Attention former Prez Carter: "Marijuana Is a Wonder Drug When It Comes to the Horrors of Chemo"

The title of this post is drawn from the headline of this Newsweek piece from last month that I just came across. Though it seems from this new news article that former President Jimmy Carter may not be getting a chemotherapy-based cancer treatment, this  Newsweek article seemed worth spotlighting on a day when a former US Prez is talking about his cancer diagnosis and coming treatments.  (In a coming post, I will highlight another newer Newsweek story on marijuana reform that I think merits even more attention.)  Here in a notable excerpt from the lengthy chemo piece:

A growing number of cancer patients and oncologists view the drug as a viable alternative for managing chemotherapy’s effects, as well as some of the physical and emotional health consequences of cancer, such as bone pain, anxiety and depression. State legislatures are following suit; medical cannabis is legal in 23 states and the District of Columbia, and more than a dozen other states allow some patients access to certain potency levels of the drug if a physician documents that it’s medically necessary, or if the sick person has exhausted other options. A large number of these patients have cancer, and many who gain access to medical marijuana report that it works.

“A day doesn’t go by where I don’t see a cancer patient who has nausea, vomiting, loss of appetite, pain, depression and insomnia,” says Dr. Donald Abrams, chief of hematology-oncology at San Francisco General Hospital and a professor of clinical medicine at the University of California, San Francisco. Marijuana, he says, “is the only anti-nausea medicine that increases appetite.”

It also helps patients sleep and elevates their mood — no easy feat when someone is facing a life-threatening illness.  “I could write six different prescriptions, all of which may interact with each other or the chemotherapy that the patient has been prescribed. Or I could just recommend trying one medicine,” Abrams says.

A 2014 poll conducted by Medscape and WebMD found that more than three-quarters of U.S. physicians think cannabis provides real therapeutic benefits. And those working with cancer patients were the strongest supporters: 82 percent of oncologists agreed that cannabis should be offered as a treatment option.

Dr. Benjamin Kligler, associate professor of family and social medicine at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, says there has been enough research to prove that at a bare minimum cannabis won’t actually harm a person.  In addition, “given what we've seen anecdotally in practice I think there's no reason we shouldn't see more integration of cannabis in the long run as a strategy,” he says.  “We have this extremely safe, extremely useful medicine that could potentially benefits a huge population.”