March 2, 2002

5:14 AM

therapeutical cannabisAn Israeli pharmaceutical company is working on a drug mimicking cannabis' chemical constituents -- cannabinoids -- to offer marijuana's therapeutic benefits without the buzz.
posted by trismegisto (13 comments total)

I thought the buzz was the therapeutic benefit.
posted by bingo at 8:31 AM on March 2, 2002

yeah. where's the fun in that?
posted by crunchland at 9:17 AM on March 2, 2002

They tried to make a product that contained the therapeutic benefits of capsaicin (the hot stuff in peppers) without the burn, and guess what? the therapeutic effect IS the burn. (It's used in creams for shingles, a type of herpes infection.) I suspect that it's likely the buzz of pot is part of the effect that helps pain and nausea.
posted by zadcat at 9:24 AM on March 2, 2002

This has been done before, and the product was called Marinol. It was marketed to chemo patients from the mid-80's to the early 90's to prevent nausea and generally relieve the agony of chemo. I don't know if it worked or not, but it certainly wasn't a great success.

Really, it's the pharmaceutical industry trying to do a value add on something that is otherwise cheap and perfectly sufficient as nature made it. As with any plant, there are what I would call "mysterious herbal compounds" and I highly doubt anyone will come up with a successful lab distillation of marijuana.

It's kind of interesting that the government can say marijuana is completely medically useless at the same time that drug companies are trying to make, um, a drug out of it. Right. Corporations are just throwing their money down the drain.

Really, this whole thing just makes me incredibly angry. God FORBID some very sick people should get high as a by-product of relieving other symptoms! I mean who really cares other than the idiotic and misguided ONDCP?
posted by astrogirl at 12:06 PM on March 2, 2002

I'm as much in favour of legalisation as anyone, but I don't see the need to attack the attempt to isolate the various active ingredients. The fact is that smoking cannabis is bad for you (carcinogenic etc) so it seems quite reasonable to want it to be safe if it has to be used as a medicine. As for the puritanism of not letting patients get high, I kind of agree, but there may be good reasons for not wanting the psychological state induced by the drug if you need it as a medicine. What if you need to drive whilst on cannabis-based medication?

Now how about those cocaine lozenges?
posted by Gaz at 12:18 PM on March 2, 2002

The reason medical marijuana is illegal is that corporations cannot own it. No patent. No profit. Same principle with hemp and any number of natural items that could really help this world.
posted by fleener at 12:20 PM on March 2, 2002

So, Gaz, don't smoke your pot. Vapourize it, or eat it. Voila, need for legislation is removed: the stuff become healthy.
posted by five fresh fish at 12:26 PM on March 2, 2002

Because feeling better shouldn't mean feeling groovy.
posted by holycola at 1:07 PM on March 2, 2002

This has been done before, and the product was called Marinol. It was marketed to chemo patients from the mid-80's to the early 90's to prevent nausea and generally relieve the agony of chemo. I don't know if it worked or not, but it certainly wasn't a great success.

The one person I knew who was offered Marinol gave up on it and went back to smoking pot instead. He said when he felt bad enough to want to take the Marinol, he was also too nauseous to take pills comfortably. The advantage of smoking was that it didn't make him feel even more sick to his stomach. Perhaps someone will come up with marijuana cigarettes minus the psychoactive ingredient, so that people in this situation have an option that lets them drive safely.
posted by sheauga at 1:34 PM on March 2, 2002

I believe Gaz makes the point. The legalization of marijuana, which I hope to see in my lifetime and always find to be an interesting discussion topic, is not the issue here.

Synthetic cannabinoid medication is for really sick people. These folks are generally more interested in feeling well enough to carry on their daily activities than being high.

By the way, Marinol is still on the market. It is currently being prescribed not only to cancer patients, but also those diagnosed with anorexia, AIDS or dementia.
posted by bee at 3:36 PM on March 2, 2002

I must say that what I find most interesting in the whole story is how "marijuana lite" may become legal, but only as long as it's engineered, patented, and (predictably) sold at prices which will make the greediest clocker green with envy... welcome to America.
posted by clevershark at 6:34 PM on March 2, 2002

Because feeling better shouldn't mean feeling groovy.

Actually, you might be surprised at how many people there are who don't enjoy being high.

My wife had brain cancer back in 1985. The radiation therapy made her extremely dizzy and nauseated. She tried all the anti-nausea medication available at the time (including Marinol) to no effect. Finally, a friend gave us a small amount of cannabis. My wife smoked a joint, the nausea and dizziness vanished. Despite this miracle, my wife absolutely refused to smoke it again because she hated the feeling of being stoned. Strange but true.
posted by MrBaliHai at 7:31 PM on March 2, 2002

Marinol--synthetic THC--has been noted to get people much more wasted than a few tokes of herb. Some people get the therapeutic effect they without getting zoned by just taking a few puffs (your results may vary), but Marinol gets them too blitzed to function, and it's not even fun.

Marijuana contains many cannabinoids beside the delta-9, THC, such as cannabidiol, which isn't very psychoactive and which some researchers believe may provide the desired effects (assuming getting high is not the desired effect). So shwag (bunk, shitweed) might be fine for therapeutic use. But the qualities of black-market cannabis vary wildly, making it difficult for a person to find a variety and dosage that works best.

Sometimes, however, it's an artificial distinction between "therapeutic" and "recreational" use; if smoking weed makes one feel better and thus contributes to one's well-being, then it's therapeutic. If I lived in Canada, I believe I could easily qualify for medically-approved use of cannabis, but here in the Land of the Free, fuhgedaboutit.

And I too have known people who tried pot but didn't like it. Maybe Clinton lied about that, too, but Frank Zappa tried it twice and cared nothing about it, and who could ever doubt Zappa? All of which further points up that no substance affects everyone the same way (I know a lady who can't even handle Vicks NyQuil).
posted by StOne at 12:19 AM on March 3, 2002