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Cannabis Campaigners' Guide News Database result:
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South Africa: Role for Marijuana in Aids Treatment
James Hall Inter Press Service (Johannesburg)
Monday 02 Aug 2004 Mbabane - Advocates of new medical treatments for people living with HIV and AIDS are compiling scientific studies and anecdotal evidence to make a case for the use of the locally-grown illegal weed dagga (marijuana) to assist those who have contracted the virus or have developed AIDS. Currently, it is illegal to grow, transport or possess dagga in the 14-member states of the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The countries are also signatories to various international agreements that commit them to eradicate the intoxicating plant. In Swaziland, where 70 percent of peasant farmers in the northern Hhohho region cultivate marijuana, the local police force vigorously enforces these agreements, working with South African police to exterminate crops where they are grown in the mountains. The dagga is burned in great controlled fires, with the media invited to observe. Any effort to legalise dagga for medical purposes in Swaziland and elsewhere in Southern Africa would be controversial, because such a measure would raise the prospect of people getting hold of the drug for recreational use. Medical researchers are not calling for the legalisation of dagga for recreational use. They are citing what they say is compelling evidence that the drug has a role to play in saving lives. Some of the arguments are included in "AIDS Africa: Continent in Crisis," published by the Zimbabwe-based Southern African HIV and AIDS Information and Dissemination Service (SAfAIDS). Author Helen Jackson writes, "Most recreational drugs are illegal. Marijuana needs special consideration. Although excessive use (by people living with HIV and AIDS) should be avoided, marijuana aids relaxation, acts as an anti-convulsant, reduces nausea and promotes a sense of well-being. It also stimulates appetite and thereby assists weight gain." Weight loss is a critical danger for people living with HIV and AIDS. The disease makes them nauseous, and anti-retroviral drugs (ARVs) can rob people of their appetites, just when they need to eat in order for the drugs to do their work, and to keep up body weight. Jackson noted that in some countries, such as the Netherlands, Canada, and in the U.S. states of California and Arizona, dagga is legally prescribed for cancer and AIDS patients, and people in terminal care. "It is rated highly effective for these purposes," Jackson writes. The report gave this testimony from an HIV-positive man: "When I was a young child growing up in South Africa, I was repeatedly warned about the dangers of smoking dagga. If I smoked it once there was no turning back, I was doomed. That was before AIDS came into my reality. "It wasn't until I started taking the highly toxic drugs used for treating HIV/AIDS that I saw the amazing benefits of this God-made herbal compound. I am not advocating it for general consumption; I am advocating it for its medicinal qualities. "Ever had chemotherapy? Days on end of vomiting? Sleepless nights for weeks on end? Not to be able to eat for two or three weeks due to your fear that within minutes of ingesting food you will lose it? Research conducted and funded by New Mexico State concluded that marijuana was not only effective as an anti-nausea drug, but was far superior to the best available conventional drug, Compazine. A study with 169 patients, all affected by nausea and vomiting, concluded that 90 percent of the participants reported significant or total relief from the symptoms, with no major side effects." Harvard Professor Lester Grinspoon stated in his commentary published in the Journal of the American Medical Association, "One of marijuana's greatest advantages as a medicine is its remarkable safety. It has little effect on major physiological functions. There is no known case of lethal overdose. Marijuana is also far less addictive and far less subject to abuse than many drugs now used as muscle relaxants, hypnotics and analgesics." Jackson writes: "Caffeine, nicotine, alcohol, marijuana, cocaine and heroin are six of the most commonly addictive drugs in use in the world; yet of the six, marijuana is considered to be the least addictive." Judge Francis L. Young, a consultant brought in by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency, concluded after a two-year hearing on the legal status of marijuana that 'Marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." Hannie Dlamini, the first HIV-positive person to publicly acknowledge his medical condition in Swaziland, now heads the counselling service, the Swaziland AIDS Support Organisation (SASO), and concurs that the use of abundantly if illegally grown marijuana locally should be considered for ailing persons living with HIV and AIDS. "There is a synthetic drug called Marinol that has all the psychoactive ingredients removed, so it can be legally prescribed by doctors, but it's not available here, and where it is available it is expensive. We have lots of dagga growing wild in the hills. People can be helped by using it. We should be practical about decriminalisation," Dlamini said. Relevant Links Another AIDS activist told IPS, "The laws are twisted all the time in the AIDS emergency. Unscrupulous people with bogus cures sell them to desperate people, and health ministries are silent. With dagga we have a proven therapy. People will use it to regain their appetites - and food is needed in the system for ARVs to work." This is a demand that the law enforcement officers in the southern African Development Community, which has the highest HIV/AIDS incidence in Africa, would not tolerate.
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