Albert Schweitzer, famous Franco-German theologian and physician, once said that “pain is a more terrible lord of mankind than even death itself”. It is a significant problem for people who are seriously ill. The control of narcotic painkillers is an important issue in terms of the debate on medical legalization.
What are drugs and what is medicine?
To be approved as a controlled medical substance, the substance must be approved by the appropriate regulatory authority of a country and its usefulness as medicine must be recognized by the medical community. A drug, in comparison, is any substance that, when absorbed into the body of a living organism, alters normal bodily functions. This obviously applies to a variety of legal chemicals nowadays, like alcohol or tobacco.
Cocaine has many possible uses
Long before rock stars started doing lines off of super models’ breasts, cocaine was hailed as a wonder drug that could be used to cure everything from headaches to alcoholism to hay fever. While modern medicine has discovered much safer treatments for most of these conditions, the drug is still occasionally used as a topical anesthetic for eye, nose and throat surgeries. It has also recently been used as a topical treatment applied to the upper palate of those who suffer from severe cluster headaches.
Research on the medical use of coca leaves has been rather limited, but Andean cultures have been using the leaves for medicinal purposes for centuries. One American physician, Andrew Weil, believes these cultures might have good reasons to do so and suggests that coca leaves may be able to treat motion sickness, laryngitis, constipation and obesity.
When does use of marijuana violate the UN Conventions?
In the US, smoking marijuana for medicinal purposes is not recognized by the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), therefore the medical use of smoked marijuana violates the UN Conventions. One of the active components of marijuana is THC which has a medical use but is not approved under the Controlled Substances Act.
There is quite a variety of medical uses for marijuana, such as for cancer patients. For instance, it relieves nausea during chemotherapy treatment. It also increases the appetite of AIDS patients who are experiencing severe weight loss. As a treatment for neurological disorders (including spinal cord injury and multiple sclerosis), it reduces pain and spasticity resulting from nerve damage. It is also useful in treating inflammatory pain and cannabinoids seem to be more effective than opiates in treating long-term, chronic pain. Opiates on the other hand are better for treating short-term acute pain. Finally, for autoimmune diseases (such as arthritis) it suppresses the immune system resulting in less pain and inflammation.
Opiates as pain killers
Morphine, codeine and papverine are opiates which occur naturally in the opium poppy plant.
For people who are seriously ill, pain is a serious problem. Severe pain can be controlled acceptably 80 to 90 per cent of the time. Yet pain remains under-treated. Studies have shown that among those suffering from cancer, significant pain occurs in 30 to 40 per cent throughout the spectrum of the disease, and in 65 to 85 per cent of persons with advanced cancer. Half of all seriously ill children suffer pain, and 20 per cent of them have moderate to severe pain. Among elders living in the community, up to half suffer significant pain, and this increases to up to 80 per cent of elders living in institutions, such as nursing homes. One-third of persons with HIV disease living in the community, and nearly two-thirds of those in in-patient facilities, suffer from moderate to severe pain. Members of minority groups who are seriously ill face even worse conditions: recent studies show that 50 to 80 per cent of the time, pain in these populations is not well managed.
But we need to clearly differentiate the use of opiates by seriously ill people in pain from the use of opiates by addicts trying to get “high”. David G Evans, the Executive Director of the “Crime and Justice Project” of the “Drug Free Projects Coalition” has got an interesting point of view on the issue because both his parents suffered from cancer. He encourages giving opiates to cancer patients to help them with their suffering to increase their quality of life.
Heroin as medicine
Many activist groups claim that heroin should be treated in the same way as morphine under the law. They claim because morphine does not always relieve pain, the next step is to use heroin. However, heroin and morphine differ from one another: heroin enters the brain more rapidly. Heroin is more potent and achieves peak pain control and mood elevation effects faster but both pain control and mood elevation are more prolonged with morphine. This makes heroin a better drug to use in some cases. In addition, increased medical use of heroin might increase the risk of it being diverted for illegal use and could increase the risk of burglaries at pharmacies and hospitals.
It will be a difficult decision-making process to decide whether or not currently illegal drugs should be considered medicine. However, scientific results suggest that the current policy that simply prohibits the use of many available substances should be re-evaluated to include the latest scientific findings.
