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I think it's OK say that Marijuana should be legal but acknowledge that the concrete proven medical benefits attributed to it are pretty marginal.

blacksmith_tb 5y ago
That seems fair, certainly the "it's natural, it cures everything" kind of arguments are tissue-paper thin, but you'd think there'd be some acknowledgement of its common use for pain-management, and there are even FDA-approved medications derived from cannabis[1]. 1: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-drug-comprised-active-ingredient-derived-marijuana-treat-rare-severe-forms https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-appr...
vorpalhex 5y ago
If you are counting THC and CBD extracts as part of it's medical benefits, they are fairly wide.
handrous 5y ago
It's better for certain types of pain management than opioids (and way less risky than them), seems to be at least fairly effective as an anti-anxiety drug (look into stats on the percentage of Americans who are on prescription anti-anxiety meds—it's probably more than you expect), and, from my own experience, is vastly better than any of the prescription or OTC sleep aids I've tried, with less-scary common side effects as a bonus on top of the greater efficacy and better results the next morning (zero extra grogginess/hangover, provided I get the dose right). [EDIT] I may be understating the sleep-aid thing—just knowing that I've got a bag of gummies and that if I pop one a couple hours before bed I will fall asleep quickly that night, with minimal ill effects, does wonders for my state of mind throughout the day. Even having prescription pills for it before didn't, both because their effects felt more like "being drugged", so, seemed scarier/more-harmful, and because I knew I'd wake up the next morning feeling like shit, even if I got a full night's sleep. Actually, here's another thing: it's almost certainly less harmful to your health to get high semi-regularly than to get drunk semi-regularly. Even if all cannabis did was replace a measurable percentage of alcohol use, I'd be very surprised if that didn't improve population-wide health markers, and that's just from its recreational use. Not a medicinal use, but still an improvement to population health.
kstrauser 5y ago
My take is that marijuana's medical benefits are small, but greater than alcohol's. I can't think of a single metric by which marijuana is worse for a person than alcohol, so if we allow alcohol, there's no reason we shouldn't also allow marijuana. Even more: there's basically zero medical benefit to tobacco, and if there are 1 or 2 areas where it's slightly beneficial, there are a thousand where it's vastly worse. If tobacco isn't a schedule 1 drug, there's no way in hell marijuana should be. I don't use marijuana and have no personal stake in this. If it were federally legalized today, my own personal life wouldn't change a bit. I just think it's ridiculous that we're clutching pearls about whether marijuana is good for you when other things that are objectively much worse for you are perfectly legal.
vegai_ 5y ago
It's not enough to be right, you also have to be effective.
ben7799 5y ago
My take too. It has not followed anywhere near a normal process for a medically safe/effective drug to be approved. I'm for it being completely legalized but the medical aspect is very weird. The DEA has not helped this at all but MJ is basically legal at the state level(s) because activists successfully argued against the war on drugs and via political will. Not because MJ treatments have been proven scientifically safe & effective. The thing I am most skeptical of is the safety of delivering the drug via smoking raw Marijuana. This is completely off the reservation compared to most medical drugs. Activists swear that it's safe to inhale MJ smoke into your lungs and you won't get cancer but it's extremely hard for me to believe with a straight face. Almost any type of smoke you inhale into your lungs has very bad side effects over time. We can make it legal but then we might discover it does increase lung cancer rates like tobacco once you daily smoke for 30 years. It's possible no one has really been able to smoke it at that level due to it being so criminalized. I agree this doesn't matter for a terminal cancer patient cause they are dying but so much of medical MJ has seemed like a political foot in the door to get it legalized for recreational use.
- shkkmo 5y ago
  There are certainly people who view medical marijuana as just a way to get high legally. There are also people who are certain that access to medical marijuana saved their lives. The example that comes to mind was someone who was dealing with significant nausea / appetite issues that had caused dangerous weight loss that no other prescription medications could manage. Medical marijuana ameliorated these issues when nothing else had. This doesn't mean MJ is a miracle drug, but it does meam that there is a significant group that quite genuinely supports medical marijuana for medical reasons.
_moof 5y ago
I don't know enough to have an opinion on marijuana's medical benefits, but in principle at least I agree. Unfortunately, "we live in a society, man," and that society requires that you find some way to transform I want into I have no choice before it'll let you do something it feels icky about. There are numerous examples of this that I won't list here because I don't want to digress into other hot-button topics, but I bet you can think of at least two right off the top of your head. With that in mind I think starting with medicalization was a smart strategic move. The only other options were to make a lot of Americans less controlling, or to convince them that they're wrong, and, well... good luck with either of those.

blacksmith_tb 5y ago

That seems fair, certainly the "it's natural, it cures everything" kind of arguments are tissue-paper thin, but you'd think there'd be some acknowledgement of its common use for pain-management, and there are even FDA-approved medications derived from cannabis[1]. 1: https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-approves-first-drug-comprised-active-ingredient-derived-marijuana-treat-rare-severe-forms https://www.fda.gov/news-events/press-announcements/fda-appr...

vorpalhex 5y ago

If you are counting THC and CBD extracts as part of it's medical benefits, they are fairly wide.

handrous 5y ago

It's better for certain types of pain management than opioids (and way less risky than them), seems to be at least fairly effective as an anti-anxiety drug (look into stats on the percentage of Americans who are on prescription anti-anxiety meds—it's probably more than you expect), and, from my own experience, is vastly better than any of the prescription or OTC sleep aids I've tried, with less-scary common side effects as a bonus on top of the greater efficacy and better results the next morning (zero extra grogginess/hangover, provided I get the dose right). [EDIT] I may be understating the sleep-aid thing—just knowing that I've got a bag of gummies and that if I pop one a couple hours before bed I will fall asleep quickly that night, with minimal ill effects, does wonders for my state of mind throughout the day. Even having prescription pills for it before didn't, both because their effects felt more like "being drugged", so, seemed scarier/more-harmful, and because I knew I'd wake up the next morning feeling like shit, even if I got a full night's sleep. Actually, here's another thing: it's almost certainly less harmful to your health to get high semi-regularly than to get drunk semi-regularly. Even if all cannabis did was replace a measurable percentage of alcohol use, I'd be very surprised if that didn't improve population-wide health markers, and that's just from its recreational use. Not a medicinal use, but still an improvement to population health.

kstrauser 5y ago

My take is that marijuana's medical benefits are small, but greater than alcohol's. I can't think of a single metric by which marijuana is worse for a person than alcohol, so if we allow alcohol, there's no reason we shouldn't also allow marijuana. Even more: there's basically zero medical benefit to tobacco, and if there are 1 or 2 areas where it's slightly beneficial, there are a thousand where it's vastly worse. If tobacco isn't a schedule 1 drug, there's no way in hell marijuana should be. I don't use marijuana and have no personal stake in this. If it were federally legalized today, my own personal life wouldn't change a bit. I just think it's ridiculous that we're clutching pearls about whether marijuana is good for you when other things that are objectively much worse for you are perfectly legal.

vegai_ 5y ago

It's not enough to be right, you also have to be effective.

ben7799 5y ago

My take too. It has not followed anywhere near a normal process for a medically safe/effective drug to be approved. I'm for it being completely legalized but the medical aspect is very weird. The DEA has not helped this at all but MJ is basically legal at the state level(s) because activists successfully argued against the war on drugs and via political will. Not because MJ treatments have been proven scientifically safe & effective. The thing I am most skeptical of is the safety of delivering the drug via smoking raw Marijuana. This is completely off the reservation compared to most medical drugs. Activists swear that it's safe to inhale MJ smoke into your lungs and you won't get cancer but it's extremely hard for me to believe with a straight face. Almost any type of smoke you inhale into your lungs has very bad side effects over time. We can make it legal but then we might discover it does increase lung cancer rates like tobacco once you daily smoke for 30 years. It's possible no one has really been able to smoke it at that level due to it being so criminalized. I agree this doesn't matter for a terminal cancer patient cause they are dying but so much of medical MJ has seemed like a political foot in the door to get it legalized for recreational use.

shkkmo 5y ago
There are certainly people who view medical marijuana as just a way to get high legally. There are also people who are certain that access to medical marijuana saved their lives. The example that comes to mind was someone who was dealing with significant nausea / appetite issues that had caused dangerous weight loss that no other prescription medications could manage. Medical marijuana ameliorated these issues when nothing else had. This doesn't mean MJ is a miracle drug, but it does meam that there is a significant group that quite genuinely supports medical marijuana for medical reasons.

_moof 5y ago

I don't know enough to have an opinion on marijuana's medical benefits, but in principle at least I agree. Unfortunately, "we live in a society, man," and that society requires that you find some way to transform I want into I have no choice before it'll let you do something it feels icky about. There are numerous examples of this that I won't list here because I don't want to digress into other hot-button topics, but I bet you can think of at least two right off the top of your head. With that in mind I think starting with medicalization was a smart strategic move. The only other options were to make a lot of Americans less controlling, or to convince them that they're wrong, and, well... good luck with either of those.