Apple has approved the imaginatively named
Cannabis, a new $1.99 iPhone/iPod touch application by Los
Angeles-based Activists Justifying the Natural Agriculture of Ganja
(AJNAG), which operates the AJNAG.com
website and iMedicalCannabis.org database.
Cannabis is designed to help legal marijuana users quickly
locate the nearest medical Cannabis collectives, cooperatives,
doctors, clinics, attorneys, organizations, and other patient services
in the thirteen states that have passed medical marijuana
(Cannabis) legislation: Alaska, California, Colorado, Hawaii,
Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Rhode
Island, Vermont, and Washington. (California, Colorado, New Mexico, and
Rhode Island are currently the only states authorizing "dispensaries"
to sell medical Cannabis.)
Seven other US states - Illinois, Pennsylvania, Minnesota, New
Hampshire, New Jersey, New York and North Carolina - are currently
considering medical marijuana bills in their state legislatures, and
South Dakota is reviewing several petitions in interest of medical
marijuana legalization.
Cannabis the iPhone
app has a map-style interface that displays medical marijuana
resources where legal as well as "coffee shops" in places outside the
US, such as Amsterdam, the Netherlands, where Cannabis can be
legally used.
For every "Cannabis" purchase, AJNAG.com will donate 50¢ to a
non-profit Cannabis reform fund, which will be set up once the
application reaches 1000 subscriptions. The non-profit organization
will unite with the many Cannabis organizations to raise money
for grassroots media campaigning. The company's mission is to put the
power of Cannabis change in your pocket while you enjoy "the
most sticky and potent iPhone application available."
Cannabis Features
- Locate Medical Cannabis Collectives and Cooperatives
- Locate Doctors and Clinics
- Locate Attorneys and Organizations
- Search by City
- Search by Zip
- Bookmark Listings
- Add Listings to Contacts
- Lookup Addresses, Phone Numbers, and websites for a 1000+
listings
- Directory is Tended by Patient ID Center
Cannabis is compatible with both iPhone and iPod touch, and requires
iPhone OS 3.0 or later.
Another medical marijuana app available from the App Store is Onaga
Design'sCalifornian
Herbal Caregivers (CHC) app, which sells for 99¢ and lists
more than 700 medical marijuana sources in California.
Commentary
Note: Most of the remainder of this column is a
political-sociological rant, so if you're not interested in reading
that sort of thing on a computer-related website, time to click along
to other content. cm
"There's nothing worse than being a qualified patient with a
physician's recommendation to consume Cannabis - commonly
referred to as marijuana," AJNAG says on its website. "You never know
where to find Cannabis resources near you. Sure, you could
search the Web, but that's as tedious as flipping through the phone
book or browsing through the advertisements in the latest
Cannabis publication."
I couldn't agree more. I've never been a marijuana user for any
reason since two or three (literally) furtive experiments with the
stuff as a teenager 40-odd years ago. I didn't particularly like the
effect and demurred further recreational use even during periods of my
late teens and 20s when I estimate that as many as half to
three-quarters of my associates and co-workers were regular
pot-smokers.
Rethinking Medical Marijuana
However, the political issues surrounding medical marijuana and my
own battles with fibromyalgia, Irritable Bowel Syndrome, and myofascial
pain syndrome - which are unhappily getting worse and have become
significantly debilitating - have caused me to reassess the issue of
medical pot. So have experiences of some friends, like one who has
really bad Multiple Sclerosis (MS), and who, after being licensed by
Health Canada to legally use marijuana, was able to cut her morphine
medication by half. Or a friend who was able to get off and stay off
brain-fog inducing tricyclic antidepressants and addictive
benzodiazepines by smoking weed instead - in her case unlicensed -
allowing her to be high-functioning and productive rather than
blitzed-out by the legal prescription drugs.
Smoking pot is still not an attractive option for me, since I have
respiratory issues and allergies that make smoke of any sort
problematical, but conventional painkillers, including NSAIDS like ASA,
Ibuprofen, and Celebrex, Acetaminophen (Tylenol), and codeine, barely
take the edge off my fibromyalgia and neuritis pain. Benzodiazepines
(e.g.: Klonopin) help a bit but are extremely
habituating/addictive.
Cannabinolids are one of the few known agents that are effective
against neuropathic pain, and they are beneficial to gastrointestinal
issues as well. I would be delighted if standardized-dosage oral
delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) - the medically active agent in pot
smoke - painkillers were available by prescription at a reasonable
price.
Marijuana Laws
Sativex, a drug
containing the cannabinoids tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and cannabidiol
(CBD), has been approved by Health Canada, but only for adults with
multiple sclerosis (MS) and moderate-to-severe pain in advanced cancer,
when the highest doses of other pain relievers don't provide adequate
pain relief. And my doctor at the pain clinic says it's absurdly
expensive anyway - some Can$9,500 per year. Being self-employed I don't
have a drug plan, and Canadian medicare doesn't cover
pharmaceuticals.
Sativex has received permission from the FDA to enter directly into
late stage Phase III trials in the US. The first large scale US trial,
Spray Trial, for cancer patients is underway and due to complete at the
end of 2009.
Frankly, after researching the issue fairly extensively for years,
I've concluded that medical marijuana laws in both Canada and the US
can only be regarded by thinking persons as perversely hysterical,
bordering on psychotic. It's bizarre. My GP can prescribe really
addictive, dangerous stuff like Vicodin and Oxycodone but is not
licensed to prescribe medical marijuana, although he says he would like
to be. By licensing Sativex, Health Canada concedes that
Cannabis is a potent pain-killer, but perversely is authorized
only for patients suffering from advanced - likely terminal -
illnesses, and only then after having exhausted the potential of
opioids, which, unlike Cannabis, are narcotic, highly addictive,
and have a variety of other nasty side-effects.
Demand and Supply
In Canada, the medical marijuana supply situation is particularly
Kafkaseque, with the federal government recently having grudgingly
responded to a January 2008 Federal Court ruling striking down the
former arbitrary limit of one licensed patient per medical marijuana
producer as a violation of the constitutional Charter of Rights and
Freedoms by cynically increasing the number of medical marijuana users
a licensed grower may supply to two - a calculated slap in the face to
medical marijuana patients suffering from painful, debilitating
illnesses whose symptoms can be relieved by therapeutic use of
marijuana.
"From one to two patients, that's just insane," Eric Nash, a
licensed Vancouver Island supplier under the Marijuana Medical Access
Regulations told the Canadian Press. I couldn't agree more. The whole
obstructive, punitive policy structure regulating medical marijuana use
in Canada is utterly insane, not to mention inhumane. Mr. Nash notes
that he's had several hundred requests for help from approved marijuana
users, but he is legally prevented from supplying them.
In his 2008 decision, Federal Court of Appeal judge Barry Strayer
reportedly pointed out that the government's own statistics show the
one patient per producer limit forces thousands of licensed medical
marijuana users to buy weed illegally, either on the street or through
"compassion clubs", which he deemed a violation of constitutional
rights.
One of the few top-tier elected officials on either side of the
US/Canada border who has spoken with reason on the medical marijuana
issue, former Nova Scotia premier John Hamm, who is perhaps
not-coincidentally a medical doctor, said marijuana should not be
regulated differently than pain-killing medications such as morphine or
dilaudid. "If it has medical benefits, and it is apparent now that it
does, then it should be handled the way we handle any other medication
that comes on the market," Hamm commented, adding that people who
possess small amounts of pot should not be classified as criminals.
However, regulation of both drugs and criminal law are federal
responsibilities, so Hamm's sensible perspectives didn't change
anything.
A Long Track Record
Cannabis has been used for medicinal purposes for more than
4,000 years and was listed in the US Pharmacopoeia, a manual of
medicines used by physicians, from 1870 until 1942, the first date of
revision after the US government outlawed pot in 1937 and launched a
hysterical disinformation campaign about the herb.
A growing body of evidence, anecdotal and scientific, backs medical
marijuana advocates' contention that Cannabis could be one of
the most powerful, versatile drugs in the healing arsenal - and one of
the safest as well. In my digging, I've never been able to find a
documented case of death from marijuana poisoning - more than one can
say for a vast array of legal pharmaceuticals. A 150 lb. person would
have to chain-smoke about 900 marijuana cigarettes in order to induce a
lethal dose.
A 1985 study published in the Journal of Neurology (236
(1989): 120-122) concluded that therapeutic effects of marijuana on MS
symptoms were quantitatively assessable and reproducible in laboratory
testing. The researchers suggested that cannabinoids in the marijuana
stimulate serotonin production and modify other brain chemicals with
therapeutic effect.
Another study (Journal of Clinical Oncology, Vol. 9, No. 7,
July 1991) by R. Doblin and M. Kleiman, found that 48% of oncologists
surveyed would prescribe marijuana to some of their patients if it were
legal, and over 44% already had recommended the illegal use of
marijuana for the control of nausea and vomiting.
Scientists at the prestigious Scripps Research Institute in La
Jolla, California, published research findings that
tetrahydrocannabinol inhibits formation of amyloid plaque, the primary
pathological marker for Alzheimer's disease, and in fact is "a
considerably superior inhibitor of [amyloid plaque] aggregation" to
several currently approved drugs for treating the disease. With its
strong inhibitory abilities, the study said, THC "may provide an
improved therapeutic for Alzheimer's disease" that would treat "both
the symptoms and progression" of the disease.
Nevertheless, Canadians can be licensed to use medical marijuana
only if they satisfy one of three categories.
- Terminal illness
- Certain specified debilitating medical conditions such as multiple
sclerosis
- Conditions in which no other medicine has been declared effective
by Health Canada.
It's Less Dangerous than Alcohol or Tobacco
I could never look my own kids in the eye and tell them, "Stay away
from marijuana, because it's a dangerous drug that can ruin your life,"
because it manifestly isn't. Not when I know people who have been using
it regularly for 40 years and are still in fine fettle and haven't
moved on to harder drugs.
The canard that marijuana is a "gateway" drug that leads users to
try harder drugs is ideologically-driven and insupportable bunkum that
has been discredited in scientific literature showing only one in nine
marijuana users goes on to try cocaine, just one in 20 to experiment
with heroin, with about 50% of (recreational) marijuana users over age
30.
Risk of developing marijuana dependence is a relatively low 9%,
compared with a reported 15% for alcohol, 23% for heroin, and 33% for
tobacco, and symptoms of marijuana withdrawal are comparatively mild.
Cannabis is one of the most thoroughly "field tested" drugs.
About 50% of young North American high school graduates have tried pot,
and roughly a third of Canadians admit to having used it. Some have
done so for more than 40 years without evident ill-effect, including
people I know personally.
It's 72 years since the US criminalized marijuana, 38 since
President Nixon declared a "War on Drugs" and Canada copycatted. The
result has been a miserable and absurdly expensive failure both in
money squandered and lives ruined. Almost all of marijuana's negative
effect on our society has been caused by governments' prohibition
efforts driving production and distribution into the criminal orbit and
not the use of the substance itself.
Britain's prestigious medical journal, The Lancet, declared
that: "The smoking of Cannabis, even long-term, is not harmful
to health." Research has determined that compared with legal drugs such
as tobacco and alcohol, marijuana is much less addictive - if addictive
at all - and there is no danger of death from overdose.
On the other hand, legal booze is a factor in a constellation of
social malignancies, from drunk driving to alcoholism to domestic abuse
and violence to many other crimes. Nearly half of murderers and their
victims are alcohol abusers. The toll of misery and ruined lives
attributable to alcohol trivializes any problems associated with
marijuana use by comparison.
Social Cost of the War on Weed
And the "War on Weed", as destructive and costly as its been for the
past half-century, has been a spectacular failure anyway. The UN's 2007
World Drug Report found that Canadians and Americans have the highest
rate of Cannabis use among developed nations. 16.8% and 12.6%
respectively having used pot in 2004. According to the Canadian
Addiction Survey, 50.1% of Canadians aged 44-54 have used pot, and even
12.8% of 64-74 year-olds.
A Canadian Senate report noted that annually 30,000 Canadians are
charged with simple possession of marijuana, three-quarters of whom
emerge from the process with criminal records. Now there's
legitimate cause for moral outrage. As Senator Larry Campbell observed,
marijuana is not a drug that causes criminality, and thousands of
Canadians are getting criminal records, which can affect their future
employment prospects and prevent them from traveling to other
countries, for essentially nothing.
Ideology, not Science
If medical marijuana research wasn't being suppressed by governments
for ideological and political reasons, indications are that it could
prove effective for an even wider range of ailments than ones where
it's already being applied (legally and illegally), such as Multiple
Sclerosis, other neurological disorders, nausea associated with
chemotherapy, epilepsy, asthma, migraines, peptic ulcer, clinical
depression, chronic pain, anorexia, alcoholism, inflammation,
hypertension, some cancer tumors, and AIDS.
Governments' typical anti-medical marijuana hostility amounts to
willful ignorance at best, with people in pain and distress being
arbitrarily denied access to a natural substance that at the barest
minimum would ease their suffering, and arguably more safely than most,
if not all, prescription painkillers.
So I say bravo to AJNAG and Onaga Design and their little medical
marijuana iPhone apps. Congratulations and a snappy salute of
appreciation to Apple for posting them on the App Store. It's another
small step toward sensible, rational resolution of the medical
marijuana farrago.
