Read what you've said again; do you realize how completely ridiculous this sounds?
A "strong dose" of heroin, to a 9-year-old who is opiate naive, will obviously not cause them to "chill out." It will cause them to horribly itch, turn green in the face, violently vomit, alternate between pouring sweat and feeling freezing cold, moan and cry, and finally lose consciousness and quite plausibly their life.
Cannabis, even at a very "strong dose," will cause none of this.
As plant medicines go, cannabis is something like a wonder drug at least in the limited sense that it is therapeutically active for a wide array of conditions at very, very safe doses.
There may be no other drug which is a candidate for relief for the symptoms described in the article and for which a trial regiment has such a low cost in terms of risk.
Heroin most certainly isn't one.
That said, I really agree with your argument. You make a great case for legalization that isn't merely "oh hur dur look how my child mellows out on weed." Thank you.
What is the advantage of this over raw plant material?
Consistency.
However, if consistent effect is the goal, I want to suggest that oral administration is not ideal in the first place, and that oral administration of isolated chemicals even less so.
Achieving the latter is more accessible via slow, careful titration via vaporization or smoking of high-quality plant matter.
This is the case at least for me and people I know, including several patients with otherwise debilitating illnesses.
Additionally, I think that the ability to garden and grow medicines (not just cannabis, but plant medicines generally) is a great way for patients to gain some control (or at least the sense of control) over their illness. It also is often more economically viable as well.
To a point, consistency. It might not even be pill form: vaporizers, inhalers, and other such things might work as well. It might be that the best way to do it is via hash instead of the unprocessed plant.
All that said, there is some concern with the synthetic. I have a feeling the very reason the plant works better is because of the high. For example, MS patients have problems with muscles. Patients report better mobility and less pain, yet the muscles don't actually improve. It seems it just doesn't bother them - and I imagine some of the synthetics wouldn't produce this effect.
It doesn't mean that synthetics won't work for some folks, though, and might be better for kids.
https://www.google.com/search?q=marinol&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8
etc.
Methylphenidate is a different beast altogether and not neurotoxic like the amphetamines are even though in therapeutic doses amphetamines are also extremely safe. The difference is that amphetamines are both dopamine reuptake inhibitors and dopaminergic releasing agents while methylphenidate only inhibits dopamine reuptake alongside its effect as a CNS stimulant.
It's ridiculous to compare cannabis to heroin, but it's still worth pointing out that giving a strong dose to someone who is 9 is a very bad idea that would probably be very unpleasant for the kid. There can be a tendency for people to overcompensate to "reefer madness" propaganda and tell people there are no issues with marijuana. It's probably a lot better than alcohol, but it's still a psychoactive substance that needs to be treated with respect.
Fortunately, the mother in this article seems to realize that and has put in a lot of effort into proper dosing:
>After the cookies finished baking, I’d taste a few crumbs and annotate the effects in a notebook. Often, I felt woozy. One variation put me to sleep. When I had convinced myself that a batch was okay, I’d give a cookie to my 9-year-old son.
Absolutely - I hope my comment didn't read otherwise.
I'm just pointing out that the effects of a strong dose of heroin are nothing less than an urgent medical emergency and possibly a life-or-death situation.
The effects of a strong dose of cannabis are, as you say, likely to be quite unpleasant, but for other, less dramatic reasons.
Additionally, it is much, much easier to find a therapeutically effective dose of cannabis that is not unpleasant (or even otherwise noticeable) than with heroin or, for that matter, most other medical treatments. This is the killer feature of cannabis.
She didn't just wake up one day and say "hey! Let's give him a joint and see what happens!"
Which, I should add is pretty much how my sister came to use marijuana as medicine -- except she didn't live in a state where medical marijuana was legal, her teenaged son had a source. She was on treatment for an autoimmune disorder and on the days she took her meds, she was so nauseous that she couldn't get out of bed. Pharmaceutical anti-nausea meds (including $20/day Marinol) worked poorly or had unwanted side effects. Finally her doctor pointed her at a website and told her that he couldn't recommend it, but other patients had gotten relief from medical marijuana. And indeed, it made a huge difference for her.
Due to her illness, she had access to pretty much any narcotic painkiller she wanted, yet to gain access to marijuana, she had to ask her son to risk prosecution to buy it from a guy he knew from school.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_J._Anslinger#The_campaig...
Calling this propaganda is the height of ridiculousness.
> Calling this propaganda is the height of ridiculousness.
You must have a poor imagination. There are cookies for that though.
propaganda: information, especially of a biased or misleading nature, used to promote or publicize a particular political cause or point of view.
In what way is the article biased or misleading? It is clearly labeled 'Opinion'.
Not every article in a newspaper needs to meet the standards for an article in a peer-reviewed journal. There is a place for human-interest stories too.
Outright prohibition isn't the answer, but the scatter shot of substitutes aren't correct either. Don't look for me to recommend the solution, I simply took issue with the Washington Post carrying this opinion piece which, frankly, glamorizes dangerous behavior.
And it's bullshit that you put words in my mouth. I never said cannabis should be illegal. "Trolling", really? Is that a byword for disagreement now? Please go harangue your DEA strawman somewhere else.
Tens of millions of dollars of meth are sold by pharma companies in the US each year.
One of my friends complained for months about headaches, loss of libido, tummy cramps while getting off of it after years of use.
Or one of the other many reasons why there can be correlation without causation.
Source - lifelong medical cannabis patient.
Currently we think cannabis is not physically addictive, and we think it might be psychologically addictive for some people.
People de-toxing from alcohol addiction can literally die if they do it wrong. That's never going to happen with cannabis.
I hope for her sake and her sons the long term effects on children are ok and that she isn't giving 10x the required therapeutic dose because she whipped it up in her kitchen.
Every parent has only one subject; every child raising is a trial. You only have one chance and have to choose one approach.
This drug is used worldwide by maybe a billion people. Scaremongering is unhelpful.
Aspirin is used by billions of people and it's dangerous to give to children.
She obviously has no clue how to manage safe dosing for a trial and that is ignorant and dangerous.
Just because it's natural and everyone's doing it doesn't mean it's safe: hemlock is natural, "everyone" used to smoke cigarettes.
This was a desperate act, by a desperate parent who had been abandoned by a medical industry that's happy to lose a generation of sick children because hey! process.
But nobody is actually arguing that it's safe because it's natural. You don't have to, the data is conclusive: it is nigh on impossible to die of marijuana usage no matter what your age is. There are few other substances in a home that that can be said of.
Whatever you think the long term side effects would be it would seem pretty damn hard for them to outweigh the unceasing agony of this child's existence without marijuana. And as has been said numerous times before, everything major has already been ruled out so long term effects are not going to be catastrophic on the level of regret when you consider how much this child's quality of life has been improved.
Marijuana is used by millions of people and is probably safer than aspirin. Granted if you're breathing weed smoke instead of air 24/7 you probably won't fare too well but that's not what's happening here: small amounts, carefully tested on adults, of a substance scientifically believed to be safe. (which cigarettes never were on this order)
On the other hand, this "just put them to sleep all day" is a particularly outrageous "solution" for autistic children, that often are very smart and sensitive people and deserve to be respected and loved, as any other children.
As a lifetime medical patient, this is not entirely true. There are plenty of physical withdrawal effects. The primary one being headache and hypertension. Another one is lack of dreaming/REM sleep (as cannabis usage depletes your melatonin/serotonin levels, which effects your REM sleep.)
"THC doesn't have near the same capability to incapacitate people"
THC-Vivarin will hit you so hard I'd be surprised if you could remain standing despite the fact it only lasts for about 15 minutes.
Huh?
i don't know what you've been smoking, but as a daily "practically 24/7" smoker myself, i've never experienced any of these when i leave the country and go without cannabis for weeks (or months) at a time. for background: i smoke first thing when i wake up, and i pretty much take a hit from the bong every 30 mins as i work from home. my work and lifestyle allows for such frequent consumption. point i'm making is, i'm a very heavy smoker so i'm a reasonably good gauge for addictive potential.
every 6 months, i take a tolerance break by visiting family in another country. guess what happens when i go cold turkey during these visits? absolutely nothing. no shaking, no foaming at the mouth, no physical withdrawal whatsoever. do i get a little bit irritated if i think about how i can't get weed? sure. but if i choose not to think about it? i don't even notice anything different at all.
regarding the lack of dreaming, yes that may be true. however, as someone who also works out every day at the gym, i felt absolutely no difference in physical recovery nor mental recovery at all.
i think the point i'm making is: whatever "withdrawal" you're experiencing is entirely in your own head. you want to believe it's there, so it's there.
Every human's body chemistry is different, so no, you are not a good gauge. To boot, I consume WAY MORE than you - I go through about 5-6 grams of concentrate a day. Get your leg replaced with titanium and plastic composites and see if your consumption doesn't jump up to really high levels due to chronic post-operative pain.
"every 6 months, i take a tolerance break by visiting family in another country."
Tolerance breaks simply aren't on the menu for me.
"i think the point i'm making is: whatever "withdrawal" you're experiencing is entirely in your own head"
Except I go to a doctor and they can physically measure everything, right down to my blood pressure, when I'm in withdrawal, and then watch everything change after I take a hit, so no, it's REAL.
Again, licensed MEDICAL patient. State card-carrying. I go to real doctors while you rely upon your own anecdotes.
Except synthetic cannabinoids have killed people. Marinol/Dronabinol has cost people their lives.