The Need for
Access to
Medicinal Cannabis

". . . Marijuana, in it's natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man. By any measure of rational analysis marijuana can be safely used within a supervised routine of medical care."

(1988 - "In the Matter of Marijuana Rescheduling Petition," Docket 86-22, Francis L. Young, Administrative Law Judge, U.S. Department of Justice, Drug Enforcement Administration.)

Many states are allowing access to medicinal marijuana through legislative and citizen initiative action. The laws differ in various states and the threat of the federal government hangs over the peace of the patients and administrators of the medical marijuana program.

MAMA clinics for Oregon Medical Marijuana patients offer medical consulting and help with registering and growing medicine.

Oregon's Medical Marijuana Program Office can be accessed at:
http://www.ohd.hr.state.or.us/oaps/mm/welcome.htm

There you can get a copy of the law or the administrative rules, and application form and other related information.

Did You Know?
Marijuana
Has Been Shown To . . .

• Relieve the pain of arthritis and rheumatism . . .
• Arrest the advance of glaucoma . . .
• Help migraine headaches . . .
• Be an adjunct to psychotherapy . . .
• Control spasticity from multiple sclerosis and paralysis . . .
• Mitigate withdrawal from alcohol and other hard drugs . . .
• Relieve menstrual cramps . . .
• Open bronchial tubes to relieve asthma attacks . . .
• Alleviate nausea and pain associated with cancer . . .
• Help overcome insomnia . . .
• Block epileptic seizures . . .
• Help people with AIDS to:
• Relieve stress and depression
• Eliminate nausea
• Reduce pain
• Fight the "wasting away" syndrome by stimulating appetite . . .

Cannabis has been used as medicine for thousands of years.
[Lester Grinspoon, MD, Harvard professor of psychiatry, in Marihuana Reconsidered, 1977, Harvard University Press, 1]

Eli Lilly and Parke Davis made multiple preparations of tinctures and pills and at least 28 different preparations of cannabis were marketed when cannabis as medicine was outlawed in 1937.
[Sassman, "Cannabis Indica in Pharmaceuticals," Journal of the Medical Society of New Jersey 35 (1938): 51-52]

The New Mexico Health Department studied over 250 cancer patients undergoing chemotherapy who failed to respond to conventional anti-vomiting medicines between 1978 - 1986. Smoked cannabis was superior to oral synthetic THC as well as the conventional agents available.
Cancer Treatment and Marijuana Therapy, edited by Randall, p.149]

Only six patients are currently receiving legal medical cannabis from the federal government via the compassionate investigational new drug (IND) protocol because President Bush shut this down in March of 1992.
[Mary Lynn Mathre, RN, MSN, Cannabis in Medical Practice: A Legal, Historical, and Pharmacological Overview of the Therapeutic Use of Marijuana, 1997. McFarland and Company, Inc. and Lester Grinspoon, MD, "Marihuana as Medicine: A Plea for Reconsideration," in Journal of the American Medical Association, Vol. 273, No. 23, p. 1875, June 21, 1995]

Forty-four percent of oncologists said that they had suggested that a patient smoke cannabis for relief of the nausea induced by chemotherapy.
[Doblin and Kleiman: "Marijuana as Antiemetic Medicine: A survey of Oncologists' Experiences and Attitudes," in Journal of Clinical Oncology, Vol. 9, No. 7 (July) 1991, p.1314-1319]

The United States Dispensatory first listed cannabis in 1854 noting that cannabis extracts "have been found to produce sleep, to allay spasm, to compose nervous inquietude and to relieve pain . . . Complaints to which it has been specially recommended are neuralgia, gout, tetanus, hydrophobias, epidemic cholera, spasticity, hysteria, mental depression, insanity, and uterine hemorrhage."
[Wood and Bache, Dispensatory of the United States (Philadelphia, PA: Lippincott, Brambo and Co., 1854) p.33]

Marinol, a brand name for dronabinol, contains THC in sesame oil for oral use but does not contain other therapeutically useful cannabinoids such as cannibidiol which is not psychoactive but may be of benefit in resistant epilepsy.
[Lynn Zimmer, PhD and John Morgan, MD: Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts: A Review of the Scientific Evidence, Lindesmith Center, 1997, p. 17-26.]

The medical safety of marijuana is great. It does not kill people in overdose or produce other symptoms of obvious toxicity. Occasional use is no more of a health problem than the occasional use of alcohol.
[Andrew T. Weil, MD, Harvard-educated ethnopharmacologist, expert witness on medicinal plants, and best-selling author, in From Chocolate to Morphine: Everything You Need to Know About Mind-Altering Drugs, Houghton Mifflin, 1993, p. 188]

It is impossible to take a lethal overdose.
[Miles Herkenham, PhD, National Institute of Mental Health researcher, quoted in Los Angeles Times, December 6, 1996]

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