 |
| YvonneDecelis Columnist & News Editor MSnewsChannel.com |
At the beginning of the conference, the moderator (Vasudev Mandyam, Instructor in Medicine at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center) gave a brief introduction and then introduced the two speakers. Dr. Grinspoon was the first to speak. I found his lecture to be very insightful. He has been involved in working with patients and medical marijuana since 1967. He mentioned that he used to believe all the myths that led to the prohibition of Marijuana but that he had had a significant change of heart after researching it and working with other people who used it.
He discussed the fact that the Federal Government’s refusal to change their categorization of marijuana (class 1 narcotic. It is in the same class as Heroin) despite numerous requests to do so and despite all of the scientific evidence to the contrary has led to an (understandably) angry public. He said that not only do the majority of people in many States want it legalized, but that a significant number of them are incensed at the fact that there are still so many rules and regulations against it. He also stated that it was not physically addictive and did not cause fatalities (he said that, while so-called harmless over the counter medications like aspirin have caused some deaths, marijuana has not.)
Kevin Hill had a completely different view. I will try to be as diplomatic as I can about what he said but I have to preface this by saying I disagreed with everything he said except for two things. He mentioned that the idea that pot is a “gateway drug” is false. I am very glad he said that because that is an argument I still hear and I agree that it is false. There have been many studies done on the subject and the idea was disproved. He also said that the way medical marijuana is being handled in the State of Massachusetts is abysmal and I agree with that as well. Doctors are being given the freedom to approve their patient’s use of marijuana for whatever they feel it would help their patients with. While many are on the fence about the use of it, some could take advantage (especially the so-called medical marijuana doctors who charge $200 for an appointment to get a medical marijuana ID card.)
He then went on to show a slideshow and started to talk about how he felt Marijuana was physically addictive to approximately 9% of marijuana users. He went on to state that he worked with Athletes who told him they “needed to quit” and he claimed they had as hard a time quitting pot than they did cigarettes (completely untrue. Unlike marijuana, Nicotine is both mentally and physically addictive). Dr. Grinspoon chimed in at this point to state once again that he had never heard of anyone having physical withdrawal symptoms after quitting the use of marijuana.
There was a very (all too) brief Q & A session following the lectures. There was a group of pediatric specialists who brought up children using it and we all agreed that harm could be done to the brain of a child in their formative years if they smoked pot. At this point Dr. Grinspoon mentioned that he was a little insulted by one of the questions asked by the specialists because when he first started speaking he had said he thought we should impose the same rules for pot as we do for alcohol. He said he would never condone the use of it by minors with the exception of for medical use. He mentioned Dr. Sanjay Gupta’s documentary “Weed” and a patient named Charlotte; girl who started having seizures when she was three months old. She reached a point where she was having 300 seizures a week when she was only a few years old. Her family tried everything until a doctor suggested a medication that would put Charlotte in a coma. At that point the family decided to give mariuana a try. For more information about this, check out Dr. Gupta's documentary WEED on youtube.
I tried hard to get a question in but the conference ran 30 minutes late and I never got picked. I did, however, get a chance to introduce myself to Dr. Grinspoon. As soon as I told him I had MS and Fibro he became very friendly and charming. He leaned over to me, gave a sideways glance to Kevin Hill and said “yeah – you must be so very addicted.” I gave him my contact information and told him how happy I was to hear him speak. I was also pretty happy with the overall reaction to the things Kevin Hill had to say (it sounded like the majority of the audience members had a hard time with many of his claims).
Click the following to listen to seminar (the visuals are my notes from the meeting. Things don't really "get going" until about 4 minutes in):
No comments:
Post a Comment