[robertpaulsen]

"Bring on the Drug Warriors."

You rang?

" He gave half actual marijuana cigarettes to smoke three times a day, the other half smoked placebo cigarettes."

I don't smoke marijuana. No secret there. But even I could tell the difference between marijuana and a placebo just by the smell alone. The "study" is a joke.

"But he says smoking the actual plant works better than taking the pill"

Yeah, doing a study using Marinol (the THC pill) and a placebo wouldn't be fair, now would it? Oh, Dr. Donald Abrams has long been associated with the movement to legalize drugs.

"Dr. Kenneth P. Mackie, a professor of anesthesiology at the University of Washington, has devoted 15 years to studying the brain's response to cannabinoids through specialized brain receptors called CB1 and CB2. "There's a whole bunch of theoretical reasons suggesting there would be a benefit for marijuana on a variety of conditions relating to pain and neuroinflammation," Dr. Mackie said. "But the clinical studies just aren't there."

[voltaires_zit]

> But even I could tell the difference between marijuana
> and a placebo just by the smell alone.

The placebo was denatured (THC removed) marijuana. Unless you can tell the difference between decaf and real coffee by the smell, I doubt you'd have noticed the difference here.

> The "study" is a joke.

No, the study is the crack in the dike of decades of drug hysteria that blocked honest study of the question.

[ItisaReligionofPeace]

A losing battle in a losing war. This is your position.

[cryptical]

Yeah, doing a study using Marinol (the THC pill) and a placebo wouldn't be fair, now would it?

It wouldn't be as interesting, to be sure. It's been done.

Oh, Dr. Donald Abrams has long been associated with the movement to legalize drugs.

Assumes facts not in evidence, unless you're implying that the following is an association in the movement to legalized drugs.

"Dr. Kenneth P. Mackie, a professor of anesthesiology at the University of Washington, has devoted 15 years to studying the brain's response to cannabinoids through specialized brain receptors called CB1 and CB2. "There's a whole bunch of theoretical reasons suggesting there would be a benefit for marijuana on a variety of conditions relating to pain and neuroinflammation," Dr. Mackie said. "But the clinical studies just aren't there."

A quick Google search only brings up an anti-drug shill site that claims that he's a legalization advocate.

[Extremely Extreme Extremist]

Post #11 LOLOLOL

[kcvl]

Rose Hoban put down her stethoscope (as a nurse), picked up a microphone and enrolled in UC Berkeley's journalism school where she concentrated in radio.

Before coming to WUNC (National Public Radio (NPR) and North Carolina Public Radio-WUNC), Rose aired stories on Living on Earth, the California Report and KQED FM news. She's also published in the San Francisco Chronicle, the Contra Costa Times and the Anchorage Daily News.

[kcvl]

Hoban also served as a medical project coordinator for the Doctors Without Borders/Médecins Sans Frontières program in Indonesia.

Hoban said she is interested in policy trends and public health — not just the disease of the week.

[RedWhitetAndBlue]

"I don't smoke marijuana. No secret there. But even I could tell the difference between marijuana and a placebo just by the smell alone. The "study" is a joke."

Don't know if someone else already responded to this without reading through them all, but you wouldn't be able to tell the difference between the real marijuana and placebo by smell because they both smell the same. The placebo is still marijuana but with the THC engineered out of it.

And, purely hypothetically, if the two did smell different, I imagine someone within the study design process, or implementation process, or peer review process, would have caught what would have been a hugely obvious flaw in the study--that flaw being the lack of a valid control. In that case it likely would have never even gotten off the ground, or by chance if it did, it would have had a pretty hard time getting published, in which case we would likely never have read about it here.

"Yeah, doing a study using Marinol (the THC pill) and a placebo wouldn't be fair, now would it?"

Those studies have already been conducted--that's how you got the drug called "Marinol" in the first place.

I'd like to see a study of smoked marijuana versus Marinol and their comparative abilities to alleviate nerve pain.