New research gives more ammunition to those hoping to change federal marijuana policy.

New Study Shows Medical Value of Marijuana
By Rob Kampia 

Ever since California and other states began passing medical marijuana laws in 1996, the federal government has claimed that — as a 2003 White House press release put it — “research has not demonstrated that smoked marijuana is safe and effective medicine.” A new study, just published in the journal Neurology, definitively refutes that claim and underlines the urgent need for the federal government to change its prohibitionist policies.

The study, conducted by Dr. Donald Abrams of the University of California at San Francisco, found marijuana to be safe and effective at treating peripheral neuropathy, which causes great suffering to HIV/AIDS patients. This type of extreme pain, which is caused by damage to the nerves, can make patients feel like their feet and hands are on fire, or being stabbed with a knife. Similar pain is seen in a number of other illnesses, including multiple sclerosis and diabetes, and cannot be treated effectively with conventional pain medications. Standard pain medicines — even addictive, dangerous narcotics — have little effect on this type of pain.

Marijuana doesn’t cure neuropathy, but in the UCSF study marijuana was clearly shown to give relief. In this randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled trial (the design that’s considered the “gold standard” of medical research), a majority of patients had a greater than 30 percent reduction in pain after smoking marijuana. For many, that level of relief means having a bearable quality of life.

This result is all the more remarkable because researchers like Abrams are only allowed to test government-supplied marijuana, which is of notoriously poor quality. There’s every reason to believe the results would be even better if scientists were permitted to study a better-quality product.

Abrams’ study is only the latest in a growing mountain of research showing that medical marijuana can provide real — and potentially even life-saving — benefits. In a study published last year of patients being treated for the hepatitis C virus (HCV), those who used marijuana to curb the nausea and other noxious side effects of anti-HCV drugs were significantly more likely to complete their treatment. As a result, the marijuana-using patients were three times more likely to clear the deadly virus from their bodies — in other words, to be cured — than those not using marijuana.

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