Medical Marijuana's Promise of Relief Lures Desperate Parents and Patients to Flee Texas
Some of the effective compounds in marijuana are already being either used or mimicked in pharmaceuticals. Take the drug Marinol, for example, which uses a synthetic form of THC as its active ingredient.
Marketed as a treatment for the anorexia caused by AIDS, Marinol was originally placed in Schedule II but was moved to Schedule III in 1999. It is now prescribed as a pharmaceutical drug, and there have been a handful of overdose deaths related to its use.
Marinol's patent has expired, which means that should cannabis get a schedule change from the folks in charge, generic Marinol could easily be made with just good old-fashioned THC. It is, after all, what they were trying to replicate in the first place.
There's also the curious case of Sativex. Approved for use in the U.K. in June 2010, the mouth spray treats neuropathic pain and spasticity in patients with multiple sclerosis and provides analgesic treatment in adult patients with advanced cancer who experience moderate to severe pain.
It's also the first pharmaceutical to contain THC and CBD, which are derived from the natural cannabis plant.
A patent has been granted for Sativex in the United States, and the FDA has given its "Fast Track" designation to Sativex for the treatment of pain in patients with advanced cancer, which will expedite review of the drug.
The development of these cannabis-based pharmaceuticals is an interesting turn of events, considering the nation's staunch history of opposition to THC.
There is plenty of evidence that lawmakers have been aware of cannabis' medical properties for quite some time, even if they're hesitant to admit it. This evidence only furthers the frustration felt by parents.
The federal government has been growing medical marijuana at the University of Mississippi since 1974. That school is the only DEA-registered cultivator of marijuana in this country. While a handful of other facilities around the nation are approved to do research, all the cannabis must come from the federal grow operation in Mississippi.
Most of the weed grown at Ole Miss is distributed to scientists for investigations ranging from chemical research to pre-clinical toxicology in animals to clinical work on humans. Some of that federally funded weed will never touch the tables in research labs, though, and will instead be pinched off and sent in little tin cans to regular citizens.
The government began sending monthly shipments of cannabis to a handful of patients after the 1976 lawsuit by Robert Randall, a Washington, D.C., man afflicted with glaucoma. Randall successfully employed the little-used common law doctrine of necessity to defend himself against criminal charges of marijuana cultivation in a case known as U.S. v. Randall, and on November 24, 1976, federal Judge James Washington ruled that Randall's use of marijuana constituted a "medical necessity."
Concurrent with this judicial determination, federal agencies responded to a May 1976 petition filed by Randall and began providing the glaucoma-inflicted patient with licit, FDA-approved access to government supplies of medical marijuana. A handful of others followed suit, and the National Institute on Drug Abuse began supplying cannabis to seven patients under the "compassionate use" act the following year as part of the lawsuit settlement by the Department of Health and Human Services.
While the program allowed for that handful of patients to receive -- and legally smoke -- tins full of rolled joints from the federal government, it was ultimately limited to those original patients. In 1992, at the height of the AIDS epidemic, a slew of new applicants tried to join, and the federal government was urged to make room for more patients. The administration of George H.W. Bush closed the program to all new applicants, and it remains closed to this day.
Those tins of medical marijuana still roll out each month, though, and their recipients are free to smoke anytime, anywhere. They are exempt from marijuana laws.
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