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Medical Marijuana's 'Catch-22': Limits On Research Hinders Patient Relief
By the time Ann Marie Owen, 61, turned to marijuana to treat her pain, she was struggling to walk and talk. She was also hallucinating. For four years, her doctor prescribed a wide range of opioids for transverse myelitis, a debilitating disease that caused pain, muscle weakness and paralysis. The drugs not only failed to ease her symptoms, they hooked her.
When her home state of New York legalized marijuana for the treatment of select medical ailments, Owens decided it was time to swap pills for pot. But her doctors refused to help. "Even though medical marijuana is legal, none of my doctors were willing to talk to me about it," she says. "They just kept telling me to take opioids."
Although 29 states have legalized marijuana to treat pain and other ailments, the growing number of Americans like Owen who use marijuana and the doctors who treat them are caught in the middle of a conflict in federal and state laws — a predicament that is only worsened by thin scientific data.
Because the federal government considers marijuana a Schedule 1 drug, research on marijuana or its active ingredients is highly restricted and even discouraged in some cases. Underscoring the federal government's position, Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar recently pronounced that there was "no such thing as medical marijuana."
(Score: -1, Troll) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday April 08 2018, @01:39PM
A lone man sat on a bench in a certain park. That alone would not be surprising, but what was surprising was that this man was completely nude. Due to this, some might mistake this man for a sexual deviant, but the truth was something much more grand; he was a freedom fighter. That's right: this man was a staunch proponent of public nudity, and fought valiantly for the right to be nude in public. Even though it was not currently tolerated, he still bravely ventured out in public while nude in order to fight for his beliefs. This man, Brendonson, stood up. If one were to glance at the bench on which he previously sat, they would notice that the man left something behind.
Brown. Rancid. Yes, it was feces. What's more, the feces stuck to the bench was almost exactly the shape of the man's buttocks. One might ask, "Why?" Because the man's buttocks was always covered in a thick layer of feces, for precisely such occasions. It was all done in the name of freedom. This man would sit in various places and mark them as his territory using his fetid feces. But that wasn't all, oh no. A keen observer would notice something moving.
They wriggled and they squirmed every which way. These beings inhabitated the feces the man left behind, and were so numerous that they were impossible to count. The most suitable name for them would be "pinworms". However, that was but a deception; these squirming beings were on an entirely different level from ordinary pinworms. Battle-hardened and fierce, they were ready to attack any who might threaten the sanctity of the areas the man had conquered. These worms were Brendonson's true power, and the guardians of his dominions. The man departed in a manner befit for a king, leaving his new territory and army behind.
Where would Brendonson go next? What new lands would he conquer? And how would the bigots who tried to control his freedom of expression react to it all? The only certainty was that the man would bravely charge forth and defeat all who stood in his path to freedom.