I want you to know that right now, it is my belief and understanding that there is no reliable evidence that it is a superior, effective treatment for pain in any situation where there is not a better alternative today. These studies demonstrate marijuana's usefulness in reducing nausea and vomiting, stimulating appetite, promoting weight gain, and diminishing intraocular pressure from glaucoma. Other therapeutic uses for marijuana have not been widely studied. However, patients and physicians have reported that smoked marijuana provides relief from migraine headaches, depression, seizures, insomnia and chronic pain. What is useful to remember is that many drugs used in the treatment of AIDS and cancer are enormously toxic.
Chemotherapy agents can cause everything from heart damage to liver failure.
Anti-nausea medications can cause headaches, constipation or diarrhea. There has been no federally funded research into the medical uses of marijuana in more than a decade. What is known is that most patients who use it have to buy it on the black market, where dosage and purity are a gamble, a significant problem for AIDS and chemotherapy patients whose immune systems are badly compromised. Medical use of marijuana has been endorsed by numerous medical associations. But here again, Gore is pandering, this time to the anti-drug lobby, and it is particularly obnoxious coming from someone who apparently enjoyed easy access to marijuana to treat the joys and sorrows of an early journalistic career at the Nashville Tennessean.