Pubdate: Tue, 29 Dec 2009
Source: AlterNet (US Web)
Copyright: 2009 Independent Media Institute
Website: http://www.alternet.org/
Author: Penny Coleman
Note: Penny Coleman is the widow of a Vietnam veteran who took his
own life after coming home. Her latest book, Flashback: Posttraumatic
Stress Disorder, Suicide and the Lessons of War, was released on
Memorial Day 2006. Her Web site is Flashback. http://www.flashbackhome.com/

10 REASONS THE U.S. MILITARY SHOULD (OFFICIALLY) USE POT

Medical Marijuana May Have a Host of Advantages Over Other Treatments
for Traumatized Vets, but the VA Won't Even Study Its Efficacy.

"There's a lot of things I'm passionate about, but getting a
prescription for my marijuana from the VA is probably at the top of
my list. I'd be like a kid waiting up for Santa if I thought he might
be bringing me one of those. Haha!"

On top of a 100 percent disability rating with PTSD, "Charlie" -- who
asked that his real name not be used -- came home from Afghanistan
with a traumatic brain injury, a back injury and gastrointestinal
problems. The VA pulled every magic trick out of its bag to treat
him. But nothing worked.

What did work was marijuana.

Shirak-e-Mazar, the milk of Mazar, is what got Charlie through his
deployment in Afghanistan. Shirak-e-Mazar is what Afghanis call the
paper-thin sheets of hashish that sell for about $1.50 an ounce. It's
a 5000-year-old recipe, perfected in the Mazar-e-Sharif region, for
preparing the compressed resin glands of the marijuana plant, and
unless things have changed since Charlie left Afghanistan in 2004,
it's available, well, just about everywhere.

So was alcohol, but according to Charlie, it didn't provide the same
kind of relief: "You get some drinks in you, you get nice and loose;
you drop your inhibitions and think you're invincible. But you
haven't dealt with the stress; you've just kind of blocked it; you
don't really understand the possible outcomes of what you're about to
do--or you don't care.

"Smoking though ... you can appreciate the stresses and understand
everything that's going on, but you're still relaxed enough to do
what you have to do, and do it well."

Since he got home, he says he is "smoking about one and a half grams
a day, depending on how I'm doing. I go through an ounce in three to
four weeks. I'm medicating for PTSD, but also a back injury and
gastrointestinal problems, so if I had to do things like shovel the
walk .. I would have to smoke a little more."

Unfortunately, Charlie does not live in one of the 13 states that
have authorized the use of medical marijuana. In the rest of the
states, federal law still applies, and according to the United States
Department of Agriculture (USDA) marijuana is still classified as a
Schedule I drug. Schedule I drugs are those deemed most dangerous,
more so than cocaine, oxycodone and methamphetamines, all of which
are Schedule II.

"Me and the rest of my veterans' group talk about it all the time,"
he says. "Most of them also medicate with marijuana. If you asked any
of us what, out of everything, was most effective in PTSD treatment,
we would tell you marijuana." But the VA is a federal agency, so even
in the 13 states where doctors are at liberty to suggest that
patients try marijuana, they are prohibited from dispensing it.

The first two years after he got home, Charlie and his wife were
still active duty. Marijuana was too risky, so he drank. A lot. So
much that he almost killed himself and his wife. "Alcohol seemed to
exaggerate all the negative feelings, the anger, the rage, the
depression, the desperation."

Since Charlie was discharged in 2006, the VA has pulled an
astonishing variety of medications out of its magic bag. Charlie's
list is an impressive one that many, perhaps most, vets who have gone
to the VA for help with post-combat stress and pain issues will recognize.

"I've been on six different antidepressants, lorazepam for anxiety;
two sleep aids, Ambien and something else; three medications for my
stomach problems, including omeprazole; and Topomax and
amyltriptomine for migraines.

"Even if the sleeping pills got me to sleep, I'd still wake up in the
middle of the night from nightmares. The only difference is that WITH
the pills I'd wake up dizzy and disoriented. The disorientation made
for a smooth transition into flashbacks, and if you want to see a vet
have a bad episode, make sure he/she is completely disoriented and
wake them suddenly in the dark. (Don't try this at home -- danger, danger!)

"The lorazepam was prescribed for the anxiety caused by the
antidepressants, but it turned me into some kind of shuffling Ozzie
Osborne zombie. I didn't have the physical energy to do anything but
lay on the couch. Topomax and amyltriptomine turned me into a sloppy,
silly bedlamite, groggy like I'd had too much to drink and babbling
like a face-painted Anna Nicole Smith. Oh, and the Topomax had me
hurling up last year's Christmas dinner.

"I've gone through pain management more times than I can count on my
hands, and I've had over twelve series of epidermal steroid
injections done to my lower back. None of them ever did anything for
me. Except of course make my stomach problems much worse. I started
smoking [marijuana] again three years ago, and it's been the best
pain management I've found. I can pick up my thirty-pound daughter
for a while now, which might not seem like a big deal, but it is. Oh,
as for helping with hypervigilance, it does, but given the current
legal status of my medication of choice in this state, I am
hypervigilant for the police."

And not without cause.

Even in states where medical marijuana has been approved, conflicting
state and federal laws have provided law enforcement agencies with an
excuse to prosecute according to personal prejudice.

Recently, the Obama Department of Justice instructed prosecutors to
leave legitimate growers of medical marijuana alone. That is a step
in the right direction, but there are at least 10 reasons why they
should be encouraged to continue moving toward saner and clearer policies.

1) Until proven otherwise, marijuana is the safest thing they've got
in their pharmacopoeia.

Marijuana has been used worldwide to treat pain, stress and any
number of other ailments since the third millennium BCE.

It has been outlawed in the United States since 1937, but since 1970,
with passage of the Controlled Substances Act, marijuana has been
classified as a Schedule I drug, with a "high potential for abuse,"
"no currently accepted medical use" and a "lack of accepted safety"
for use of any kind.

The Schedule I classification has meant that for the better part of
40 years, claims could be made that marijuana would turn you into a
serial psycho-killer, a spotted owl or a socialist, and nobody could
prove them wrong.

Daunting layers of federal permits discouraged serious study of the
substance's efficacy, and strictly controlled access to the only
legally grown supply have meant that grants were awarded only to
those folks who weren't looking for anything nice to say about pot.

Schedule I drugs can't even be the subject of research or study.

But this November, the young guard at the American Medical
Association (AMA) gleefully hip-checked the doomy, gloomy
straight-laced old guard out of the way and voted to revisit
marijuana's Schedule I classification.

After reviewing all the reliable information available, their
conclusion was this (PDF): "Adverse reactions observed in short-term
randomized, placebo controlled trials of smoked cannabis to date are
mostly mild without substantial impairment. Physicians who comply
with their ethical obligations to 'first do no harm' and to 'relieve
pain and suffering' should be protected in their endeavors, including
advising and counseling their patients on the use of cannabis for
therapeutic purposes."

In taking that position, the AMA joined the American College of
Physicians, the country's second largest physician group, which in
February 2008, had adopted a similar resolution.

As former Surgeon General Dr. Jocelyn Elders wrote in AlterNet in
2008, it's time "to put science ahead of politics."

2) Reduce our dependence on foreign opioids.

Chronic pain is the leading indication for medical marijuana use,
accounting for 90 percent of the patients in Oregon's medical
marijuana program.

Recently, research done both in Canada and the United States has
demonstrated a synergistic interaction between cannabis and opioids.
Patients who smoked a little weed along with their meds found they
could decrease their opioid dose by between 60-100 percent.

So consider that if the entrenched drug warriors were finally
outflanked, VA doctors would be allowed to prescribe marijuana and
our vets could reduce their consumption of opioids.

3) Restore the reputation of the VA among veterans.

After all the criticism of the VA for limiting access, shredding
claims, misdiagnosing illnesses as a cost-saving trick and using
soldiers as uninformed guinea pigs to test pharmaceutical drugs
linked to suicide and other violent side effects, veterans invited by
the VA to knowingly participate in a marijuana study might be
inclined to allow the euphorogenic qualities associated with cannabis
to blur their outrage, even to the point of forgiveness.

4) Israeli rats have less stress than American soldiers.

In an article published in the September issue of the Journal of
Neuroscience, Israeli scientists revealed that injecting synthetic
marijuana into the brains of rats allowed them to recover faster from
trauma. In fact, it "cancelled out the symptoms of stress."

The researchers predicted that marijuana may help patients overcome
life stresses that worsen reawakened trauma and other symptoms of
post-traumatic stress disorder.

5) And then there is Sativex.

Savitex is an oromucosal spray, developed by the British firm GW
Pharmaceuticals, that has been called "liquid marijuana" because it
is derived from the entire botanical cannabis plant. In 2005, the
Canadian government approved its use for relief of neuropathic pain
and the FDA has agreed to trials in the U.S. prior to an approval application.

It will be challenging to persuade patients that Sativex, which will
surely cost more than what can be grown in your backyard, is the
better choice. No pharmaceutical preparation, synthetic or natural,
has yet proven as effective as the smoked plant. In fact, the only
proven advantage of such medications is that they are legal.

Those FDA trials, by the way, were supposed to be completed by the end of 2009.

6) We gave Big Pharma 40 years of government handouts and they came
up with zilch.

Instead of paying extortionist rates, imagine if the VA could say,
"Sorry, Bayer, but you're going to have to make it cheap and make it
good, or they'll just grow their own."

It's a piece of cake to go around Big Pharma on this one. All you
need is a little sun, soil and TLC, or a grow-lamp in your basement.
And the good fortune to get to your crop before the cops, the local
kids or the deer.

How easy? Since 2006, entrepreneurial Americans have grown enough
marijuana to displace corn as the leading cash crop in America.

7) The growing process is itself demonstrably therapeutic.

A recent study out of the Naval Postgraduate School and Stanford
University predicts that as many as 35 percent of returning soldiers
could have PTSD. The number of veterans who have already served in
Iraq and Afghanistan has reached 1.8 million.

Another study, courtesy of the Pentagon, estimates that as many as
360,000, or 20 percent of the veterans of these current wars have
suffered traumatic brain injuries.

That's a lot of new fists that will be banging on the doors of an
already overwhelmed VA asking for help. How serendipitous then, that
a promising treatment option being offered to traumatized veterans
across the country is gardening.

8. We could fill some budget gaps.

Imagine the savings for states like Washington that are currently
facing huge financial deficits. Washington announced this month that
a bill to legalize marijuana altogether will be on the ballot in 2010.

The circularity is sweet; the logic hopefully irresistible.
Traumatized veterans could be hired by the state to garden, which
relieves their post-combat stress symptoms and also affords them an
income and the self-respect that comes with employment. The crop they
grow will medicate their own psychic distress and that of other
veterans, while at the same time replenish the state coffers when
sold in state-run liquor stores.

Rep. Mary Lou Dickerson, a Seattle Democrat who is sponsoring the
legalization bill, said she expected legal sale of marijuana could
bring in as much money as alcohol; more than $300 million a year.

It will also challenge legislators in other cash-strapped
municipalities to consider the billions of dollars worth of marijuana
that is currently going untaxed, and whether they want to stand on
principle or on solvency.

9) Suicide prevention.

The National Center for Posttraumatic Stress Disorder acknowledges
that there is "disagreement whether pharmacotherapy should be
considered a first-line treatment for PTSD."

As illustration, their manual, "Treatment of the Returning Iraq War
Veteran," states: "We recommend SSRIs as first-line medications for
PTSD pharmacotherapy in men and women with military-related PTSD."

The Journal of Clinical Psychiatry reports that 89 percent of
veterans with PTSD are prescribed antidepressants and 34 percent
antipsychotics by the VA.

Of the specific medications identified as potentially useful, all but
two come with black box warnings of suicide or increased risk of death.

In October, VA Secretary Eric K. Shinseki announced that, "(m)ore
Veterans have committed suicide since 2001 than we have lost on the
battlefields of Iraq and Afghanistan--each one a tragedy."

Soldier suicides are at an all-time high and so are prescriptions for
all kinds of new and dangerous drugs. Nobody can say for sure if
there is a connection between those two facts, and I would never
suggest that marijuana could or should take the place of SSRIs or any
other drugs proven to be effective in managing PTSD. Or that
marijuana could prevent soldier suicides. But the vast majority of
drugs the VA prescribes for PTSD are known to worsen depression,
increase suicidal thinking or increase risk of death in enough people
to warrant the warning.

The same is not true of marijuana.

10) It would bring some coherence to our nation's drug policies.

It is just possible that Tim Leary was right when he said that
"(p)sychedelic drugs cause paranoia, confusion, and total loss of
reality in politicians that have never taken them."

Daniel Robelo of the Drug Policy Alliance says, "The federal
government has a duty to help veterans receive the most effective
treatment available for their combat-related conditions, and for PTSD
and chronic pain, marijuana is often that treatment. All veterans
(and non-veterans) who might benefit should have unfettered access to
this effective medicine, which is well within the margin of safety
for any drug, and in fact, much less dangerous than most drugs
commonly used to treat PTSD and pain."