Vaporizer Good for Medical Pot intake-REPOSTED FROM I SMOKE BUT DIDNT INHALE BY STEVEN DUBOVSKY

"I Didn’t Smoke, But I Inhaled"
A smokeless vaporizer might decrease dangerous combustion products, thus encouraging medical marijuana use.


Despite the potential of marijuana to cause dependence and to function as a gateway drug, it has medical applications in treating nausea, pain, and weight loss associated with certain serious medical illnesses. However, smoked marijuana can cause lung damage and may be carcinogenic. These researchers examined features of a new delivery system, the "Volcano," an electric vaporizer that converts cannabis to a gas that can be inhaled with a lower concentration of such dangerous substances as polycyclic hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide (CO), and tar.

The vaporizer, which resembles a humidifier with a mouthpiece, heats cannabis to 180°–200°C, which vaporizes cannabinoids on the surface of the leaves without combustion. In an NIH-supported study involving a 6-day hospitalization, 18 adult marijuana users inhaled three strengths of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in uniform puffs from cigarettes and from the vaporizer. At each strength, the vaporizer produced higher 30- and 60-minute plasma levels of THC but the same 2-minute peak level, area under the time-concentration curve, and self-reported high. Exhaled CO increased much less with the vaporizer than with smoking (P<0.001). Most participants preferred the vaporizer to smoking.

Comment: The virtual absence of exhaled CO may indicate the lack of other combustion products, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and oxidant gases that can cause lung damage and cancer. As most participants favored the vaporizer, it is more likely to increase addiction risks than to reduce them. Nonetheless, the system may facilitate medical use of marijuana. Clinicians may see illicit use of the vaporizer if its popularity increases.

— Steven Dubovsky, MD

Vaporizer Good for Medical Pot intake-

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Summary and Comment

"I Didn’t Smoke, But I Inhaled"
A smokeless vaporizer might decrease dangerous combustion products, thus encouraging medical marijuana use.


Despite the potential of marijuana to cause dependence and to function as a gateway drug, it has medical applications in treating nausea, pain, and weight loss associated with certain serious medical illnesses. However, smoked marijuana can cause lung damage and may be carcinogenic. These researchers examined features of a new delivery system, the "Volcano," an electric vaporizer that converts cannabis to a gas that can be inhaled with a lower concentration of such dangerous substances as polycyclic hydrocarbons, carbon monoxide (CO), and tar.

The vaporizer, which resembles a humidifier with a mouthpiece, heats cannabis to 180°–200°C, which vaporizes cannabinoids on the surface of the leaves without combustion. In an NIH-supported study involving a 6-day hospitalization, 18 adult marijuana users inhaled three strengths of tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) in uniform puffs from cigarettes and from the vaporizer. At each strength, the vaporizer produced higher 30- and 60-minute plasma levels of THC but the same 2-minute peak level, area under the time-concentration curve, and self-reported high. Exhaled CO increased much less with the vaporizer than with smoking (P<0.001). Most participants preferred the vaporizer to smoking.

Comment: The virtual absence of exhaled CO may indicate the lack of other combustion products, such as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and oxidant gases that can cause lung damage and cancer. As most participants favored the vaporizer, it is more likely to increase addiction risks than to reduce them. Nonetheless, the system may facilitate medical use of marijuana. Clinicians may see illicit use of the vaporizer if its popularity increases.

— Steven Dubovsky, MD

Published in Journal Watch Psychiatry January 18, 2008

Citation(s):

Abrams DI et al. Vaporization

COURT STRIKES DOWN REG ON AMOUNT POT GROWERS CAN GROW!ABOOT TIME EH!!!

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COURT STRIKES DOWN REG. ON POT GROWERS=ABOOT TIME EH~~~!!!!VOTE NDP & LETS LEGALIZE WEED!!!


strikes down regulation limiting growers of medical marijuana
Last Updated: Friday, January 11, 2008 | 12:45 AM ET
CBC News
Canadians who are prescribed marijuana to treat their illnesses will no longer be forced to rely on the federal government as a supplier following a Federal Court ruling that struck down a key restriction in Ottawa's controversial medical marijuana program.


The decision by Judge Barry Strayer, released late Thursday, essentially grants medical marijuana users more freedom in picking their own grower and allows growers to supply the drug to more than one patient.


It's also another blow to the federal government, whose attempts to tightly control access to medical marijuana have prompted numerous court challenges.


Currently, medical users can grow their own pot but growers can't supply the drug to more than one user at a time.


Lawyers for medical users argued that restriction effectively established Health Canada as the country's sole legal provider of medical marijuana.


They also said the restriction was unfair, and that it prevented seriously ill Canadians from obtaining the drug they needed to treat their debilitating illnesses.


In his decision, Strayer called the provision unconstitutional and arbitrary, as it "caused individuals a major difficulty with access…"

Ottawa must also reconsider requests made by a group of medical users who brought the matter to court to have a single outside supplier as their designated producer, Strayer said in his 23-page decision.

While the government has argued that medical users who can't grow their own marijuana can obtain it from its contract manufacturer, fewer than 20 per cent of patients actually use the government's supply, Strayer wrote.


"In my view it is not tenable for the government, consistently with the right established in other courts for qualified medical users to have reasonable access to marijuana, to force them either to buy from the government contractor, grow their own or be limited to the unnecessarily restrictive system of designated producers," he wrote.

Ron Marzel, a Toronto lawyer representing the group of medical users who brought the matter before the Federal Court, called the decision a "great remedy" for his clients.


"All this means is that the limit — the one-to-one ratio — it's the last nail in the coffin for that ratio," he said in an interview.


"The court has said, 'Look, unequivocally, this is unconstitutional, it's arbitrary. All the reasons you've provided us with so far for this one-to-one ratio, they don't pass muster. We don't buy it, we don't accept it."'

The provision had been struck down by the courts before, but was reinstated by the government who contracted Prairie Plant Systems Inc. in Flin Flon, Man., to provide the drug to patients./As a PHA that has to use pot in order to eat- i face RED TAPE & beaurocratic BS. by Drs the refuse to help,politicians throw their hands in the air & do nothing!!! i think the CAS should mandate that 1)pot access for patients, & subsidizing $ spent on medical pot-or reimbursing us at tax time~~!!!Housing is another big issue that need attention.PEACE N LOVE NOT WARS N WALLS EH FOLKS!!!!