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clinical studies on medical marijuana v. marinol?

ff3mwg

ff3mwg

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Hi. Maybe this has been covered already, but does anyone have any links to clinical studies that compare the medical efficacy of marijuana v. marinol? The existence of prescription marinol (synthetic THC) has been used by anti-marijuana advocates to explain away the necessity for medical marijuana.
But!... is marinol really as effective?

Also, I was wondering are patients prescribed marijuana given vaporizers to reduce the exposure to carcinogens? If such a practice is / were to be the standard protocol in medicine, anti-MJ advocates couldn't talk about the "negative effects outweighing the beneficial effects" of smoking pot.
 
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Well clinical isn't really my area but I thought I'd still chime in...

The problem is that as a medicine, cannabinoids don't really seem to stack up in randomised clinical trials. They don't work good as pain meds, they don't work good as antispastics, they don't work good as anti-MS.... etc... etc... (unless you listen to GW pharmaceuticals)...

Now, yes, most of those times people were dealing with pure THC.. though, if we look at the big, mac daddy, daddy mac of cannabis trials, the cannabis in multiple sclerosis (CAMS) trial, we can have a bit of insight..

Here, we had a big group of MS suffers (600 odd) given pure THC, or an ethanolic cannabinoid extract (ie a big bag of cannabinoids). When it came to objective measurements by doctors, the patients showed no improvement (though this could have been to do with the way they measured it), BUT the patients reported an improvement on post THC and the extract in comparison to the placebo. Now there was bassically no difference in improvement reported by patients on the extract and pure THC (61% vs 60%).

Now you can look at that two ways. 1) THC or cannabinoids have the same effects on self diagnosis OR 2) These peope were reporting an improvement because they new they were on an active drug and the effect has nothing to do with the true action of cannabinoids.

Now one way or the other, this doesn't discount cannabinoids as anti-MS drugs, it just says that on average, in the larger population, they don't work that good.
 
It has bene proven more recently that most of the medicinal features are either in Cannabinol or Cannbidol (non-psychoactive), so this "synthetic THC" they won't share the chemical synthesis for, might in fact be pretty useless for most medicinal needs of marijuana. Although patients are using it, and reporting effects, no one will really know what works best for each individual.

Also, does anyone know if Marinol ios prescribed for pain releif? Cannabis pain releif is mostly psychological I have found. You can make it hurt more by thinking about it, or make it pretty much dissapear when you focus on something else.
 
^^^ I wouldn't say its fair to say that most of cannabis medicinal actions are because of cannabidiol and cannabidol (cannabinol?)... but still there is GW pharmaceuticals' sativex' which is a mix of THC and cannabidiol, and if you believe their press releases, it cures everything under the sun.

Meanwhile...
Also, does anyone know if Marinol ios prescribed for pain releif?
Click to expand...

It's not legal to prescribe marinol for pain (in the USA). The FDA has only approved marinol for use as an appetite stimulant in AIDs and for use as an antiemetic in cancer patients.

In clinical trials, THC was only as good as 60mgs of codeine in the general population...
 
That makes sense as I find sativa makes me hungry, and speeds up metabolism
 
Marijuana has so many chemicals in it that the ones that have medicinal purposes may be useless because ur only taking THC.
I believe that smoking it is the best way to activate and obtain the medicinal cannabinoids.
 
From what I've heard and read about, Marinol does not give a 'buzz' like smoking cannabis does.

As Tri-nity said, smoking it is the most effective way of utilizing it's medicinal/recreational properties.
 
Some people find marinol quite fun. A lot of it has to do with the mind set. In a clinical setting, a lot (~30%) of people find opiates extremely depressing.

Meanwhile...

If Marinol worked medical MJ wouldn't be an issue
Click to expand...
Are you implying that marinol doesn't work? Although a lot of people who are used to self administering cannabis don't find marinol to be the same, when it comes to controlled studies, pure THC and cannabis extracts tend to perform the same.
 
I'm implying that it never worked as well for me or anyone I've known that's used both Marinol and herb. What do you mean by "mindset", by that logic a lot people with the right "mindset" would really enjoy a placebo.

Taking a THC pill is just not the same as smoking weed.
 
A lot of people DO find placebos enjoyable. Shit, this forum is the biggest evidence for it. People reporting tripping of 10mg of 5-HTP, or potentiating there LSD with vitamin C.....

But anyway, a lot of people who haven't used cannabis, find marinol good (i.e. appetite stimulant, and antiemetic). You can use the fact that people who use cannabis, don't tend to find marinol to be very good, to support either arguement. You could say "well they know what cannabis is REALLY like, and hence they know marinol is a waste of time", or you could say "they are used to smoking it, and they usually have a negative view of marinol, hence they don't have the same mind set they do when smoking".
 
The fact is Malice, people don't use Marinol to get high.. They use it as a medicine, the high is something extra. For what it's initially made for, it does a damn good job..
 
^^^I disagree. (on the damn good job part.)

I've met and read accounts of many cancer and AIDS patients that have got zero effects from Marinol. No high, no appetite stimulation, nothing. And on the other hand I've heard of people going into psychotic episodes while using Marinol.

Marinol sucks for a multitude of reasons, not getting high off it is #1 for me. I I still believe Marijauna is a better medicine.
 
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