Cannabis News The November Coalition
  Discovery is Touted as Alternative To Marijuana
Posted by FoM on July 27, 2001 at 14:44:52 PT
Sun Staff & Wire Reports 
Source: Las Vegas Sun 

medical Nevada has yet to be daunted by the troubles facing the use of medicinal marijuana. First the U.S. Supreme Court ruled marijuana possession -- even for medicinal purposes -- was illegal. Next Nevada's funding crisis left the state $30,000 short in launching its own program.

Now the controversy over the medical use of marijuana may soon be moot. Researchers say discovery of a pain-blocking enzyme similar to that found in marijuana could alleviate those concerns and allow free-spirited Nevada to forge ahead with its approved program.

Medical research in mice found that the enzyme, FAAH, allows a marijuana-like compound in the brain to trigger pain relief. The compound, anandamide, is a chemical cousin of the compound found in marijuana.

The findings by the Scripps Research Institute in California appear Tuesday's issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Supporters of Nevada's medicinal marijuana program have been hesitant to support alternative drugs in the past, because those drugs often have severe side effects, or because pill-forms of drugs are difficult for some chronically ill patients to take.

During testimony to the state Legislature in the spring, Dan Geary said smoking marijuana gives chronically ill patients the best form of relief. Geary spearheaded the citizens' ballot initiative that led to legalization of medicinal marijuana by the Legislature.

"They'd have to prove it to us that it's as effective as marijuana before we give up the fight for our medical marijuana program," Dan Hart, one of the program's proponents, said this morning.

Prosecutors, such as Washoe County District Attorney Richard Gammick, argued against such a program saying that a pill, Marinol, could be prescribed by doctors without treading on the state's drug laws.

An unidentified woman whose husband takes marijuana for relief from cancer pain told state lawmakers that marijuana proved the most beneficial for his ailment. She was granted anonymity for her testimony to keep her husband's identity unknown.

Researchers admit their current findings don't answer all the concerns.

"Anandamide reduces pain sensitivity, but it has a lot of side effects," said Benjamin F. Cravatt, an assistant professor of cell biology and chemistry at Scripps and the lead author of the research study.

"We have to see whether those can be separated, one from the other, so we get pain reduction without side effects," Cravatt added.

The importance of the report is that "it really proves that anandamide is broken down by this enzyme and no other," says Dale Deutsch, an associate professor of biochemistry and cell biology at the State University of New York at Stony Brook. Deutsch, who is president of the International Cannabinoid Research Society, played a major role in the first research describing the role of FAAH.

Deutsch is also working with anandamide inhibitors.

"The goal of our research is to understand the mechanism by which anandamide is broken down in the brain, and how cells take it up," he says. "FAAH appears to act like a straw, sucking anandamide into the cell to get rid of it."

A medication that heightens anandamide activity could have a number of uses, Deutsch says. Cannabinoids also affect mood, blood pressure and memory, he explains, and they are closely related to the brain mechanisms of drug addiction, so one possible use would be reducing the ill effects of withdrawal from addiction.

Weight reduction is another possibility, Deutsch says. Safoni, an Italian pharmaceutical company, is planning clinical trials of a compound that blocks cannabinoid receptors in the brain as an aid to weight loss.

Erin Neff, Sun Reporter contributed to this report.

Source: Las Vegas Sun (NV)
Published: July 27, 2001
Copyright: 2001 Las Vegas Sun, Inc.
Contact: letters@lasvegassun.com
Website: http://www.lasvegassun.com/

Related Articles & Web Site:

International Cannabinoid Research Society
http://cannabinoidsociety.org/

Medical Marijuana Information Links
http://freedomtoexhale.com/medical.htm

Enzyme Could Lead To Medical Marijuana Alternative
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread10390.shtml

Medical Marijuana Program To Start Oct. 1
http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread10359.shtml


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Comment #14 posted by FoM on July 28, 2001 at 21:10:54 PT
SWAMPIE
Hi SWAMPIE,
It seems like you are drug wise. Experience is generally the best teacher but sometimes it isn't particularly with drugs but even more dangerous then drugs is alcohol. I have seen more people wreck their lives from alcohol then any drug at all. Alcohol is really easy to get in over a persons head before they even realize they have a problem.

I hope you get your home. I know how great it is to get your own home and with a little land which makes it even nicer. We have 25 acres between my husband and myself and Father in Law. I love the serenity. The deer go thru the front yard often and one Momma deer leaves her little one by the side of the one house. They feel safe here because we don't allow hunting and we are next to a State Park. We have wild turkeys too. They sounds so cool when they are in the woods clucking if that's what its called. Good Luck to you.

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Comment #13 posted by jacksplace58 on July 28, 2001 at 05:56:08 PT
angel dust
Formaldehyde is one of the precurser chemicals in the manufacture of pcp or angel dust as it's known,..a realy nasty thing from back in the old hippie days,...glad I didn't do it more,.

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Comment #12 posted by dddd on July 28, 2001 at 00:59:22 PT
I dont think..
...that this is "angel dust"...but then again,,"angel dust",could be
one of many nasty substances....All of what SWAMPIE says is
sound and true....but I think we would be jumping to conclusions
to say that this is "angel dust".....dddd


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Comment #11 posted by SWAMPIE on July 27, 2001 at 23:22:38 PT
FoM
Hi FoM!To the best of my knowledge,that is what it is!I had alot of friends in the 70's that were into it,and it really messed some of them up.Some are gone but I don't know if it was from that.My wife even tried it whenshe was a kid and she said that that sounds right to her too,and she's only 31!I know alot of ex-heroin users who were lucky to get off it before they killed themselves,even my wife.I never tried that,though,I had teachers in"high"school who told the truth about those drugs and I only tried drugs that weren't needle-bound.At my "high school"we would sit in our cars and burn the morning leaves as one teacher put it!LOL!!There would be 20 cars crammed with students before school,and the teachers would have to come out to let us know it was time to come in,and the smoke would roll out of the cars when we opened the doors!They actually laughed at us and called us"burnouts"!!Some of these students are now a police chief,lieutenant,a mayor,a city councilman of this town!!!I don't know what their stance on cannabis is today,but when I see them,they are friendly to me,even though I have long hair and don't hide the fact I smoke!We see them around town and they wave!!!Just got lucky,I guess,to know some cool people!We might move back there soon,I hope we can get the loan on the house we found.55K!!an acre with a small house!!Enough rambling!Nice to talk to you!As always,SWAMPIE

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Comment #10 posted by lookinside on July 27, 2001 at 18:38:09 PT:

thanks doc...
for putting this in perspective...the insanity involved in touting drugs with possible severe side effects as alternatives to cannabis is silly at best, and criminal in the extreme...

i guess the anti's attitude is they(the sick) are better dead than using the "killer weed"

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Comment #9 posted by FoM on July 27, 2001 at 18:34:59 PT
SWAMPIE
That sounds really bad for you. Is that what this is Angel Dust? That was a nasty drug. Yuk I say. When you're young you feel invincible and you don't think of the long term effects from chemical drug use but it catches up with a person. It's just when and how. I don't know any Meth users or Heroin users that are still alive. They're all gone now. They've all been gone for years. They all died fairly young. Chemicals legal and illegal can be so dangerous and Cannabis is so darn safe.

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Comment #8 posted by SWAMPIE on July 27, 2001 at 18:24:28 PT
WET/DUST COMMENT
FoM,and all,according to the second article you posted about "wet",everything that was described there was"angel dust"!!!I was about 17 when getting high in the back door of my brothers' gas station,when the local ambulance/funeral driver popped in to get some gas and caught us.The others ran,but I was working.He flashed a sheriffs badge at me and scared the hell out of me,then helped me finish the joint.He asked me if I had ever smoked angel dust,and I had,so the next week he brought me in 2 qts.of embalming fluid,a 200ml.bottle of sodium pentothal,a syringe,and needle.Then he told me how to do it.I won't go into detail,but I had the bomb!His partner is now the president of the county council!To all,this stuff was great when young and dumb,but I saw ALOT of people I went to school with turn into ZOMBIES!Some of them aren't right today,25 years later!Just wanted to tell a weird truth,Thanx
SWAMPIE


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Comment #7 posted by Ethan Russo, MD on July 27, 2001 at 16:08:08 PT:

Hold Your Pharmaceutical Horses
This research result is important but anyone who thinks it represents the answer to medical marijuana is deluding themselves. FAAH works on numerous substrates, not just anandamide. In other words, blocking it unselectively will affect a bunch of other functions beyond raising anandamide levels. Is that a good thing? Millions of rats will die in order to answer that question.

It will be many years, if ever, before anything marketable results from this discovery. The chances that it will equal or better the wondrous synergistic biochemical factory of cannabis is remote, indeed.

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Comment #6 posted by Pontifex on July 27, 2001 at 16:05:38 PT:

What about studying the "long-term effects"?
FoM, thanks very much for posting this article. I'm glad
you did, because it raises some important points.

Sudaca put his finger most clearly on the hypocrisy. On
the one hand, we have cannabis, used by mankind for
millenia with no known fatalities or significant side
effects. On the other hand, we have this new synthetic
anandamide, never before used by mankind, with
admitted side effects and unknown long term effects.

And yet, this new synthetic drug receives all the benefit
of the doubt. Where's the call for a government
committee to appoint a panel to plan a forum to report
on the health effects some day? Where's the
finger-wagging politician saying, "we still need more
research into the long-term effects of Anandamide?"

Of course, no politician is asking those questions,
because this new drug serves their goal of cannabis
prohibition -- however illogically.

FoM, you're right to focus on the human aspect. For all
we know this could be the next OxyContin. In the
meantime, cannabinoid users would be insane to use
synthetic anandamide (or Marinol) when whole
cannabis has repeatedly been proven the safest drug
in human history.

Prosecutors, such as Washoe County District
Attorney Richard Gammick, argued against such a
program saying that a pill, Marinol, could be prescribed
by doctors without treading on the state's drug laws.

Add that to the mountain of evidence that cannabis
prohibition is all about politics and has nothing to do
with public health.


[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #5 posted by FoM on July 27, 2001 at 15:43:28 PT
My 2 cents
Hi Everyone,

I thought I'd mention why I didn't want to post the article on the front page. You all might think I'm weird but this is why. I think a lot about what news to post because I can only do around 10 give or take a few articles a day and I hope they accomplish a lot for the readers of Cannabis News. What really bothered me about this article is I was afraid it could promote the use of this substance. If you keep telling kids what drugs are out there and how bad they are you make them want to try it more. Let sleepying dogs lie I say. The very nature of youth is to do exactly the opposite of what they are told to do. That is a normal part of growing up but we should be careful what we harp on or we create the very problem we are trying to avoid. I hope this makes sense.

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Comment #4 posted by Doug on July 27, 2001 at 15:34:15 PT
Thank you Drug Warriors...
for givng us yet another drug to use. Granted, most of the article is probably scare tactics, but this certainly gives people another idea for a drug to use. And all the warnings about possible harm will not cause the use of this fluid to suffer. Way to go!

Let me offer my own suggestion of a legally available drug that will get you high: catnip. I'm not kidding. There were a few articles in the Journal of the American Medical Assossication (in about 1969) about people who got high by smoking catnip, and were taken to a doctor. The aerosol form is even more potent. Armed with this knowledge, I tried it out. My conclusion, it works but you have to smoke an awful lot. Perhaps if you ate it.... But better means of getting high presented themselves. But what if the young people today heard about this. Lock the pet stores!

And then there are tales of prisoners using nutmeg (which contains the psychedelic MDA (not MMDA). Using netmeg does have some unpleasant side effects.

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Comment #3 posted by Sudaca on July 27, 2001 at 15:26:16 PT
reinventing the wheel
"Cannabinoids also affect mood, blood pressure and memory, he explains, and they are closely related to the brain mechanisms of drug addiction, so one possible use would be reducing the ill effects of withdrawal from addiction."

And so , as FOM has pointed out , this same observation applies to the potential use of cannabis in addiction treatments.

Funny how once a patent shows up and the substance becomes a product , then everything's ok.

[ Post Comment ]

 
Comment #2 posted by FoM on July 27, 2001 at 15:13:57 PT
TroutMask
Hi TroutMask,

I've been seeing this article all day but passed on posting it on the front page. The drug war is really crazy.

Dangerous New High Kids Use - Embalming Fluid as Recreational Drug

Source: Associated Press
Author: Joann Loviglio
Published: July 27, 2001
Copyright: 2001 The Associated Press

A chemical used to preserve the dead is becoming an increasingly popular drug for users looking for a new and different high, one which often comes with violent and psychotic side effects, officials say.

The chemical is embalming fluid, and users — mainly teens and twentysomethings — are buying tobacco or marijuana cigarettes that have been soaked in it, then dried. They cost about $20 apiece and are called by nearly a dozen names nationwide, including "wet," "fry" and "illy."

"Some people around here think it's just a city problem but it's not," said Julie Kirlin, a juvenile probation officer in Reading, about 50 miles northwest of Philadelphia. "Whether they live in a million-dollar house or a $5,000 house, kids who are smoking pot or crack and are looking for a different type of high are turning to wet."

The high that users experience depends on what they're really getting. Many users who want embalming fluid often get it with phenylcyclidine (PCP) mixed in. Embalming fluid is a compound of formaldehyde, methanol, ethanol and other solvents.

"We test for heroin, cocaine and marijuana but not for this," Kirlin said. "Numbers-wise, I think we're missing a whole lot."

Adding to the confusion is that PCP has gone by the street name "embalming fluid" since the 1970s.

"What they're getting is often PCP, but the idea of embalming fluid appeals to people's morbid curiosity about death," said Dr. Julie Holland of New York University School of Medicine, who has studied drugs including wet. "There's a certain gothic appeal to it."

Drug Can Produce Euphoria, But Also Coma and Seizures

Twenty Houston-area users interviewed for a 1998 study by the Texas Commission on Drug Abuse said effects include visual and auditory hallucinations, euphoria, a feeling of invincibility, increased pain tolerance, anger, forgetfulness and paranoia. Stranger symptoms reported include an overwhelming desire to disrobe, and a strong distaste for meat.

"It's prevalent, it's cheap, it's easy to make and it's marketed to children … it comes in little bags with cartoon characters on them," said Edith Pestana, an epidemiologist for the Connecticut Department of Environmental Protection who took part in the Texas study. "It has become quite popular with college kids, too."

Other symptoms may include coma, seizures, renal failure and stroke. The high lasts from six hours to three days.

"Fry users are described like those who do a lot of inhalants; they're just spaced out, disassociative," said Jane Maxwell of the National Institute on Drug Abuse's Community Epidemiology Work Group, composed of researchers from major metropolitan areas.

"When people say they've been using fry and they come into the emergency room and are just wild — they have to be strapped down in their beds or they destroy the room — that tells me that PCP's in there," Maxwell said.

Deadly Attack by 14-Year-Old on ‘Wet’

In the Philadelphia suburb of Morrisville, a 14-year-old boy fatally stabbed a 33-year-old neighbor more than 70 times in May 2000, after smoking wet he purchased in Trenton, N.J. The boy, who said he took "wet" to quiet the voices in his head, is serving a seven-year sentence in a juvenile facility.

In Connecticut, "illy" first appeared in 1995 and was cited as a factor in at least four deaths. It was believed by users to be marijuana and mint leaves, but tests showed it contained those ingredients plus embalming fluid and PCP, Pestana said.

In Oklahoma, three young girls reported last year that they were sexually assaulted by male acquaintances after the group smoked "fry."

Although there are no national statistics on usage, many drug experts say anecdotal evidence suggests wet has spread from poor, minority inner-city areas to affluent, white suburban neighborhoods and college campuses.

"It seems to pop up in isolated incidents; we see it in [geographic] groupings," said Kate Malliarakis of the U.S. Office of National Drug Control Policy. "Unfortunately it seems to spread by word of mouth, especially with kids."

Reports of Thefts from Funeral Homes

The chemical poses an added problem for police because it is legal. Formaldehyde can be purchased in drug stores and beauty supply stores (it is an ingredient in nail care products). It's also available in many school science labs.

Hydrol Chemical Co. in Yeadon, an embalming fluid supplier to funeral homes, has received one or two calls with questions from "parents who found a bottle of embalming fluid in the freezer or in their child's room," chief chemist Richard Hoffman said. There also have been reports of embalming fluid thefts from funeral homes in Louisiana and New York.

The company sent suggestions to funeral homes about secure storage, and the industry is taking note.

"We'd always kept our chemicals in our garage but since we heard about it, we keep everything stored inside the funeral home, in the morgue" under lock-and-key, said Christopher Dinan of Dinan Funeral Home in Philadelphia.

Kirlin said police have their hands full putting out the big fires — the cocaine, heroin and marijuana trades — and that wet doesn't pose the same huge problems associated with those drugs, but she is concerned wet may become more widespread if left unchecked.

"This is a violent drug, and it will turn into a big fire if it's not watched very closely," Kirlin said.

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Comment #1 posted by TroutMask on July 27, 2001 at 14:54:00 PT
Next stop, formaldehyde
I bet formaldehyde won't show up in drug tests. I guess that's what the War on Drugs hawks would have them use to get high. Idiots.

-TM

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