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January is Glaucoma Awareness Month. Glaucoma is a medical condition where either the eye produces too much fluid or the channels that carry fluid away become blocked. The result is increased intraocular pressure (IOP) and damage to the optic nerve leading to deterioration of vision and even blindness. As one born with this painful, vision stealing disease, I have faced glaucoma every day of my life. But thanks to medical cannabis, I can still see today more than 5 and a half decades since my birth.
Scientists first began studying cannabis and glaucoma at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1970:
In controlled studies at UCLA, it was discovered that patients smoking marijuana experienced, on average, a 30% drop in eye pressure. The reduction was dose related and lasted 4 to 5 hours. Dr. Robert Hepler, principal investigator in the UCLA study, concluded that cannabis may be more useful than conventional medications and may reduce eye pressure in a way that conventional medications do not, thus making marijuana a potential additive to the glaucoma patient's regimen of available medication. -- Marijuana As Medicine Fact Sheets
More than five years of UCLA studies followed, further establishing the utility of cannabis in treating glaucoma.
On Oct. 3, 1972, I smoked some cannabis before a half-hour ride to Milwaukee for a glaucoma checkup. When my ophthalmologist checked my IOPs, he was very pleasantly surprised to find them not at their usually elevated levels but right at normal! These results were found what I would estimate at least more than an hour after inhalation, indicating a good effect well after medication.
A light went off in my head that day.
The disease that had tormented me and stole my vision as a child finally had a treatment that provided more than partial relief. The monster that robbed me of my sight to the point I had trouble reading the blackboard from the front row after being moved from the back, was not going to blind me! The constant eye pain was gone when I could access my medicine!
The problem was, as I was busy discovering the medical benefits of cannabis, Congress had acted in 1970 to ignore them by passing the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), which placed cannabis in Schedule One. Substances in this schedule are deemed to have a high potential for abuse and no medical value. Both of these bits of legal fiction remain stuck at 1970 today, despite thousands of studies on medical cannabis including more than 200 added in 2010 alone.
Federal authorities have also spent the intervening years throwing bureaucratic roadblocks in the path of a series of cannabis rescheduling petitions that have presented broad evidence that cannabis has just the opposite properties as federal authorities contend. Clearly, the low potential for abuse, high margin of safety and myriad medical uses indicate that a rational approach would be not to schedule it at all because of its unique properties.
Schedule One and cannabis prohibition has not been helpful to those with glaucoma and other eye problems.
In 1976, a Washington D.C. glaucoma patient named Robert Randall made news when he sued for legal access to cannabis after an arrest. Randall, like myself, had stumbled onto the fact that cannabis could lower IOP. Randall's suit was successful, creating the federal Compassionate IND program. The program still supplies four living Americans with 300 pre-rolled 0.9-gram federally-dispensed "marijuana cigarettes" every 25 days. Randall testified in support of Wisconsin's Therapeutic Cannabis Research Act at a State Capitol hearing on July 31, 1979 that I attended. Similar laws were passed by around 2/3 of states in the 1970's and 1980's. A version of the Act was passed by wide margins in 1981 and signed into law in April 1982 by Republican Gov. Lee Sherman Dreyfus. While the Therapeutic Cannabis Research Act remains on the books in Wisconsin, it remains symbolic because it relies on federal cannabis that federal officials will not supply. Robert Randall died in 2001. Glaucoma patient Elvy Musikka , who spoke at Harvest Fest in 2002, is one of the four surviving patients.
In the late 1970's and early 1980's I attempted to enroll in the program with assistance from Bob Randall and Wisconsin's then-U.S. Senators Gaylord Nelson and William Proxmire, but was unable to find a physician willing to navigate the bureaucratic morass federal authorities created to hold down applications.
In 1990, Jacki Rickert's physician gained approval for her for the program, but federal authorities never supplied her as contracted. Today, 20 years later, she is still waiting.
Cannabis prohibition has also denied generations of glaucoma patients of legal access to cannabis-based medications created from ganja in Jamaican labs. Canasol eye drops contain whole cannabis from plant extracts. Since patients are instilling the medication directly into the eye rather than ingesting it more indirectly, it lowers pressure without the psychoactive effects of smoking or eating whole cannabis. A companion med also contains timolol, a beta-blocker used for many years to treat glaucoma. But these drugs, and another used to treat asthma, have never been approved for U.S. use. This leaves patients here dealing with laundry lists of side effects from conventional prescription meds. Cannabis alone may not be sufficient to fully control the IOP and many patients have found it works best as an adjunct to conventional drugs, allowing lower doses and reduced side effects from pharmaceutical drugs.
It's a national shame that glaucoma patients in all but 15 states still have to look over their shoulders and face arrest and jail if they choose to use cannabis to treat the pain and suffering of glaucoma and other ailments. It's shameful that some glaucoma advocacy groups including the Glaucoma Research Foundation continue to poke those they claim to support in the collective eye by opposing legal access to cannabis for glaucoma sufferers.
Glaucoma Awareness Month should also mean awareness of the injustice of the prohibition of cannabis for patients with glaucoma.
Source: January is Glaucoma Awareness Month: Can Marijuana save eyesight? - Madison norml | Examiner.com
Scientists first began studying cannabis and glaucoma at the University of California-Los Angeles (UCLA) in 1970:
In controlled studies at UCLA, it was discovered that patients smoking marijuana experienced, on average, a 30% drop in eye pressure. The reduction was dose related and lasted 4 to 5 hours. Dr. Robert Hepler, principal investigator in the UCLA study, concluded that cannabis may be more useful than conventional medications and may reduce eye pressure in a way that conventional medications do not, thus making marijuana a potential additive to the glaucoma patient's regimen of available medication. -- Marijuana As Medicine Fact Sheets
More than five years of UCLA studies followed, further establishing the utility of cannabis in treating glaucoma.
On Oct. 3, 1972, I smoked some cannabis before a half-hour ride to Milwaukee for a glaucoma checkup. When my ophthalmologist checked my IOPs, he was very pleasantly surprised to find them not at their usually elevated levels but right at normal! These results were found what I would estimate at least more than an hour after inhalation, indicating a good effect well after medication.
A light went off in my head that day.
The disease that had tormented me and stole my vision as a child finally had a treatment that provided more than partial relief. The monster that robbed me of my sight to the point I had trouble reading the blackboard from the front row after being moved from the back, was not going to blind me! The constant eye pain was gone when I could access my medicine!
The problem was, as I was busy discovering the medical benefits of cannabis, Congress had acted in 1970 to ignore them by passing the Controlled Substances Act (CSA), which placed cannabis in Schedule One. Substances in this schedule are deemed to have a high potential for abuse and no medical value. Both of these bits of legal fiction remain stuck at 1970 today, despite thousands of studies on medical cannabis including more than 200 added in 2010 alone.
Federal authorities have also spent the intervening years throwing bureaucratic roadblocks in the path of a series of cannabis rescheduling petitions that have presented broad evidence that cannabis has just the opposite properties as federal authorities contend. Clearly, the low potential for abuse, high margin of safety and myriad medical uses indicate that a rational approach would be not to schedule it at all because of its unique properties.
Schedule One and cannabis prohibition has not been helpful to those with glaucoma and other eye problems.
In 1976, a Washington D.C. glaucoma patient named Robert Randall made news when he sued for legal access to cannabis after an arrest. Randall, like myself, had stumbled onto the fact that cannabis could lower IOP. Randall's suit was successful, creating the federal Compassionate IND program. The program still supplies four living Americans with 300 pre-rolled 0.9-gram federally-dispensed "marijuana cigarettes" every 25 days. Randall testified in support of Wisconsin's Therapeutic Cannabis Research Act at a State Capitol hearing on July 31, 1979 that I attended. Similar laws were passed by around 2/3 of states in the 1970's and 1980's. A version of the Act was passed by wide margins in 1981 and signed into law in April 1982 by Republican Gov. Lee Sherman Dreyfus. While the Therapeutic Cannabis Research Act remains on the books in Wisconsin, it remains symbolic because it relies on federal cannabis that federal officials will not supply. Robert Randall died in 2001. Glaucoma patient Elvy Musikka , who spoke at Harvest Fest in 2002, is one of the four surviving patients.
In the late 1970's and early 1980's I attempted to enroll in the program with assistance from Bob Randall and Wisconsin's then-U.S. Senators Gaylord Nelson and William Proxmire, but was unable to find a physician willing to navigate the bureaucratic morass federal authorities created to hold down applications.
In 1990, Jacki Rickert's physician gained approval for her for the program, but federal authorities never supplied her as contracted. Today, 20 years later, she is still waiting.
Cannabis prohibition has also denied generations of glaucoma patients of legal access to cannabis-based medications created from ganja in Jamaican labs. Canasol eye drops contain whole cannabis from plant extracts. Since patients are instilling the medication directly into the eye rather than ingesting it more indirectly, it lowers pressure without the psychoactive effects of smoking or eating whole cannabis. A companion med also contains timolol, a beta-blocker used for many years to treat glaucoma. But these drugs, and another used to treat asthma, have never been approved for U.S. use. This leaves patients here dealing with laundry lists of side effects from conventional prescription meds. Cannabis alone may not be sufficient to fully control the IOP and many patients have found it works best as an adjunct to conventional drugs, allowing lower doses and reduced side effects from pharmaceutical drugs.
It's a national shame that glaucoma patients in all but 15 states still have to look over their shoulders and face arrest and jail if they choose to use cannabis to treat the pain and suffering of glaucoma and other ailments. It's shameful that some glaucoma advocacy groups including the Glaucoma Research Foundation continue to poke those they claim to support in the collective eye by opposing legal access to cannabis for glaucoma sufferers.
Glaucoma Awareness Month should also mean awareness of the injustice of the prohibition of cannabis for patients with glaucoma.
Source: January is Glaucoma Awareness Month: Can Marijuana save eyesight? - Madison norml | Examiner.com
