Well let's see...you are either a DOCTOR, or work in PHARMA. Your comments are obviously anti-MMJ as you say OxyCodone 'works' better for you than MMJ...very sad to hear indeed.
Put down the pipe, sir. I think you're hallucinating (a recognized side effect of excessive cannabis usage). Where did I say I use oxycodone OR MMJ?
I said that opiates are by FAR better as pure pain relievers than cannabis is, which explains why everywhere that BOTH are legal, patients and doctors still overwhelmingly prefer opiates for acute pain relief. Addiction and side effects are relevant to why you'd pick one drug over another, but those are separate issues. If cannabis could truly replace opiates medically, nobody would ever use opiates. But that's not true, its never been true, and it never will be true.
I'm not against medical marijuana at all. I'm against the mistaken belief that cannabis is some sort of side-effect free miracle drug that can treat or cure anything, when quite plainly it cannot.
MMJ works well FOR CERTAIN APPLICATIONS. Despite claims to the contrary seen recently on this board, curing cancer, unfortunately isn't one of them.
Chronic musculoskeletal pain happens to be one of the things that MMJ actually does work well for, but its certainly not for everyone, nor does it mean that because cannabis works well for THIS kind of pain, that its the best for EVERY kind of pain, or that cannabis can wholesale replace opiates, or that cannabis doesn't come with its own set of side-effects and drawbacks.
In addition to pain relief, opiates also have multiple other medical uses beside pain control, including significant anti-spasmodic, anti-diarrhea, anti-seizure, and anti-coughing effects. Oh, and certain opiates can give you an erection (seriously. . .look it up). Even if we said that cannabis worked better for pain relief than opiates in EVERY circumstance (something that clearly is NOT true) it would still be foolish to entirely eliminate opiates from the pharmacies because of all the other benefits they have.
Here's some review for you in case you missed it:
Oxycodone is now the most-abused medicine in the United States, with hydrocodone second, according to the Drug Enforcement Administration's annual count of drug seizures sent to police drug labs for analysis.
Even stipulating that this fairly questionable statistic is correct, so what?
You're saying that whichever drug is the most abused one, that's the one that needs to be banned?
Everyone knows that opiates are widely abused. This has been true LONG before there was any such thing as "big pharma", and its true in places where there is no "big pharma".
Are you actually going to claim that:
a. Opiates (which, like cannabis, have ALSO been in wide medical use for thousands of years) have no medical value whatsoever and
b. Cannabis always works better than opiates for every person and every application?
Maybe you haven't been able to find a medical strain properly grown and dispensed to treat pain, we do not know. Also, everyone's tolerance of pain is quite different, that's a given. But the fact remains: Opiates and narcotics from 'doctors' that offer no other other beneficial factors, have horrible side effects and turn you into a pain med junkie...are not good. I have YET to see anyone suffer WITHDRAWAL symptoms (read- not use) from MMJ. Big pharmas days are numbered and the sooner the better.
I think one of the less recognized side effects of medical marijuana use is gratuitous use of the royal "we".
Other, more widely recognized side effects include: dry mouth, hallucination, throat irritation (from smoking), bronchitis, tachycardia, paranoia, lethargy, confusion, and short-term memory impairment. That's just off the top of my head, there are probably others.
The point is, MMJ isn't entirely risk or side-effect free either. Its may not be physiologically addicting in the same way that opiates are, but I think its pretty plain that plenty of people abuse it all the same. Its also pretty plain that MMJ is not for everyone. Some people simply cannot tolerate the physiologic side-effects of cannabis. The question for any individual user is whether the benefits outweigh the side effects and liabilities. . .same as any other medication.
Put differently, whether or not oxycodone should be available to patients is a different question than whether or not MMJ should be available. The drugs work differently and do different things. One simply does not substitute for the other.
As to the rest of your remarks, you're simply wrong.
Plenty of people use and have used opiates for pain relief without turning into junkies. In fact, given the prevalence of opiate use in hospitals for acute pain relief, its probably fair to say that MOST people given it for that reason do NOT become addicted.
On "big pharma" if you think doctors are just stupid puppets who hand out narcotics because "big pharma" is pulling their strings, you don't really understand what's going on. Doctors are complete idiots who don't know what they're doing and don't care for the well-being of their patients?
Opiates are relatively cheap to make and sell. The drug companies make money selling them, of course, but they are nowhere near the giant profit centers that other "blockbuster" drugs, like Crestor, Viagra, etc, are. You could get rid of all the legal narcotics tomorrow and all the big drug companies that you seem to hate so much would still be doing business just fine.
Furthermore, while you may not see any personal benefit to having new and effective effective cholesterol lowering drugs, anti-hypertensive drugs, antibiotics, anti-inflammatory medications, cancer chemotherapy agents, vaccines, and so forth, I assure you that plenty of people want these things to make their lives better and longer. So opiates or no opiates, I don't see why "Big pharma" is going to go away any time soon, nor why it ought to.
