinol, will supplant all but the most powerful opiates such as Heroin, Dilaudid, lethal Oxycontin and possibly Morphine. All of those in the above sentence cause severe addiction, and the adverse side effects are almost worse than their disease processes. MARIJUANA IS THE BEST, SAFEST PAIN KILLER. http://www.salem-news.com/articles/november182010/miracle-marijuana_pl.php
After you have finished reading this article you can click here to go back.
|
This page was created by the Cannabis Campaigners' Guide.
Feel free to link to this page!