MEDICINAL MARIJUANA

Alistair Bone's "Dope test" (June 7) obscured an important point about
the medical use of cannabis.

If you need its medical benefits, smoking is the silliest possible way
to take it. There is no dosage or purity control, and the tar content
of the smoke is more threatening to lung health than that of tobacco,
puff-for-puff. This would still be true even if there were no legal or
attitudinal barriers to smoking it recreationally.

Very sick, disabled or terminally ill people may well like to smoke it
for its well-known sedative effects and associated heightened feelings
of wellbeing.

You'd be hardhearted to deny it to such people.

But smoking the raw plant material could never be a medically
appropriate practice.

Dosage and purity are crucial in drug therapy, especially when
calculated side-effects are part of the equation.

The biggest barrier to the medical use of the active ingredient in
cannabis is that the medical-use agenda is being driven by those who
want cannabis legalised for recreational smoking.

They need to focus on their real programme and stop this transparent
hypocrisy that recreational cannabis smoking is a medical miracle in
disguise.

No reasonable person would obstruct the use of a promising ingredient
from an illegal substance in medically proper applications. As the
article mentioned, several of our existing medicines use illegal
substances with no social disapproval. If it were really
ground-breaking, the drug companies would fall over themselves to get
it through the hoops, and the Health Minister's powers already extend
to allowing it. So don't expect me to believe that recreational
cannabis smokers are only interested in advancing medical science or
helping sick people.

The thin edge of the wedge is blatant.

Dope smokers are their own worst enemy.

Their campaign for legalisation would be more credible if they left
medical use out of it. It is much more important to acknowledge that
the health and social costs of recreational use are as real as they
are for alcohol and tobacco, and that this reality must be recognised
in any new laws.

Bill Keir,

Waimamaku, Hokianga