What is Medical Marijuana?

For 5 millennia, Cannabis sativa has been used throughout the world medically, recreationally, and spiritually.6 As a folk medicine marijuana has been “used to treat an endless variety of human miseries,” although typically under the aegis of strict cultural controls, according to DuPont.7 The first medical use probably occurred in Central Asia and later spread to China and India. The Chinese emperor Shen-Nung is known to have prescribed it nearly 5 millennia ago. Between 2000 and 1400 bc, it traveled to India and from there to Egypt, Persia, and Syria. Greeks and Romans valued the plant for its ropelike qualities as hemp, although it also had medical applications. The medieval physician Avicenna included it in his formulary, and Europeans of the same epoch ate its nutritional seeds and made its fibers into paper, a practice that continued for centuries. Indeed, the American Declaration of Independence was purported to have been drafted on hemp-based 8, 9

Traditional Eastern medicine met Western medicine when W. B. O'Shaughnessy, an Irish physician working in Calcutta in the 1830s, wrote a paper extolling “Indian hemp.”10 The list of indications for which he recommended cannabis—pain, vomiting, convulsions, and spasticity—strikingly resembles the conditions for which modern medical marijuana proponents extol its virtues. As of 1854, the medical use of cannabis received official legitimacy by its listing in the US Dispensatory.11The black leather bags of 19th-century US physicians commonly contained (among many other plant-based medicaments) cannabis tinctures and extracts for ailments ranging from insomnia and headaches to anorexia and sexual dysfunction in both sexes.12 Cannabis-containing remedies were also used for pain, whooping cough, asthma, and insomnia and were compounded into extracts, tinctures, cigarettes, and 13, 14 More recently, the Institute of Medicine issued a report based on a summary of the peer-reviewed literature addressing the efficacy of therapeutic marijuana use. The 1999 study found at least some benefit for smoked marijuana in stimulating appetite, particularly in AIDS-related wasting syndrome, and in combating chemotherapy-induced nausea and vomiting, severe pain, and some forms of 15, 16

Contemporary Americans who eschew mainstream medical treatments while embracing herbal remedies perpetuate this 19th-century tradition of cannabis use. Even if cannabis use lacks the scientific legitimacy endowed by the randomized controlled trials that underpin modern evidence-based medicine, these individuals assert that the smoked herb is highly effective against “a vast array of diseases that are refractory to all other medications”17 and requires no further study to prove its medical worth. Americans who shun prescription drugs but stock up on “natural” compounds in the vitamin section of their local grocery store are prime candidates for this long-established folk nostrum, an “organic” means of

With gardening sections in bookstores displaying robust selections of manuals for cannabis cultivation, an uninformed shopper might conclude that growing marijuana is as legitimate in the United States as cultivating roses or zinnias. Anyone with a credit card has ready access to blueprints for marijuana propagation and culture. The concentration of δ-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), the psychoactive ingredient in cannabis, ranges from less than 0.2% in fiber-type hemp (so-called ditch weed) to 30% in the flower buds of highly hybridized sinsemilla.18 With the goal of achieving better, more intense highs, cannabis cultivators have crossed and recrossed diverse strains with the result that an average THC content of 2% in 1980 became 4.5% in 1997 and 8.55% by 19, 20

The term medical marijuana is ambiguous in that it can refer to 2 of the 3 forms in which cannabinoids occur.18, 21 These include (1) endocannabinoids, arachidonic acid derivatives such as anandamide produced in human tissue like any other endogenous neurotransmitters; (2) phytocannabinoids, the hundreds of compounds in the C sativa plant, including the 2 most medically relevant ones, THC and cannabidiol; and (3) synthetic cannabinoids, laboratory-produced congeners of THC and cannabidiol that form the foundation of the pharmaceutical industry in cannabinoid-related products.21 For purposes of this review, medical marijuana will be synonymous with botanical cannabis, the second option, as distinct from the third option, pharmaceutical cannabinoids, which are synthetic cannabinoid-based medications in use or under

Botanical cannabis attracts the notoriety and controversy. Given the far-flung influence of endocannabinoids throughout the body, it is not surprising that botanical cannabis has traditionally been used to combat so many ills. In modern times, it has become an option of last resort for those for whom available pharmaceuticals have proven ineffective, including individuals with intractable nausea and vomiting with cancer chemotherapy or anorexia in human immunodeficiency virus disease. This is the same substance, of course, that delights recreational users, blurring the boundary between health care and pleasure.  Source"http://smokeeverytimeandeverywhere.blogspot.com/