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To: Montana Wildhack who wrote (7099)	4/6/2001 11:57:14 AM
From: Tom Johnson	Respond to of 14101

According to one leading investigator into pain; although there may be a perceived benefit, there have been no well-controlled trials that prove a benefit to taking THC over currently available pain-killing drugs. And there are side-effects from THC as well.

To: Montana Wildhack who wrote (7099)	4/6/2001 12:18:11 PM
From: Joe Krupa	Read Replies (3) \| Respond to of 14101

Wolf, "While I don't publicly condone the use of psycoactive herbs (in this case THC) through inhalation, I'm certain this would only be for cases where the arthritis is throughout the body. . . .I support this toleration in cases like this." Freedom from pain is the most powerful of all human needs states. For this reason, I would not deprive anyone from smoking marijuana if that was the only thing that worked. For me, this is not the issue though. The issue, as I see it, is the prioritization and allocation of resources at Health Canada. I can't imagine that there will be many people in this country who qualify to smoke marijuana under the critereon set forth by HC: ie. all other options/treatments have failed. For these handful of people, HC had decided it was appropriate to allocate critical time and resources to seeing that marijuana was made available under law to them. Worse yet, I challenge anyone to show me clinical evidence of the efficacy and safety of marijuana. Oh sure, there's plenty of annecdotal evidence out there, but so there was for Pennsaid as well (a 4,000 patient phase IV study, in fact). In the meantime, there several million OA sufferers in Canada, who currently have no legitimate alternative to oral NSAIDs and their horrific litany of side effects. Of those, there are likely 250,000 to 1,000,000 people who can't take oral NSAIDS and are stuck with putting up with the pain, either by taking nothing at all or much weaker products (ie. tylenol). There are also a very significant amount of people who die every year as a result of the side effects of those drugs. Now I ask, if you you had the choice of allocating time a resources to helping improve the quality of life for hundreds of thousands of people, and saving many lives at the same time, OR, helping a much smaller group of people alleviate their pain with a currently illegal drug, which would you chose? With the very scare resources of Health Canada, the answer can't be "well I'd help both groups." I think its a reality that chosing one comes at the expense of the other. The time the burocracy at HC has spent on the marijuana issue could have been spent getting Pennsaid to market long ago -- then, they could have reviewed the pot issue. I agree with you Wolf, I would not deprive a few people in severe pain the right to smoke pot (if it helped), but I would be first to not deprive thousands of people with bleeding GI tracts, the right to a safe and effective alternative. I'm not trying to be confrontational in any way, I just feel very strong about this failure of Health Canada to prioritize in the interest of Canadians. joe