By Lolly Bentch Myers, Campaign4Compassion
Campaign4Compassion (C4C) is a grassroots advocacy group that was started by mothers of sick children and other patients to advocate for the compassionate use of medical cannabis. Our goals are to educate residents and lawmakers in Pennsylvania and to pass comprehensive, compassionate medical cannabis legislation so that all patients with qualifying conditions have access to medication without fear of criminal prosecution.
Several national medical associations including the American Nurses Association, the American Public Health Association, the American Academy of HIV Medicine, the Leukemia & Lymphoma Society, the Epilepsy Foundation of America, and many others support the compassionate use of medical marijuana. A recent poll from the New England Journal of Medicine found that 76% of doctors would recommend medical marijuana to their patients, with 96% support from Pennsylvania doctors who participated in the poll. The Pennsylvania Medical Society claims to represent Pennsylvania doctors, but according to their own numbers only 37% of doctors in the state are current members of the group.
While PAMED expresses their opposition to SB 3 and any similar legislation, they never provide a specific problem with the content of the bill. As Dr. Bruce Nicholson, Chief, Division of Pain Management, Lehigh Valley Health Network and member of PAMED has stated:
“The intent of this legislation is to control and ensure that there is acceptable dosing of THC & Cannibidiol for both the therapeutic use in the patient population as well as further studies of medical cannabis regarding specific conditions. It is my opinion that the current position of PAMED is not one of constructive dialogue further identifying the potential benefits of medical cannabis."
Like many other opponents of medical marijuana legislation, PAMED stakes their position on the need for more research and FDA approval. Since 1976, there has been a congressional mandate placed on the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) to study drugs only as substances of harm. Since NIDA owns the only researchable source of cannabis in the United States, research has been slanted to find only the negative effects of these drugs. However, in other countries where laws are different, researchers have found that cannabis can be used safely within the confines of a medical program.
Even within the United States, despite the restrictions on research, over a dozen recent small-scale Phase 2 trials support marijuana’s medical efficacy. Studies like these and research from other countries was sufficient evidence for 23 states and the District of Columbia to enact sensible medical marijuana legislation. Lawmakers, residents, and doctors in those states decided patients should not have to wait for this bureaucratic process to be changed.
To support their claims that medical marijuana has harmed patients with epilepsy, PAMED sites the Chapman study presented to the American Epilepsy Society (AES). Out of 75 patients using medical cannabis, 57% reported improvement in seizure control with 33% reporting more than a 50% reduction in seizures. In a patient population that has only a 1% response rate to the 22 other FDA-approved antiepileptic medications, this efficacy rate is impressive. PAMED also indicates that medical marijuana was responsible for the 20% who experienced an increase in seizures. However, they fail to mention pharmaceutical anticonvulsants can also cause an increase in seizures in some patients.
We would like to mention that although PAMED focused on pediatric epilepsy, many seriously ill Pennsylvanians could benefit from access to medical marijuana. Chronic pain, nausea, lupus, spasms related to multiple sclerosis, and Crohn's disease all have strong evidence supporting the efficacy of medical marijuana, including, in several cases, small-scale double-blind placebo-controlled trials.
We would also like to make it very clear that as parents and potential patients we know there is no guarantee that any treatment will be effective. We are only asking for access to another option by our trusted medical professionals and the patients that they treat. The diseases that we face are debilitating, life-altering and often times life threatening. We do not have time on our side.
PAMED asks us, “Why not wait”?
To ask patients and their loved ones to wait years for the federal government to reschedule marijuana, for research to advance, for our legislature to act, is cruel.
Why not wait?
We should not have to wait one more minute. The people we love are suffering, and there is a safe, effective treatment that could help. Every day we wait means more pills, more hospital stays, more seizures, more pain, more tears.Now is the time to move forward on this critically important legislation.
Recently, Campaign4Compassion joined a bipartisan group of lawmakers, potential patients and caregivers inside the Pennsylvania State Capitol to demand that lawmakers stop waiting and take action. We urged movement for patients suffering today, the ones that have passed waiting and for future generations not yet diagnosed with disease. We would have loved to have had the support of PAMED.
We respectfully request that the Pennsylvania Medical Society reconsider their position. We implore them to remember that at the end of the day, we simply don’t want to bury our loved ones knowing that there is a medicine that could have facilitated healing and a better quality of life.
Why would anyone want to stand in the way of that?
READ PAMED PERSPECTIVE
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