cannabisnews.com: Spray Alternative To Pot On The Market in Canada





Spray Alternative To Pot On The Market in Canada
Posted by CN Staff on June 23, 2005 at 19:25:52 PT
By Wendy Koch, USA Today
Source: USA Today
Canadians now have access to a legal spray alternative to medical marijuana. Beginning this week, multiple sclerosis patients with constant tingling pain can get a doctor's prescription for a new drug, Sativex, derived from the marijuana plant.The under-the-tongue spray, approved only in Canada, is one of several emerging alternatives to smoking pot for medical relief. The new pharmaceuticals, some of which may not enter the U.S. market for years, may alter the public debate about medical marijuana.
"People ... who don't want to break the law" will use the spray, says Dr. Lester Grinspoon, professor emeritus at Harvard University and an advocate for legalizing pot use. "They're elevating the debate on medical marijuana." But Grinspoon expects many new users will find they prefer smoking marijuana. "There is no holding back medical marijuana. It's going to happen," he says.Tom Riley, spokesman for the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, agrees there's change ahead. But he says the new drugs will lessen the controversy over medical marijuana.Riley says the Bush administration, which has opposed medical pot use, would welcome alternatives that are scientifically proved to be safe and effective. Several Republicans, led by Rep. Mark Souder of Indiana, cited the availability of Marinol — a pill with the active pot ingredient THC — in arguing against a bill to protect medical pot users from federal prosecution.The U.S. House broadly defeated that bill last week. Its rejection followed a Supreme Court ruling earlier this month that allows federal prosecution even if smokers are following state laws. Currently, 10 states allow medical pot use. Snipped:Complete Article: http://www.freedomtoexhale.com/sativex.htmSource: USA Today (US)Author: Wendy Koch, USA TodayPublished: June 23, 2005Copyright: 2005 USA Today, a division of Gannett Co. Inc.Contact: editor usatoday.comWebsite: http://www.usatoday.com/Related Articles & Web Sites:GW Pharmaceuticalshttp://www.gwpharm.com/Dr. Lester Grinspoonhttp://www.rxmarihuana.com/ The Lesson of Sativexhttp://cannabisnews.com/news/thread20542.shtmlCanada Approves GWs Cannabis Drug for MS http://cannabisnews.com/news/thread20541.shtml
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Comment #17 posted by jose melendez on June 27, 2005 at 07:30:41 PT
flip flop
"There are very few people who do not know somebody who knows somebody who is already benefiting from this medicine illicitly."http://www.mult-sclerosis.org/news/May2001/UKMedMJCompany.htmand**We are helping thousands and potentially millions of patients.How many patients are our critics helping?"http://www.cannabisculture.com/articles/4310.html
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Comment #16 posted by ngeo on June 27, 2005 at 07:03:37 PT:
High again
This quote is from a Cannabis Culture article of 19 April 2005, written by Nigel Olsen. Dr. Guy said, “"The end result will be that patients and their doctors can exactly monitor the relief and lift they get from our drugs . . . ." 
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Comment #15 posted by ngeo on June 27, 2005 at 06:54:47 PT:
High
In an interview a few months ago, Dr. Guy of Sativex did in fact admit that Sativex users will get 'high'. Except he called it 'lift'.
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Comment #14 posted by jose melendez on June 25, 2005 at 05:42:34 PT
paraphrased . . .
They prohibit, kill, imprison, seize homes and property, and persecute without conscience, many of them beating their chests about how "righteous" they are to be doing what they're doing. Yet despite their insidious and powerful efforts to date, they can't manage to keep it unavailable to the citizens of the United States.
Cannabis: It's food, stupid.
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Comment #13 posted by Hope on June 24, 2005 at 21:09:07 PT
Sativex
I'm not sure the people who just go ballistic at the thought of any sort of marijuana, legalized in any form, in any way, will allow the FDA to approve it. Yes. I think they may likely have that sort of insidious power. Their deadly tentacles obviously spread far and wide, high and low. They don't hesitate to make people suffer at their whim. They prohibit, kill, imprison, seize homes and property, and persecute without conscience, many of them beating their chests about how "righteous" they are to be doing what they're doing. Souder comes to mind. Although I suspect he's a puppet to someone or something more insidious and powerful than he. I wouldn't be surprised if they can't manage to keep it unavailable to the citizens of the United States.
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Comment #12 posted by AOLBites on June 24, 2005 at 18:48:43 PT
hidden cameras is how
a friend of mine his best freinds dad was a pharmasist and he got totally kicked down cause of some shady deallings on prescription drugs...i beleive they were source from someone who worked in a hospital and they vid a transaction of basicly a huge garbage bag full of drugs that the hospital person scrounged up and sold to him... it was on one of those crime tv show current affairs or something the undercoverd him and put it all on tv.. was facinating how sketchy the whole thing was..
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Comment #11 posted by runderwo on June 24, 2005 at 18:07:29 PT
enforcement
"*Because there is now a fine line between a legal operation and an illegal one, it takes more police resources, a lot of paperwork, things we wouldn*t normally be involved in having to prove,*"I don't suppose they lodge the same complaint against pharmaceuticals such as Oxycontin or Vicodin or Ritalin? How do you tell a legal bottle of pills apart from an illegal one?
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Comment #10 posted by Sam Adams on June 24, 2005 at 07:52:52 PT
price
Wolfgang - I noticed the same thing - the "user doesn't get high". I guess that's what our society is reduced to - the truth is whatever the government and corporations say to the media. People using natural cannabis are a bunch of lazy, child-corrupting stoners. People using Big Pharm's cannabis are NOT HIGH. So for about 5 weeks' supply of Sativex, the "user" could buy a Volcano vaporizer, grown their own herb on the patio, and self-medicate for almost no cost whatsoever. But of course, we don't want them "dancing naked" out there, without being under the CONTROL of a doctor, drug company, and government bureaucracy, they'd be liable to go hog-wild, over-medicating and quite possibly going insane, murdering others or running down children with their car. 
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Comment #9 posted by afterburner on June 24, 2005 at 07:34:44 PT
'This bill reclassifies marijuana as a Schedule 2'
US MA: PUB LTE: Our Reps Rock, DudeURL: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v05/n1011/a02.html
Newshawk: Humphrey Ploughjogger http://www.masscann.org/
 Votes: 1
Pubdate: Thu, 23 Jun 2005 
Source: Tewksbury Advocate (MA) 
Copyright: 2005 Community Newspaper Company 
Contact: reading cnc.com 
Website: http://www2.townonline.com/tewksbury 
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3797 
Author: Steven S. Epstein 
OUR REPS ROCK, DUDE "Nine days after the Supreme Court decided that Congress has the power to prohibit the growing and possession of marijuana for medical use in compliance with state law the House of Representatives voted 161 - 264 to reject a bi-partisan amendment to next year's appropriations for the Justice Department that would have effectively reversed the Supreme Court's decision. "One hundred and sixty-one votes is the most ever received in Congress on this issue. Federal elected officials are starting to hear the public http://mpp.org/2005MasonDixonPoll/index.html on medical marijuana; as well they should given the passage of most medical use laws by initiative http://norml.org/index.cfm?Group_ID=3391. Except for Stephen F. Lynch, Massachusetts' nine other representatives do hear the public on this issue as they were among the 161. With the defeat of the amendment attention turns to H.R. 2087, The States Rights to Medical Marijuana Act http://thomas.loc.gov/cgi-bin/query/z?c109:H.R.2087:, reintroduced by Barney Frank, with Michael Capuano, James McGovern and John Olver among the earliest co-sponsors. This bill reclassifies marijuana as a Schedule 2 substance with recognized medical benefits, requires the federal government stay out of the lives of persons complying with their state's medical cannabis laws, and permits states to grow their citizens' supply. To those who illicitly use medical cannabis in Massachusetts this would be a blessing, because since 1991 Massachusetts law http://www.mass.gov/legis/laws/mgl/gl-94d-toc.htm has permitted its use, but only if in the state program. That program requires a legal source and the federal government refuses to provide it. "If you think that Marty Meehan, given his favorable vote on the amendment, should be a co-sponsor, he needs to hear it from you. "Attorney Steven S. Epstein "Massachusetts Cannabis Reform/NORML" 
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Comment #8 posted by siege on June 24, 2005 at 07:30:53 PT
 Body's own 'cannabis' helps pain
writing in Nature, the team said their new understanding of how the brain chemical works could lead to drugs with fewer side-effects.http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/health/4119346.stm
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Comment #7 posted by AOLBites on June 24, 2005 at 06:05:49 PT
verticalfarm
http://www.verticalfarm.com/ tomatoes ...right..
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Comment #6 posted by kaptinemo on June 24, 2005 at 04:36:44 PT:
The showdown approaches
The point at which the prohibs will have to do the one thing they have tried since the very beginning to avoid: admitting cannabis has any medicinal qualities at all.How to explain to contituents? Sativex is liquid marijuana. It's a medicine. It's prescribable. But it if it's liquid marijuana, then wasn't marijuana medicine to begin with?Sooner or later, the prohibs shall be backed into a corner with the obvious rejoinder, "Well, yes, but..." and THAT'S when an activist must lower the boom: "So, it's only a medicine when YOU say it is? When there's thousands of years of proof to the effect it has been all along? I smell a rat, a big fat greedy corporate rat, in cahoots with some government revolving-door hypocrites." The same corporate rat we smelled when "Dr." Barthwell signed on to GW Pharma.Notice the expected price of the acceptable marijuana; almost as much as you'd expect to pay on the black market for the 'raw, crude (gasp!) smoked drug'. Only it comes with a regulating device meant to assuage the NeoPuritans in the Gub'mint who don't want sick people feeling good while their symptoms are being treated. This is an improvement? Paying as much, but not being able to titrate your own dosages to suit your needs, at the whim of some bureaucrat?A person getting those humongous orange morphine pills doesn't have to go through such paternalistic nonsense. They're free to OD on the stuff as they wish, with the obvious fatal consequences. But cannabis? The shell game of the prohibs and their corp-rat allies is becoming ever more transparent. With half of all Americans admitting they take natural herbs and vitamins on a daily basis to augment any allopathic medicine they use, there is ALREADY a concensus favoring legal, naturally grown cannabis...no different than what GW Pharma derives Sativex from. And that concensus exists for the same reasons: (recently justified) mistrust of both corporations with too much pull with the government (revolving door, again) and the less than honest practices of performing slipshod safety testing and too-rapid marketing of questionable products. When that group realizes another swindle is on, they won't take too kindly to it. More natural allies for our camp, and fewer by the millions for Uncle.The antis are doing our work for us. Thanks, guys. 
 
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Comment #5 posted by AOLBites on June 24, 2005 at 03:34:07 PT
HALF-BAKED ECONOMICS
 HALF-BAKED ECONOMICS
High court ruling ignites debate over the policing of pot in the marketplace~ By IDAN IVRI ~-=snip=-“Other things equal, if the enforcement pressure on the market [stays] the same and now the market [is] smaller, there is a little more enforcement pressure per gram, and therefore you would expect the price to go up, not down,” Kleiman told CityBeat. In other words, it’s possible that legal medical marijuana would actually strengthen the Federal ban on recreational marijuana.In a more simplistic form (e.g. “Cops should spend time catching the real criminals!”), pro-marijuana advocates have been making the case for years.“I think [medical marijuana prosecutions are] a shameful waste of valuable resources and really a violation of what the people of the state of California wanted when they passed Proposition 215,” said Bruce Margolin, an attorney and director of Los Angeles NORML, referring to the initiative that legalized medical marijuana in 1996.Unsurprisingly, police officers point to the added efficiency of the old all-or-nothing approach to pot smokers. “Because there is now a fine line between a legal operation and an illegal one, it takes more police resources, a lot of paperwork, things we wouldn’t normally be involved in having to prove,” said LAPD spokesman Lt. Paul Vernon. “That takes more work, not less.” -=snip=-“The congressional judgment that an exemption for such a significant segment of the total market would undermine the orderly enforcement of the entire regulatory scheme is … not only rational, but ‘visible to the naked eye,’” wrote Stevens confidently, raising the question of whether Supreme Court justices could use some free time at a UCLA public policy course or two.06-23-05
HALF-BAKED ECONOMICS
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Comment #4 posted by OverwhelmSam on June 24, 2005 at 03:11:52 PT
Congress. The Final Frontier.
...these are the voyages of the starship Cannabis News. To discover new friends, seek out new alliances, to boldly go where no lobbyist has gone before....I can't put my finger on it, but something is afoot in Congress. Something is about to change. 
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Comment #3 posted by WolfgangWylde on June 24, 2005 at 02:53:11 PT
"The user gets relief but does not...
...get high"That's an out and out lie. Sativex can get you as high as you want with more dosing, or not high with less dosing, JUST LIKE THE RAW PLANT. From GW's own website:Do patients get high?By careful self-titration (dose adjustment), most patients are able to separate the thresholds for symptom relief and intoxication, the “therapeutic window”, so enabling them to obtain symptom relief without experiencing a “high”. Patients emphasise that they seek to obtain the medical benefits without intoxication. 
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Comment #2 posted by The GCW on June 23, 2005 at 20:17:05 PT
Off topic... but It takes a village        
US CO: It takes a village        Viewed at: http://www.boulderweekly.com/incaseyoumissedit.htmlAccording to a federal Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration report released last week, Boulder ranks No. 2 in the nation for admitted marijuana use. With 10.3 percent of honest Boulderites over the age of 12 admitting to using pot in the past 30 days, Boulder was more than double the national average of 5.1 percent. Boulder finished second only to Boston, Mass., which scored a whopping 12.2 percent. We're honored, but frankly a bit incredulous. Second place? 
 
Cont.THCUPeople should stop caging people for using cannabis.
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Comment #1 posted by whig on June 23, 2005 at 20:02:56 PT
Change ahead
"Tom Riley, spokesman for the White House's Office of National Drug Control Policy, agrees there's change ahead. But he says the new drugs will lessen the controversy over medical marijuana."I hope that means they will fast-track Sativex to approval. While it is unlikely to be as effective for many people as the unadulterated herb, there are many who suffer with severe chronic pain and nausea who would prefer an approved pharmaceutical and would not otherwise take what might help them live in greater comfort and health. Until that time, the small steps that we take make a real difference.
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