Study Finds Marijuana Comforts MS Patients

By James Donahue

Various studies have shown that the cannabis plant, better known as marijuana, is good medicine for a wide range of medical ailments.

Now a study by a British research team finds that the plant also helps ease the pain of spastic muscles experienced by patients suffering from multiple sclerosis.

We know about those muscular contractions. My wife, Doris, is battling this disease and I have watched her wreathe in agony, sometimes in the middle of the night, while she waits for harsh medicine to take effect that helps her muscles relax. She also keeps extreme pain medicine at her side.

All of the medicine prescribed for Doris is costly, it requires a doctor’s prescription, and it brings unwelcome side effects. She doesn’t like to take it any more than she has to.

The work by a research team headed by John Zajicek at Peninsula Medical School, Exeter, UK, suggests that cannabinoid compounds from the marijuana plant might give her the same comfort without the threat of lasting side effects.

Sadly, we live in America where marijuana is prohibited by law.

Even though it is a common weed, and tests have proven that marijuana is neither physically harmful or habit forming, the plant is included in the nation’s idiotic War on Drugs. As a news reporter I have watched many decent men and women go to jail and sometimes prison for growing and distributing the stuff.

Efforts by voters in states like California and Arizona to legalize marijuana for medical use have only been partly successful. Because the plant is still listed as a violation of federal law, anyone caught using it even in these states may be subject to arrest by federal agents.

The British team tested cannabinoid compounds on 630 advanced state MS patients for 15 weeks. Some of the patients were given cannabis while others received a placebo.

The flaw in the study showed that the recipients of the placebo knew right away they were not getting cannabis because they failed to experience the so-called “good mood” the ingredient PCB brings on.

But even at that, the study showed real evidence of benefit from cannabis that was not expected in such a short-term study, Zajicek said.

He said patients who received active compounds said they felt less pain and an ease of muscular spasms characteristic of the neurodegenerative disease.