The Medical Value of Marijuana and Related SubstancesSeveral cannabinoids have been tested as antiemetics, including THC (both 9-THC and 8-THC) and the synthetic cannabinoids nabilone and levonantradol. Smoked marijuana has also been examined.Snip...
As in the THC trials, nabilone and levonantradol reduced emesis but not as well as other available agents in moderately to highly emetogenic settings. Neither is commercially available in the United States.Snip...
Neither study showed a clear advantage for smoked marijuana over oral THC, but neither reported data on the time course of antiemetic control, possible advantages of self-titration with the smoked marijuana, or the degree to which patients were able to swallow the pills. Patients with severe vomiting would have been unlikely to be able to swallow or keep the pills down long enough for them to take effect. The onset of drug effect is much faster with inhaled or injected THC than it is for oral delivery.87,112,141
Although many marijuana users have claimed that smoked marijuana is a more effective antiemetic than oral THC, no controlled studies have yet been published that analyze this in sufficient detail to estimate the extent to which this is the case.An important and unexpected problem encountered in the New York state open trial with marijuana was the inability of nearly one-fourth of the patients to tolerate the administration of marijuana by smoking.188 The intolerance could have been due to inexperience with smoking marijuana and is an important consideration.And to be "fair"...Although marijuana smoke delivers THC and other cannabinoids to the body, it also delivers harmful substances, including most of those found in tobacco smoke. In addition, plants contain a variable mixture of biologically active compounds and cannot be expected to provide a precisely defined drug effect. For those reasons there is little future in smoked marijuana as a medically approved medication.
Guess what! Coffee delivers harmful substances to the body. So does alcohol. So does a myriad number of other things.
They don't even know if those other active compounds cancel out or counter the effects of the "harmful substances" inhaled. They're sooooo sure.
Yeah - but a typical tobacco smoker smokes a pack or more, while a marijiana smoker needs only a few puffs. And, you don't need to smoke marijuana to a burn, you just need to heat it to a degree that activates the cannaboids. Or you can cook with it (though if you can't eat then you need another delivery system).
OK, 3 posts on the pot thread, I'm going to get typecast :-)