Our Contradictory Country

Is cannabis medicine or not?—our federal government can’t seem to decide

Cannabis has no medicinal value. Cannabis has medicinal value. Sound contradictory? It should—but the most frustrating thing is likely where such conflicting statements are coming from: our own federal government.

Yes, the same government that continues to tell us that the cannabis plant “has no currently accepted medical use” also tells us that cannabis-derived medicines were successful in treating patients suffering from cancer-related and neuropathic pain.

Why would one arm of the federal government—the White House, the Drug Enforcement Agency, et. al.—completely refute the scientific claims of another arm—the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services’ National Cancer Institute (NCI) or National Institutes of Health (NIH)? Whatever the answer is, this isn’t the first time something like this has happened—and it’s enraged patients, advocates, activists and those championing cannabis as medicine.

“The federal government’s continuing attack on people [recommended] medical cannabis by their doctors is hypocritical considering the benefits reported by its own National Cancer Institute,”  Matthew Pappas, a patients’ rights attorney for Advocates for the Disabled and Seriously Ill, said via a written statement.

In 2011, the National Cancer Institute posted information on its website confirming what other doctors, patients, scientists and researchers have said for years: the chemical compounds in cannabis can provide medical benefits to cancer patients.

“In the practice of integrative oncology, the health care provider may recommend medicinal cannabis, not only for symptom management, but also for its possible direct antitumor effect,” read the NCI website on March 17. Curiously, this passage was later changed and the “direct antitumor effect” wording was deleted.

The paradoxes continue: Despite the fact that the Nixon administration successfully passed the Controlled Substances Act, which, again, considers cannabis as something with “no currently accepted medical use,” our federal government continues to send cannabis to patients . . . for “medical use” as part of the Compassionate Investigational New Drug Program, a program currently administered by (insert irony here) the National Institute on Drug Abuse. The program is closed to new patients, but continues to provide hundreds of cannabis cigarettes to the four surviving patients.

Researchers from UCLA and Harvard—as well as scientists from Spain—have also documented cannabis’ cancer-fighting effects during the ’90s and ’00s.

More recently, the National Cancer Institute, on its cancer.gov website, posted new information about a study of 43 patients who were able “to obtain relief of their cancer-related pain with long-term use of the delta-9-terahydrocannabinol :cannabidiol oromucosal spray.” The institute also posted new information about a trial of 39 patients “with neuropathic pain who were treated with medium-dose, low-dose or placebo vaporized Cannabis that found that vaporized Cannabis produced comparable analgesic effects at both doses compared with placebo; psychoactive effects were minimal and well tolerated.” The NCI website also has posted information about studies indicating cannabis compounds’ cancer-fighting properties when it comes to breast cancer and colorectal cancer.

The information are part of the Institute’s Physician Data Query (PDQ) database which the agency itself describes as a summary that provides “comprehensive peer-reviewed, evidence-based information about the use of Cannabis and cannabinoids in the treatment of people with cancer.”

Interestingly, the answer to the question why would one federal agency completely undermine what another agency has said might be found in some disclaimer-like language that mentions that the NCI’s research summary is handled by an editorial board that is “editorially independent” of the NCI. “The summary reflects an independent review of the literature and does not represent a policy statement of NCI or NIH.”

In 2009, the National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI)—part of the National Library of Medicine—posted an abstract of U.S. research stating: “Our study suggests that moderate marijuana use is associated with reduced risk of [head and neck squamous cell carcinoma.]”

Last year, the NCBI posted information about a study in Spain: “Cannabinoids: a new hope for breast cancer therapy?” The abstract stated that “[e]xperimental evidence accumulated during the last decade supports that cannabinoids, the active components of Cannabis sativa and their derivatives, possess anticancer activity.”

“Cities that ban dispensaries are denying patients the ability to obtain a medicine the federal government’s National Institutes of Health says fights cancer and they’re doing it with the Obama administration’s help,” Pappas said.