The SF Chronicle published an important column today by Dr. Lynn Ponton, a psychiatrist and professor at UCSF Medical School. He describes a patient victimized by a physician writing a letter for medical marijuana. From the column:
“It’s my medicine, Doc,” said 18-year-old Jonathan, when I asked him why he was smoking marijuana every day. Surprised that any physician would prescribe marijuana for the anxious, depressed and disorganized adolescent sitting in my psychiatric office, I asked him where he had obtained the prescription. “A doc just like you. I heard about her from a friend. Anyone over 18 can get one. All I had to do was show my driver’s license and answer a bunch of questions. It’s good for a year, Doc, longer than any of your prescriptions.”
Confused and surprised, I questioned Jonathan about his treatment with the other doc. He filled me in on his 20-minute visit with her during the next hour and showed me a physician’s statement that read that Jonathon “has been diagnosed with a serious medical condition and that the medical use of marijuana is appropriate for that serious medical condition.”…I sat there thinking about the thousands of prescriptions I had written for young people during my 30 years of practice, for each laboring over dosage and carefully considering the impact of side effects on their young bodies. Twenty minutes …
I say victimized because the examination and letter was a complete abdication of the physican’s duty to her patient. And for our kids’ sakes, we must not legalize marijuana: It can be an initiative destroyer:
I called the California doctor who had prescribed the marijuana for him and told her about my 18 months of work with Jonathan to help him with his depression, disorganization, anxiety and lack of initiative in high school. I mentioned that Jonathan had been smoking marijuana for about a year before he saw her. During that year, his school performance, initiative and self-esteem had fallen. He believed that he was less anxious but also acknowledged that he was doing a lot less. I told her that this pattern worsened after Jonathan purchased the medical marijuana from the dispensary. She didn’t know this, because she had planned no follow-up visits to check on her young patient. It was also clear from our conversation that she did not even remember seeing Jonathan.
This law just permits doctors to abandon professionalism for the ethics of drug pushers. That anonymous physician should lose her license to practice.
This is just one reason why the current anarchy must be stopped and marijuana reclassified so that it can be properly prescribed and dispensed for those conditions for which it can be a benefit. And it clearly indicates why recreational marijuana should remain illegal.
December 31st, 2009 | 5:53 pm
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by Vince Humphreys, Wesley J. Smith and topsy_top20k, topsy_top20k_en. topsy_top20k_en said: Medical Marijuana: Youth are Victims of the Current Anarchy » Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog – http://shar.es/a9Mr1 [...]
December 31st, 2009 | 6:08 pm
She’s probably on it too. And let’s not forget Al Gore who invented the internet and global warming, perhaps with its help.
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
December 31st, 2009 at 6:11 pm
You’re tough Ianthe.
December 31st, 2009 | 8:21 pm
[...] the rest here: Medical Marijuana: Youth are Victims of the Current Anarchy … By admin | category: Medical….? | tags: among-the-thousands, concerned, errant-nurse, [...]
December 31st, 2009 | 8:54 pm
Cannabis is medicine, like it or not and has been for thousands of years .
Get used to it right-wing soul-less republicans !
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
December 31st, 2009 at 9:00 pm
C.B.D. You didn’t read what I wrote. I agree it’s medicine. It should be made available by prescription for those things, and only those things, for which it can be of benefit, not the current method. Read and reason rather than emote.
December 31st, 2009 | 10:02 pm
Illicit use is certainly a problem with medical marijuana but it’s also a problem with Ritalin, diet pills, steroids, painkillers, etc. and nobody’s trying to remove them from the list of prescribable drugs. There’s too much legitimate need.
There’s going to be off-label use of any drug, the only questions are how much and what are the negative effects? With marijuana I expect there’d be a lot, but the effects of the illicit use are not as severe as a lot of legal drugs, like any given opiate for instance.
I’m not crazy about legalized marijuana, but having seen the good it does chemotherapy and AIDS patients, I’m hoping we can make this available with minimal abuse.
January 1st, 2010 | 3:36 am
[...] the original post: Medical Marijuana: Youth are Victims of the Current Anarchy … By admin | category: Uncategorized | tags: cardiac, decade, doctor, from-the-column, [...]
January 1st, 2010 | 5:48 am
Pharma HAS a pill, it’s called Marinol. Natural Cannabis is a non-toxic plant that will grow just about anywhere for free.
January 1st, 2010 | 8:44 am
@Padraig: I’m with you on the prescription drugs. I find them far more dangerous, addictive and deadly. Booze and cigarettes are pretty deadly, but you can buy them on any corner.
Unlike Wesley, I favor legalization, though I do understand where he’s coming from. The med-pot debate has been hijacked a great deal.
Too much pot really does take away your ambition. But, in moderation, I find it less harmful than a whole lot of perfectly legal substances.
January 1st, 2010 | 8:45 am
Wesley,
C.B.D. probably suffers from the exact same side effect of Marijuana mentioned in the article – lack of initiative. He or she would have to actually take the time to focus their attention and think, in order to read your short article.
It’s so much easier to just rage against anything and everything that calls for actual thought, discipline, or reason.
January 1st, 2010 | 1:49 pm
I treat chronic pain and I have found that in *some* instances, marijuana can help. But there is one aspect that I am not seeing addressed anywhere, since those who are for it think that it is close to the Second Coming and those against it see demon hellfire…what are the effects on the lungs by smoking it? Eating it shows poor and erratic absorption (except with Marinol), so you have to smoke it. Is it as bad, better or worse than the effects of tobacco on the lungs? Frankly, not enough studies have been done. So are we going to be reaping a harvest in 20 years of respiratory cripples because they thought that smoking marijuana was the *right* thing to do?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
January 1st, 2010 at 1:52 pm
Dr. Work: It is my understanding that sprays have been developed that will deliver the THC without smoking. And it is better than Marinol. But until we reclassify cannabis to Schedule 2 or 3, we won’t be able to dispense it through pharmacies, test it for efficacy, etc.
January 1st, 2010 | 2:29 pm
@Dr. Work: What’s your take on vaporizing as opposed to smoking? I hear it can be useful.
January 2nd, 2010 | 3:34 am
That is terrible. The family should sue that doctor.
January 2nd, 2010 | 12:00 pm
Some material from years ago suggested that respiratory damage from one cannabis cigarette was roughly equal to the damage from a whole pack of 20 tobacco cigarettes. Smoke several doobies a day, every day, and… You get the picture. And that’s beside the long-term brain effects from getting baked all the time.
(Cheech Marin voice) “Like wow, man! Far out!”
January 2nd, 2010 | 12:18 pm
[...] Nevius has a good column in today’s San Francisco Chronicle that dovetails with a post I wrote the other day about the abuse of medical marijuana laws by patients, doctors, and “clinics.” Apparently in San Francisco–where nothing [...]
January 2nd, 2010 | 12:26 pm
One point proponents might make is that the kid has transitioned from an illegal source for MJ to a somewhat-more-controlled one (i.e., one known to the police). The kid didn’t start using because of the prescription; he’d been on it for a year, and his year and a half of therapy has evidently not diminished his desire to use one jot. The prescription is a travesty, but it moves the kid out of contact with criminal suppliers. That’s a nonzero harm reduction, right?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
January 2nd, 2010 at 12:43 pm
I don’t think so. He should have been helped OFF it, not expediently shrugging at the problem. I’m not big on harm reduction because it generally causes more harm, not less.
January 2nd, 2010 | 3:42 pm
Harm is hard to measure. I’m not for everything that goes under the label of harm reduction. But: the kid’s therapy is apparently futile, and that being the case, a regulated MJ economy is preferable to an illegal one involving slave labor and an enormous wealth transfer to drug cartels.
Will you concede that inhalant abuse (e.g., butane) is much more devastating than MJ, yet absolutely impossible to interdict by any means? Why then is it necessary that America’s MJ demand be satisfied by organized criminals?
Wesley J. Smith Reply:
January 2nd, 2010 at 4:49 pm
One has nothing to do with the other. If you reduce MJ harm by legalizing, more people will smoke it. That will lead to further harm. Moreover, we could say the same thing about harder drugs, prostitution, etc, beyond our scope. But if we want a society funded by vice, we are well on the road.
January 3rd, 2010 | 8:33 pm
Since I don’t have data that would quantify the harm, I cannot expect you to change your position, and in fact I’m not a fanatic on this issue.
I have come to believe, though, that the marginal increase in MJ harm from increased use will be more than compensated by the benefits reaped from the vanishing of the MJ supply cartels and the US/Mexico’s expensive, cruel and corrupt interdiction efforts.
Keep it illegal w/o prescription. Move production above-board. We know that a fair number of bogus prescriptions will be written, allowing a fraction of the non-ill population to smoke MJ grown under non-criminal conditions. That is less than ideal. But what goes on in the foreign MJ supply market is very bad too.
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