|
Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
|
|
Canada: Lack of profit motive hurting cannabis' place in medicine Matthew M. Elrod Vancouver Sun Thursday 03 Nov 2011 As a therapeutic herb, or natural health product, cannabis cannot be subjected to the sort of clinical trials applied to pharmaceuticals. Perhaps more importantly, herbs cannot be patented, so there is no incentive for private pharmaceutical companies to shepherd them through the expensive drug approval process. However, cannabis already surpasses the accepted standards for natural health products. According to the Institute of Medicine, the benefit-risk profile of cannabis is well within that of many commonly used pharmaceutical drugs. A far greater number of studies have already demonstrated the health benefits and safety of cannabis than exist for such medical standbys as Aspirin, penicillin and codeine. Indeed, these latter drugs (and many more) were approved for sale without any controlled clinical trials whatsoever. Instead, they were "grandfathered" into the approved formulary back in the 1930s by virtue of longtime experience showing them to be safe (the socalled Generally Recognized As Safe, or GRAS process). As a similarly long-used medicine (much longer if we count over 10,000 years of experience in Asia and India), cannabis should also have received grandfathered status but, for purely political reasons, it did not. Given the widespread use of cannabis, surely doctors should already be familiar with the effects, contraindications and drug interactions. At a minimum, surely doctors could attest to the fact that their patients would benefit from not fearing arrest or being criminalized. Matthew M. Elrod Victoria Read more: http://www.vancouversun.com/health/Lack+profit+motive+hurting+cannabis+place+medicine/5650279/story.html#ixzz1cf15E3zK
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!