by Elsewhere 8 Replies latest jw friends
http://www.usdoj.gov/dea/concern/marijuana.html
According to the above DEA website, Marijuana and THC are EVIL and HARMFUL and will ruin your life and cause all sorts of horrible diseases and problems...
UNLESS you buy Marinol (Marijuana in a pill) sold by pharmaceutical companies. THEN it is GOOD for you!
So:
I want to move to Amsterdam.
You know, legalize the damn thing, tax the hell out of it and call it all good. People are happy, government gets money and everyone lives happily ever after.
DEA does that with alot of natural grown things, I am looking for a list.
But in the mean time, wanted to post this.
Tuesday, December 30, 2008
2008: The Year In Review – NORML’s Top 10 Events That Shaped Marijuana Policy 1 Landslide At The Ballot Box: Election Day Voters Reject Bush War Doctrine 2 Members Of Congress Demand An End To Federal Pot Possession Arrests 3 California Courts Rule: Medical Pot Statutes Don't Conflict With Federal Anti-Drug Laws 4: Marijuana "Exceptional" At Reducing MRSA 5 Marijuana Arrests For 2007 Reach All-Time High 6 Cannabis Determined To Be Less Harmful Than Alcohol 7 Teen Pot Use Declines In States With Medical Cannabis Laws 8 Medical Marijuana Use Not Associated With Adverse Side Effects 9 California Attorney General Issues Guidelines Recognizing Patients' Medical Cannabis Use 10 NORML Daily Audio Stash Gains record Listenership |
Thanks Purple!
Well, I think what I meant to say was, there are alot of natural grown remedies that a doctor cannot prescribe in it's natural state, but must be in the form of a pill. I did not mean that that particular natural grown thing is illegal as marijuana is. So, actually, that is the list I would be looking for?!?!
This is not what I am looking for but found this interesting.
by Tamar Nordenberg
Two thousand years ago, according to Christian belief, three wise men traveled to Bethlehem to worship the Christ child, bringing with them the gifts of gold, frankincense and myrrh. The aromatic resin myrrh, historically treasured for its medical and cosmetic usefulness, is still used in medicine today, mostly to treat inflammation of the mouth and pharynx.
Myrrh is not approved by the Food and Drug Administration to treat these or any other conditions. But the medical use of this unapproved drug may become legally acceptable under a new pharmacy compounding law that allows pharmacists and doctors to tailor-make some drugs for specific patients.
Considering the Alternatives
Health professionals are compounding when they prepare a specialized drug product to fill an individual patient's prescription when an approved drug can't fill the bill.
Compounding sometimes involves nothing more than crushing a pill into a powder with a mortar and pestle and then mixing it into a liquid, says Wayne Mitchell, an FDA regulatory counsel and member of the agency's internal pharmacy compounding steering committee. On the other hand, some types of compounding involve sophisticated scientific operations. Preparing sterile drug products, for example, can require complex steps to ensure a germ-free work environment.
The pharmacy compounding law, which is part of the FDA Modernization Act of 1997, defines the limits of legitimate compounding. By limiting the scope of the practice, the law aims to protect patients from the unnecessary use of compounded drugs, which carry intrinsic risks. Patients are often better served by taking commercially manufactured drugs that have been scientifically tested, approved by FDA, and manufactured under controlled conditions.
Compounded drugs can be "a great alternative when nothing is commercially available," says Randy Juhl, Ph.D., dean of the University of Pittsburgh's pharmacy school and chair of FDA's pharmacy compounding advisory committee, a group that includes non-government doctors, pharmacists, and consumer advocates. "But," Juhl says, "as a rule of thumb, if there is a commercially available drug, that's always better because of the quality controls that we as pharmacists can't provide for something we make up as a single-patient batch."
No Seal of Approval
The pharmacy compounding law carves out a limited exception to the requirement that prescription drugs be approved by FDA based on studies demonstrating their safety and effectiveness. Because pre-approval drug studies are performed on a very specific drug formula and dosage, even relatively small compounding changes can convert an approved drug (a product tested as a tablet, for example) into an unapproved one (such as a liquid form made by the pharmacist).
As unapproved drugs manufactured without FDA oversight, compounded medications involve an extra risk factor compared to approved ones. "Any time you make a change to a drug, there is the potential for reactions between ingredients or other problems," says Fred Richman, an FDA compounding expert. "You could end up with something that is less effective and that, at worst, could harm the patient."
Patients have been injured and have even died after taking pharmacy-prepared drug products. Examples include three infants who died after receiving an intravenous solution incorrectly prepared in a pharmacy, and a patient who became blind in one eye from pharmacy-prepared eyedrops that weren't sterile.
Taking the Risk
So why would a doctor choose to prescribe a compounded drug for a patient despite the inherent risks? A doctor may determine, in his or her professional judgment, that the compounded drug's benefits over any approved alternative justify the risk for a particular patient.
Drugs for certain conditions just aren't made by manufacturers. But even if a drug is mass-produced for a medical condition, patients might need a custom-made version for a variety of reasons.
Sometimes a patient can't use the standard version of a drug because of an allergy to one of its ingredients. If that ingredient is "inactive," meaning it has no therapeutic role, a compounder might make a similar drug minus that ingredient--say, without the dye used for coloring; or without lactose, a filler in many classes of drugs, from decongestants to antibiotics to chemotherapy medicines.
In other cases, the right dosage strength is not readily available for every patient. A child, for example, would usually need a smaller dosage than an adult. Commercial products are often not available in kid-sized portions, and sometimes it's not practical to break up the adult drug product.
And, commercially available drug products often need to be transformed into a different form for children and the elderly. For people in these age groups who can't swallow tablets or capsules, compounders can make a drug in a powder, liquid, lozenge, suppository, or other form for them.
Children may refuse to swallow a medicine, even in liquid form, if it tastes bad. Compounders can customize a drug in a kid's favorite flavor--cherry, orange, or raspberry, for example--to increase its appeal.
While flavoring a medicine may seem innocuous, it can alter a drug's makeup to the point of diminishing its effectiveness, scientists caution, so health professionals should not underestimate the potential downside of prescribing these drugs.
The risks of prescribing a compounded drug, along with the benefits, should be weighed in the context of a specific patient's medical condition, emphasizes the University of Pittsburgh's Juhl. It's "unfortunate," he says, that some pharmacists--including, for example, some makers of hormone replacement drugs--"are insisting that compounded drugs are better for you in all times and all places because they're 'all natural.' To generalize that these are necessarily best for everyone is, in my mind, a weak point in terms of credibility."
Proceeding With Caution
To encourage what quality control is possible for compounded drugs, the compounding law calls for certain federal requirements. (See "The Law Laid Out.") Some of these requirements, including a list of acceptable compounding ingredients, were developed by FDA's steering committee in consultation with Juhl and others on the external advisory committee.
Even with the law's restrictive provisions, however, pharmacist and former FDA pharmacy compounding steering committee member Robert Tonelli cautions consumers, "Whenever possible, FDA would recommend that patients use an approved drug. We have more data and reporting requirements on those to assure us of their safety and effectiveness."
More information on pharmacy compounding is available on FDA's Website at www.fda.gov/cder/pharmcomp/.
Tamar Nordenberg is a staff writer for FDA Consumer
The pharmacy compounding law offers some protections against unsafe and ineffective compounded products, including the following main provisions:
Also, to protect consumers from the excessive use of these unapproved drugs and to prevent compounders from profiting from the research and development efforts of drug manufacturers, the law places limits on the compounding of copies of manufactured drugs.
"It's a hard line to draw between legitimate compounding and manufacturing," says recently retired FDA pharmacist Robert Tonelli, "but we want to draw that line so manufacturers can't use the guise of compounding to avoid the approval process."
--T.N.
It's obsene isn't it!?
They just want the revenue.
They will never legalize weed. They want the glory of raiding places, to put a dent on "crime" when all it's going to do is jack up the cost of weed, create more need for money, and thus increase violence and robberies and burglaries to get the weed.
If anything, they are going to add everything that could cure disease to the list. It is now illegal to cure many diseases in the United States of the Food and Drug Administration and Federal Trade Commission; if we go on with Codex Alimentarius at the end of the year, it will be illegal to cure any disease worldwide. Vitamin busts will be common; you will hear of the raid that netted 100 kg of vitamin C, taking it off the streets. Even growing your own food will get you in trouble ("home grown terrorists"), all food will have to have the vitality destroyed. Monsanto will have the monopoly of all seeds and pesticides (and ALL dairy will have to be treated with hormones); you thought Microsoft was bad?
I can see a whole world, in just a couple of short years, where every food and pill you take will be what the big drug companies and Monsanto order you to take. You will even be required to go to the doctors to check on what pills you will be required to take (not just to see if there is any); failure to take prescribed medicine will be as bad a crime then as taking horse is now. You can go to jail for 15 years for failure to take your statin, even if it is causing you other bad effects (plus another 10 for not submitting to another drug in lieu of quitting the first drug). But, still no weed.
Seems that weed has too many good side effects (yes, it is dangerous when used indiscriminately and should never be abused). Cocaine, while dangerous when abused, is no worse than prescription Prozac and probably safer than the newer drugs like Paxil; even heroin is better than some of the synthetic drugs that are in common use today. It's just that those illegal drugs do not make a profit to some huge drug company; the even worse ones do.
And, those "even worse" drugs are no better at curing diseases than snake oil.
