Section Three Introduction
Cannabis and Special Health Concerns
By Prof Tim
Semi-legal cannabis has created a whole new category of itinerant Americans that have come to be known as “medical marijuana refugees” (Creede, 2016). Medical marijuana refugees should not be confused with cannabis tourists (Kang, et al., 2016). The difference is that cannabis tourists are similar to Las Vegas gamblers. Gamblers travel to Las Vegas to sidestep hometown restrictions on gambling; cannabis tourists do likewise to participate in cannabis-themed vacations. Las Vegas gamblers and cannabis tourists are not hardened criminals. They tend to be affluent Americans with sizable quantities of disposable cash for adult-themed recreation. Las Vegas gamblers and cannabis tourists are scrupulously law-abiding citizens. The catch is that they comply with one set of laws in their hometowns and they comply with a different set of laws when they travel.
In contrast, medical marijuana refugees are people who wish to purchase medical cannabis for themselves, or for loved ones, but are prevented from doing so because of federal cannabis restrictions. As Raphael Mechoulam discovered decades ago (Mechoulam and Carlinin, 1978), there are many medical conditions for which cannabis is the most effective remedy. Medical marijuana refugees tend to be people who are in desperate need of cannabis to treat life-threatening illnesses.
Medical marijuana refugees try to maintain a low profile because many of their activities are not, in the eyes of the federal government, legal. Medical marijuana refugees might make legal cannabis purchases at state-licensed dispensaries, but they often violate cannabis laws after their purchases. Medical marijuana refugees might break the law by crossing state lines with a federally-illegal substance. Much dicier legal concerns arise when parents purchase medical marijuana for their sick kids (Levin, 2016).
As long as cannabis remains a Schedule 1 drug, adults who dose children with cannabis—even if they are parents who are desperately trying to save their childrens’ lives—could be subject to criminal prosecution (Roberts, 2017). This is not an idle threat. People like Moriah Barnhart, the founder of Cannamoms, live every day of their lives under the shadow of such a threat.
Moriah Barnhart explains in her chapter, “Cannamoms,” that she created Cannamoms because it is the kind of organization that she desperately needed while trying to manage her daughter’s childhood cancer. Because cannabis helped save her daughter, Barnhart understands how important it is for parents to be aware of cannabis-based medical therapies that are not legal within the current western medicine paradigm. At present, most medical doctors are prevented from writing prescriptions for cannabis. Under Barnhart’s leadership, Cannamoms has helped families find the life-saving medications that they urgently need. According to Barnhart, Cannamoms exists because, “These children need us. Their parents need us.”
In 2014, the US awakened to a decades-old tragedy. Instead of delivering high-quality healthcare to the USA’s honored veterans, the Veterans Administration has been criminally under-serving veterans for longer than anyone cares to imagine (Devi, 2014). Astonishingly, in 2014, the public learned that the VA had created a byzantine waiting list system that often delayed urgently-needed medical attention for years (Mann, 2017). While the VA turned a deaf ear, many veterans died while idling interminably on the VA’s waiting lists.
According to the VA’s own statistics, twenty-two veterans commit suicide per day due to the horrors of PTSD (Anastasia, 2017). Twenty-two suicides per day works out to more than 8,000 suicides per year. That is an extremely high number of suicides, but it’s a number that the VA seems content to tolerate.
Given that many veterans die while awaiting help from the VA, who can blame veterans for seeking life-saving PTSD treatments while they wait? Though the precise medical reasons remain unknown, many veterans have discovered that cannabis provides effective relief from PTSD (Limbach, 2016). Indeed, many veterans have stated that cannabis has literally saved their lives (Amsler, 2015).
True to form, even though twenty-two vets die each day, the VA opposes cannabis as a PTSD treatment (Sabet, 2018). The VA officially categorizes all cannabis use as a “substance use disorder” (Bryson, 2018). Although the VA cannot legally curtail health benefits for veterans who treat themselves with cannabis, the VA does try to dissuade veterans from using cannabis in favor of relying on opioids to treat PTSD.
WHY DONALD TRUMP'S TAX PLAN MAY BLOW UP IN HIS FACE
...the Department of Veterans Affairs has played a little-discussed role in fueling the opioid epidemic that is killing civilians and veterans alike. In 2011, veterans were twice as likely to die from accidental opioid overdoses as non-veterans. One reason...is that for over a decade, the VA recklessly overprescribed opiates and psychiatric medications. Since mid-2012, though, it has swung dangerously in the other direction, ordering a drastic cutback of opioids for chronic pain patients, but it is bungling that program and again putting veterans at risk. (It has also left untouched one of the riskiest classes of medications, antipsychotics—prescribed overwhelmingly for uses that aren’t approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA), such as with post-traumatic stress disorder.) (Levine, 2017).
Once again, we must doff our caps to Harry Anslinger’s Reefer Madness truth regime. Only in the topsy-turvy realm of Reefer Madness unreality would doctors urge patients to switch from non-lethal cannabis to highly-lethal opioids to treat their PTSD. In spite of pressure from the VA, many veterans have persisted in choosing cannabis over opioids to manage PTSD. As a result, the number of homeless veterans in Colorado—one of the few states that has adopted vet-friendly cannabis policies—has skyrocketed (Mitchell, 2016). Apparently, veterans would rather live on the street than comply with the VA’s inhumane PTSD treatment regime. Who can blame them?
Teri Robnett played a pivotal role in the passage of legislation that added PTSD to the list of qualifying conditions for medical cannabis cards in the state of Colorado. In her chapter, “Including PTSD in Colorado,” Robnett provides a detailed account of the complexities involved in adding PTSD to Colorado’s official list of qualifying conditions. For anyone who is considering similar initiatives in other states, Robnett’s article is must reading.
Marcie Cooper is a palliative care nurse. In her article, “A Natural Approach to Comfort,” Cooper argues that cannabis is quickly becoming the go to remedy for hospice and palliative care patients who live in cannabis-friendly states. Cooper believes that cannabis is a particularly effective tool for hospice and palliative care because it is holistic a mind-body medicine. Cannabis treats a wide range of discomforts in a way that dignifies a patient’s final days as well as providing much-needed comfort at life’s most difficult hour.
References
Amsler, R. Gage, The Strains of War. CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform, 2015.
Anastasia, Leilani, Warrior Lost: Veteran Suicide and the Combat PTSD Monster. New York, Pronoun Books, 2017.
Bryson, Donna. Home of the Brave: A Small Town, Its Veterans And The Community They Built Together. John Hunt Publishing, 2018.
Devi, Sharmila. "Obama vows to address veteran health-care scandal." The Lancet 384, no. 9946 (2014): 841.
Kang, Soo K., Joseph O’Leary, and Jeffrey Miller. "From Forbidden Fruit to the Goose That Lays Golden Eggs: Marijuana Tourism in Colorado." SAGE Open 6.4, 2016.
Kwak, Alice. "Medical Marijuana and Child Custody: The Need to Protect Patients and their Families from Discrimination." Hastings Women's LJ 28 (2017): 123.
Levine, Art, How the VA Fueled the National Opioid Crisis and Is Killing Thousands of Veterans. Newsweek, October 12, 2017.
Limbach, Elizabeth. Cannabis Saved My Life. Atlanta, GA: Whitman Publishers, 2016.
Levin, Sam, “Expots: Medical Marijuana Draws Parents to US for Their Children's Treatments.” The Guardian, May 9, 2016.
Mann, Michael J., Mission Betrayed: How the VA Really Fails America's Vets. New York: Encore Press, 2017.
Mechoulam, Raphael, and Elisado A. Carlini. "Toward drugs derived from cannabis." Naturwissenschaften 65.4 (1978): 174-179.
Mitchell, Kirk, “Colorado Shows Nation’s Largest Spike in the Number of Homeless Veterans: Colorado Saw a 24 Percent Rise in the Number of Homeless Veterans.” Denver Post, November 18, 2016.
Newton, Creede, 2016, "Colorado’s Medical Marijuana Refugees." The Daily Beast, November 7, 2016.
Roberts, Michael, “Why Alexis Bortell, 11-Year-Old Medical Pot Patient, Is Suing Jeff Sessions.” Westword, August 3, 2017.
Sabet, Kevin. Reefer Sanity: Seven Great Myths About Marijuana. Beaufort Books, 2018.
Young, Saundra. "Medical Marijuana Refugees: 'This Was Our Only Hope'." CNN Health 2016 (2014).
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