Reply #10: What bug me the most

[ismnotwasm]

(Aside from the people rotting away in prison because of insane pot laws, the bullshit burden on our prison system is part of the insanity of pot laws)

Is that people are suffering because marijuana has been proven to help with a variety of illnesses. I don't smoke pot. Used too. A lot. I don't think it's a panacea, and I don't think it's necessarily harmless. It's a drug, and drugs have side effects and those side effects are worse for some people than others.

Then again, I don't think American football is harmless either, but not all football player end their careers with a life changing spinal injury, now do they?

It should be completely legal. We give give harsh drugs to people with Chrons, Multiple sclerosis, HIV--many diseases especially in the autoimmune categories, marijuana would help with symptoms and side effects from these drugs, might even be able to take the place of some of them, and is much gentler on the body. For those predisposed to addictive behaviors, I'd put marijuana up against oxycodone any day. We hand out narcotics like candy, and can't consider alternatives like pot. Total bullshit.

I work in transplant, and let me say first the reason you can't get listed for transplant when you smoke pot, is that pot can carry certain fungus or mold. I've seem some horrid outcome from immunosuppressed people who developed uncontrollable mold or fungus in there systems, such as the loss of a arm and finally the entire arm and shoulder (it happened in a series of several surgeries trying to control the fungus and save part of the arm) AND the transplanted graft, up to just plain death because the fungus gets in the lungs and brain. Sick people need very clean weed.


But there is a way to certify pot, to clean it up. I'm not thinking pre-transplant as much as post transplant when we have patients with what we call "failure to thrive" No appetite. No energy. Already immuno-suppressed, they need optimum nutrition to survive. The meds they take all have side effects including anorexia, loss of appetite, diarrhea.

They shouldn't smoke the stuff, but a nice appetite stimulating spaghetti with pot-- or whatever else to start with-- can be done. We don't do this because of ridiculous laws. It's to the point were it's very painful to me, to hear patients say "Nothing tastes good, I get sick smelling food" watching them melt away when I know there is a solution we are forbidden to try, that MD's are forbidden to offer.

Oh, and What the US offers, the synthetic pot, Marinol? It's crap. Very few of my patients have good results. Canada has a much better product, but the US is just weird when it comes to THC.