• • New effort launched to allow medical marijuana in TN
• • Brain study gives credence to stereotype of the 'pothead'
• • The Myth of "Medical Marijuana"

A Democratic legislator has filed a bill for the upcoming legislative session that would authorize prescription sales of marijuana for medicinal purposes in Tennessee under somewhat stringent regulations.

"It's just simply a matter of being rational and compassionate," said Rep. Sherry Jones, D-Nashville, sponsor of HB1385. "It would apply to only the most severely debilitated people ... children suffering a hundred (epileptic) seizures a day, people on chemotherapy, people with multiple sclerosis ... people with a plethora of diseases" who now must either leave the state to get marijuana or make their purchases illegally.

Tennessee allowed marijuana by prescription under state law for a period in the 1980s, but that law was repealed, and attempts to revive it have died in legislative committees since - most recently in 2012. But Jones and Doak Patton, president of the National Organization for Marijuana Legalization in Tennessee, say times might have changed in the state because of developments on the national front.

They said the push could be seen as parallel - or a juxtaposition - to the ongoing push toward allowing the sale of wine in grocery stores, wherein expanded sales of an alcoholic beverage for consumer convenience are sought.

"I think anybody would tell you alcohol is much worse than marijuana," Jones said. "If you think alcohol should be legal, then you would think that for sure medical marijuana should be legal."

Twenty-one other states allow marijuana sales for medical purposes, and Colorado gained national attention by authorizing sales for recreational purposes, effective on New Year's Day. A few other states have eliminated or minimized criminal penalties for simple possession, but Tennessee law makes possession or sale of "pot" a crime.

Jones' bill, which she says was drafted by Bernie Ellis, a longtime champion of medical marijuana once convicted of providing the drug without charge to individuals with medical problems, would allow prescriptions only to those suffering from a "qualifying medical condition," who would have to be certified by a physician and pay a $25 registration fee. Such patients would get a special card, which would allow qualifying pharmacies - there would be a procedure for getting qualified - to provide the drug.

 

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Memory goes up in smoke for heavy weed users

Shrunken structures inside the brains of heavy marijuana users might explain the stereotype of the "pothead," brain researchers report.

Northwestern University scientists studying teens who were marijuana smokers or former smokers found that parts of the brain related to working memory appeared diminished in size - changes that coincided with the teens' poor performance on memory tasks.

"We observed that the shapes of brain structures related to short-term memory seemed to collapse inward or shrink in people who had a history of daily marijuana use when compared to healthy participants," said study author Matthew Smith. He is an assistant research professor in psychiatry and behavioral sciences at the Northwestern University Feinberg School of Medicine, in Chicago.

The shrinking of these structures appeared to be more advanced in people who had started using marijuana at a younger age. This suggests that youngsters might be more susceptible to drug-related memory loss, according to the study, published in the Dec. 16 issue of the journal Schizophrenia Bulletin.

"The brain abnormalities we're observing are directly related to poor short-term memory performance," Smith said. "The more that brain looks abnormal, the poorer they're doing on memory tests."

No weed recently

The participants had not been using marijuana for a couple years, indicating that memory problems might persist even if the person quits smoking the drug, said Dr. Frances Levin, chairman of the American Psychiatric Association's Council on Addiction Psychiatry.

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More than a dozen states and the District of Columbia have legalized the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes, but under federal law, marijuana remains illegal. So-is marijuana medicine? The short answer is NO. However, some of the chemicals found in marijuana have been developed into medications, and more medications may be on the way.

To understand why marijuana is not medicine, it helps to know how medications are approved in the United States.

The FDA Testing Process
All medicines in the United States must be approved by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA). The FDA is the government agency that is responsible for making sure that medications are safe and effective AND that their likely benefits are greater than any possible harmful effects. This requires careful scientific testing. If a drug doesn't meet FDA standards, it will not be approved and cannot be prescribed or sold as medicine in the United States.

Why Isn't Marijuana an FDA-Approved Medication?
Marijuana comes from the plant Cannabis sativa. It contains more than 400 different chemicals-many with unknown effects-which differ from plant to plant. For something to be a medicine, it must have well-defined and measurable ingredients that are the same each time a person takes a dose. That means one pill has to have the same amount of medicine as the next. This way, a doctor can determine what dose to prescribe and how often a patient should take it.

Also, marijuana has harmful effects, especially when it is smoked, that must be considered. Smoking marijuana can cause a chronic cough and increased risk of bronchitis and other lung infections. It can also interfere with learning and memory, affect driving (especially if combined with alcohol), make some people anxious and paranoid, and can lead to addiction.

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As Colorado ushers in legalized pot, proponents of reform often cite a singular statistic: No one has ever died of a marijuana overdose. However, some say that's setting the bar too high. A wider availability of marijuana may increase rates of accidental ingestions by children attracted to cookies and other candies laced with the drug.

On Tuesday, a two-year-old girl ingested marijuana accidentally by eating a cookie she'd found in front of her apartment building in Longmont, Colo. Aida Hernandez said that she told her daughter to throw away the cookie and didn't realize anything was wrong until they'd gone out shopping. The girl later tested positive at the hospital for marijuana's active ingredient, delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol (THC). "She was sleepy, she was opening and closing her eyes, and she couldn't walk very well,' Hernandez told FOX31 Denver after police began investigating with social services on the case.

Detective Commander Jeff Satur said police had failed to find any signs of drug use after searching the family's home. "At this point we believe the family," Satur said.

The accidental dosing came just one day prior to the beginning of retail marijuana sales in the state, whose voters approved the drug law reform in a November referendum. Presently, marijuana is legal for prescription-based medical treatment in 18 states and the District of Columbia, whereas the drug has been legalized now for recreational purposes in Colorado and Washington.

In May, medical toxicologist George Sam Wang and his colleagues at the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center in Denver published a study about pediatric marijuana poisonings. "We are seeing increases in exposure to marijuana in young pediatric patients, and they have more severe symptoms than we typically associate with marijuana," Wang said in a statement. "We hadn't seen these exposures before the big boom of the medical marijuana industry."