[ASA Field]

Tell Congress to "Have a Heart" for Medical Cannabis Research

In light of long overdue research published this week in Neurology, ASA is asking Congress to "Have a Heart" this Valentines Day and to support our call for congressional oversight hearings to investigate why federal agencies resist full implementation of the recommendations provided by the Institute of Medicine in their 1999 report, Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base.

Take action today to help advance medical cannabis research!

For more information about the, please read the Washington Post story below, which quotes Dr. Barbara T. Roberts, Director of Medical and Scientific Affairs for Americans for Safe Access.

Actions to Take:

1. Call your U.S Representative at 202-224-3121. Urge support for congressional hearings to encourage more medical cannabis research. Find out who your Representative by visiting the House of Representatives website and entering your zip code.

Call Script:

Hello, my name is (your name) and I live in (city, state). I am calling to make sure that Representative ___________ knows about long-overdue research published this week in Neurology, which indicates that smoked marijuana effectively reduces chronic neuropathic pain as well as acute pain for people living with HIV/AIDS.

Seven years ago the federal government issued a gold-standard report from the Institute of Medicine recommending that more research be conducted to review the appropriate therapeutic use of cannabis. Despite these recommendations federal agencies often discourage medical cannabis research like the study published this week.

I am urging Representative ____________ to "have a heart". Please support congressional oversight hearings to investigate why federal agencies have resisted full implementation the Institute of Medicine's 1999 recommendations. Thank you for your time.

2. E-mail your Senators and Representative and urge support for congressional hearings to investigate why federal agencies discourage medical cannabis research. Visit ASA's congressional action site to send your letter.

3. Write a Letter to the Editor: In the past day, more than 100 supporters wrote Letters to the Editor. There are thousands more of you who have an opinion about the news. Please make your voice heard by visiting ASA's LTE action page. When visiting the action page, you will be asked pick your state, then you can choose from newspapers in your area, and finally you will be taken to a page with talking points, but please personalize your letter. Editors do not appreciate receiving several of the same messages so be sure to make yours unique!

4. Become a Member of ASA: Take a moment right now to make a sustaining monthly pledge to defending safe access. Your monthly pledge of $10, $25, $50, or even $100 will let us know we have the resources to keep fighting for you!

5. Spread the Word: Forward this message widely to friends, co-workers, and family to encourage them to join you in the national movement to protect safe access!

Sincerely,

Caren Woodson
Director of Government Affairs
Americans for Safe Access

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Research Supports Medicinal Marijuana
AIDS Patients in Controlled Study Had Significant Pain Relief

By Rick Weiss
Washington Post Staff Writer
Tuesday, February 13, 2007; Page A14

AIDS patients suffering from debilitating nerve pain got as much or more relief by smoking marijuana as they would typically get from prescription drugs -- and with fewer side effects -- according to a study conducted under rigorously controlled conditions with government-grown pot.

In a five-day study performed in a specially ventilated hospital ward where patients smoked three marijuana cigarettes a day, more than half the participants tallied significant reductions in pain.

By contrast, less than one-quarter of those who smoked "placebo" pot, which had its primary psychoactive ingredients removed, reported
benefits, as measured by subjective pain reports and standardized neurological tests.

The White House belittled the study as "a smoke screen," short on proof of efficacy and flawed because it did not consider the health impacts of
inhaling smoke.

But other doctors and advocates of marijuana policy reform said the findings, in today's issue of the journal Neurology, offer powerful evidence that the Drug Enforcement Administration's classification of cannabis as having "no currently accepted medical use" is outdated.

"This should be a wake-up call for Congress to hold hearings to investigate the therapeutic use of cannabis and to encourage more research," said Barbara T. Roberts, a former interim associate deputy director in the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, now with Americans for Safe Access, which promotes access to marijuana for therapies and research.

Countless anecdotal reports have suggested that smoking marijuana can help relieve the pain, nausea and muscular spasticity that often accompany cancer, AIDS, multiple sclerosis and other ailments. But few well-controlled studies have been conducted.

The new study enrolled 50 AIDS patients with severe foot pain caused by their disease or by the medicines they take.

The team first measured baseline pain, both subjectively (patients ranked their pain on a scale of 1 to 100) and with two standardized tests, one involving a small hot iron held to the skin and another involving hot chili pepper cream.

Then, for five days, patients lit up at 8 a.m., 2 p.m. and 8 p.m. using a calibrated puff method that calls for inhaling for five seconds, holding one's breath for 10, then waiting 45 seconds before the next.

The cigarettes were kept frozen and locked in a safe, then thawed and humidified one day before use. Cigarette butts and other debris were collected, weighed and returned to the safe to ensure no diversion for recreational purposes.

Grown on the government's official pot farm in Mississippi, the drug was about one-quarter the potency of quality street marijuana. The inactive version was chemically cleansed of cannabinoids, the drug's main active ingredients.

"It smelled like and looked like" normal marijuana, said study leader Donald I. Abrams, a physician at San Francisco General Hospital, where the smoking ward was located. Like the patients, Abrams was not told who had the active pot until the study was over.

Thirteen of 25 patients who smoked the regular marijuana achieved pain reduction of at least 30 percent, compared with six of 25 who smoked placebo pot. The average pain reduction for the real cannabis was 34 percent, compared with17 percent for the placebo.

Opioids and other pills can reduce nerve pain by 20 to 30 percent but can cause drowsiness and confusion, Abrams said. And many patients complain that a prescription version of pot's main ingredient in pill form does not work for them.

That was true for Diana Dodson, 50, who received an AIDS diagnosis in 1997 after a blood transfusion.

"I have so many layers of pain I can hardly walk," said Dodson, who was in the new study. Prescription drugs made her feel worse. "But inhaled cannabis works," she said.

Patients in the study -- all of whom had smoked pot previously -- reported no notable side effects, though the researchers acknowledged that people unfamiliar with the drug may not fare as well.

Igor Grant, director of the University of California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research, which funded the research, said the study was probably the best-designed U.S. test of marijuana's medical potential in decades. He called the results "highly believable."

But David Murray, chief scientist at the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, called the findings "not particularly persuasive." The study was relatively small, he said, and it is likely that those who received the real pot were aware of that, introducing a bias of expected efficacy.

"We're very much supportive of any effort to ameliorate the suffering of AIDS patients," Murray said. But even if ingredients in marijuana prove useful, he added, they ought to be synthesized in a pill to make dosing more accurate and to minimize lung damage.

Separately, ending a six-year effort, a Massachusetts group learned yesterday that it had won a legal victory against the DEA in its battle for federal permission to grow its own cannabis for federally approved studies, instead of relying on government pot.

In an 87-page opinion, administrative law judge Mary Ellen Bittner ruled that it "would be in the public interest" to allow a University of Massachusetts researcher to cultivate marijuana under contract to the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies (MAPS), which sponsors medical research on marijuana and other drugs.

The DEA is not obligated to follow the advice of its law judges, but the detailed decision should make it difficult for the agency to balk, said MAPS President Rick Doblin.