(Sacramento Bee) University of California system researchers have concluded that smoking pot provides effective relief of pain-related medical conditions.
But the first major study on the effects of marijuana in two decades also indicated that pot smokers can achieve the same pain reduction at low doses as higher doses — meaning they don’t have to get high to obtain relief for medical conditions.
The long-running research was done by the state-funded Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research at UC San Diego.
“We found that low-strength (doses of smoked marijuana) was as good as high strength in resolving pain,” said one of the researchers, Dr. Barth Wilsey, a UC Davis specialist in pain medicine and anesthesiology. “But the lower dose did not cause confusion.”
These are the results we reported on yesterday with Paul Armentano from the CMCR press conference on NORML SHOW LIVE. These studies were undertaken as a result of a 1999 California law to test scientifically the claims of medical marijuana advocates. After fourteen years of medical marijuana opponents saying, “Yeah, but smoked marijuana isn’t medicine!” we have human clinical trials showing that, yes, smoked marijuana is medicine.
But isn’t it interesting how media frame the same exact story?
Here at NORML, we run the headline: “‘Gold Standard’ Studies Show That Inhaled Marijuana Is Medically Safe And Effective”
In Sacramento, they run the headline: “Getting high not needed for pot to relieve pain, new UC study shows“
Another “Yeah, but” response to good news about medical marijuana. “Yeah, but you don’t have to get high!”
These patients were using the only NIDA-approved source of marijuana for clinical studies – that low-THC seeds-and-stems-blend grown at the University of Mississippi and still delivered to four remaining federal medical marijuana patients (you did know there is legal federal medical marijuana, right?)
The prohibitionists know they’ve lost the medical marijuana battle. The only avenue left to them now is to fight the high. Get that medicinal benefit in a pill, spray, salve, or inhaler, minus that pesky high. Legalize medical marijuana but only allow sales of low-potency strains.
Once again, maintaining medical marijuana without pursuing full legalization is a path to stricter control of marijuana. Ironically, under full legalization, more cannabis strains would be available in a variety of reliable potencies. Those patients and consumers who want to get pain relief without a high would be able to find the variety that works for them. But so long as marijuana is prohibited for 95% of its consumers, the Iron Law of Prohibition will dictate that strains will be of the most potent varieties.
Contact your elected representatives and urge them to 'Stop Arresting Marijuana Smokers'. 
As a long term user of cannabis, i developed the ‘associated’ mental health problems – paranoia, anxiety etc…I now have severe joint pain and feel i am addicted to opiate based pain killers.
For this reason i wish to gain the pain killing properties of cannabis without the high
In short..
“i can do without the paranioa but i could do with cannabis’s help in relieving my pain”
IS THIS POSSIBLE ?
Oh, cannabis, you would be so useful if you didn’t cause that bothersome side-effect known as euphoria (which is, of course, bad and completely different than the good, FDA-approved type of euphoria caused by medications like oxycodone.)
Seriously, though, while I realize that some people medicating with cannabis might not want to get high, I just cannot fathom why treating pain with a medication that also happens to make you feel good is so terrible—especially when we already have pain medications that have the (unintended?) side-effect of “feeling good.” Of course, most of those medications make you so loopy that you don’t know whether it’s day or night, but somehow that “high” (which can leave people incoherent) is FDA-approved and the cannabis “high” (which doesn’t leave people incoherent) is not.
I feel more mentally disconnected from reality on over-the-counter Benadryl (which I refuse to take now due to the dissociative feelings it produces in me) than on cannabis, and I am not even kidding.
This information contradicts almost everythign FOX news reported the last time they talked about marijuana.
Hannity, Coulter and Oreilly all told lies about how you can drink alcohol without getting intoxicated but there are no degrees of intoxication with marijauna. Your either stoned or not.
Now all us smokers know this is complete nonsense. We know that we can be many varying degrees of high depending on how much and how we injest it. We know that we can easily control this effect, unlike alcohol, and we know that at the highest degree were still not as impared as the guy who just finished ONE beer.
Aside from pointing out the bogus, I think the findings are very interesting. It makes me wonder if it isn’t a CBC or CBN that helps with the pain and not the THC. Perhaps a combination.
At any rate, why do they seek to filter out the best effect of the drug in the first place? What is it about our culture that resents feeling good? Why do so many people seem to want us to suffer in life?
Thanks for this one Russ, I was leaving a comment on the story from yesterday regarding the Sacramento Bee article when my comp got stupid, heh heh. I lost my somewhat lengthy post.
Anyways, you summed it up better than I could in your commentary.
They are gonna figure out how to get the right cannabinoid cocktail into tablets or capsule eventually, and once pfizer or any of the other big pharma honchos pull that off, we can kiss natural home grown cannabis-as-medicine goodbye!
To me this is the essential weakness in the MMJ as stepping stone to legal recreational MJ strategy…