MarijuanaNews.com : “Support Our Troops” – Unless It Interferes with the Drug War – Then Let Them Suffer and Die?? Analysis by Richard Cowan

Posted September 21,
2007

Analysis by Richard Cowan

For a short time, before OJ
and Britney and the latest missing blonde, there was a flurry of concern
over the outrageous treatment – or lack thereof – given to our seriously
wounded troops at Walter Reed and other VA
facilities.

Now there are new stories
about a problem that seems to be even worse in the Iraq war
than in previous wars, “traumatic brain injury” or TBI.
One fact is never mentioned in these stories, of
course: that cannabis can help prevent and treat brain damage.

I first wrote about this over
four years ago.

From 2003,
see

The
Ultimate Betrayal: Depriving Our Troops of Medical Cannabis. But It Is Okay
to Give Combat Pilots Speed. US Army Tests Proved Cannabis Works Four Years
Ago!

Again, this is not a new
development. On October 3, 2001 HealthScoutNews
reported:

“A natural brain chemical
that’s similar to the active ingredient in marijuana may help heal brain
injuries, say researchers…

The body’s natural version
of a cannabinoid, called 2-arachidonoyl glycerol (2-AG), reduced brain
swelling, cell death and inflammation in mice with brain injuries, say
scientists at Hebrew University in
Jerusalem. Animals given 2-AG recovered more of
their movement and mental sharpness than those that didn’t get it,
suggesting a drug made with the cannabinoid one day could be used to treat
brain injuries in humans, the researchers say.”

Despite the potential value
of cannabis in treating TBI being known for years, on September
10th the
Washington
Post carried a story about TBI by Marilynn Marchione, the AP medical writer.

See

Program
Notes for the MarijuanaNews World Report April 19, 2005 Sativex, Approved
for Use In Canada. Proves Medical Value of Plant. Hires Prohibitionist
Quack. Dangerous Pain Killers. Czar’s Idiocy.

This paragraph reveals a
lot.

“Thousands of troops have
been diagnosed with traumatic brain injury, or TBI. These blast-caused head
injuries are so different from the ones doctors are used to seeing from
falls and car crashes that treating them is as much faith as it is
science…”

And this is not a problem
that will go away with a little time.

“Most TBIs are mild, and
most of these patients recover within a year. But one-fifth of the troops
with these mild injuries will have prolonged or lifelong symptoms and need
continuing care, the military estimates. Nearly all of the moderate and
severe ones will, too…Though the full number of those suffering from TBI is
still unknown, the problem is straining the U.S.
Department of Veterans Affairs.”

The symptoms can be hard to
diagnose:

“People with TBI have
frequent headaches, dizziness, and trouble concentrating and sleeping. They
may be depressed, irritable and confused, and easily provoked or distracted.
Speech or vision also can be impaired.

Some sufferers have been
misdiagnosed with personality disorders. Others have lost jobs because of
unrecognized and untreated symptoms.”

And
then…

“Treating it is even more
difficult. Lacking a cure, doctors focus on symptoms — headaches, anxiety,
vision problems, etc. But they lack good
treatments for some of these, too, and are considering some experimental
approaches being pushed by private companies with little proof they
work… Many troops get no care at
all. Some are sent back to fight with their brain injuries undetected,
especially if they had no obvious wounds.”

A September 19th
AP story added more data:

“Brain
injuries caused by explosions have become some of the most common combat
wounds suffered in
Iraq.
Thirty percent of soldiers taken to Walter
Reed Army Medical
Center since 2003 suffered traumatic brain injuries,
according to the Defense and Veterans
Brain Injury
Center.

The brain-injury center,
which has seven facilities around the country, has seen 2,669 patients
between 2003 and 2007. But doctors believe many less obvious brain-injury
cases go undetected…

As noted in the AP story,
“they lack good treatments”, but that has not stopped them from the usual
“try anything and everything before cannabis” approach.

For example, in 2005,
HealthDay
Reporter carried an
article (no longer online),

Steroids Risky Treatment for
Brain Injury:

“British
researchers evaluated the results of more than 10,000 patients with brain
injury. They found that those treated with corticosteroids after traumatic
head injury were more likely to die from the injury than those who did not
take the drugs.

Among
those who received steroid treatment, 21 percent — or 1,052 of the 4,985
patients treated — died, the authors reported, compared to 18 percent who
received a placebo…

They
noted that corticosteroid use is widespread after serious brain injury. An
estimated 1.4 million Americans suffer traumatic brain injuries each year,
according to the
U.S.
Centers for Disease Control and Prevention), and 50,000 die from the
injuries.

The report appeared in
The
Cochrane Library, a
publication of the Cochrane Collaboration, an international organization
that evaluates medical research.

(For a bit of irony, consider
that in the UK cannabis is currently in the same
“classification” (C) as steroids.

See

Beyond
Bonkers: UK “Reclassification” Of Cannabis Caps Weeks of Absurdity. Prime
Minister Has A Drug Problem?
)

Both sides of the
Iraq war debate claim to “support our troops”, but neither has
said anything about the troops being sacrificed to the needs of the drug
war.

See

They’ve
Lied to Us About Marijuana, So How Do We Know That They Aren’t Lying About
Iraq? Credibility in Time of War.

And, as the HealthDay
Reporter said, the problem is hardly confined to the military. I am not a
football fan, so I was surprised when I did a search for “concussion” in the
Yahoo news pages and found numerous references to football players.
(Duh!)

We are not only willing to
sacrifice our troops, we are even prepared to sacrifice our football
players. Is nothing sacred?

The invaluable Stephen Young
of DrugSense has even written about it.

See
Ricky
Williams and the NFL’s Brain Damaged
Policy

When I wrote about Williams,
I never even considered how common concussions are among football
players

See

Ricky
Williams and Our Paxil Problem. The Media Miss the Point, As Usual.

Recent reports also indicate
that cannabis might be useful in blocking Mad Cow disease, and Alzheimer’s
disease.

See

Could
Medical Cannabis Have Saved Ronald Reagan From The Worst Of Alzheimer’s?
Seniors Now Have Even More Reason to Demand End to Cannabis Prohibition.

and

Ethical
Failure Of Cannabis Prohibition. Tragedy And Farce. Using the Patients To
Protect Prohibition. Analysis by Richard Cowan

Of course, the standard
copout by doctors is the cliché “We need more research.”

As noted above, they did not
need more research before they killed thousands of brain injury patients
with steroids. It took a lot of research to get them to quit, if they
have.

But the fact is that the DEA
has blocked any research that might prove anything positive about cannabis.

Just this week the ACLU
issued a press release, “Congress Ask DEA to Stop Obstructing Medical
marijuana Research”:

“Since 1968, the federal
government’s National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) has maintained a
monopoly on the supply of research marijuana and uses that monopoly to
obstruct legitimate, privately funded research. Judge Bittner found that
NIDA has repeatedly refused to supply marijuana for FDA-approved studies
that aim to develop marijuana as a prescription
medicine.”

The U.S. House
of Representatives’ letter can be found online at:
http://www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/medmarijuana/31861leg20070918.html

Additional background on the case
can be found at:
http://www.aclu.org/drugpolicy/medicalmarijuanafeature/index.html

I am all in favor of
research, but even without the obstructionism of the DEA/NIDA, et al. it
will take years to complete the standard trials.

See

No,
Cannabis Will Not Be “The 21st Century Aspirin” – Because It Doesn’t Kill
Anyone! People Suffer And Die, While “Scientists” Try To Pharmaceuticalize
The Aspirin Of the 21st Century B.C.

That may or may not be good
science, but such a delay really is the ultimate betrayal, by both General
Petraeus and his critics. Move on, indeed!

See

The
Drug War Is Politics By Other Means: Blackwater Gets Billions to Fight
“Narco-Terorism”. Buying Constituencies for the Drug War. Analysis by
Richard Cowan