Harm Reduction: The Cannabis Paradox

[RainDog]

http://www.harmreductionjournal.com/content/2/1/17#B119

Robert Melamede
Biology Department, 1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, 80918, USA
Bioenergetics Institute, 1420 Austin Bluffs Parkway, University of Colorado, Colorado Springs, 80918, USA

This article examines harm reduction from a novel perspective. Its central thesis is that harm reduction is not only a social concept, but also a biological one. More specifically, evolution does not make moral distinctions in the selection process, but utilizes a cannabis-based approach to harm reduction in order to promote survival of the fittest. Evidence will be provided from peer-reviewed scientific literature that supports the hypothesis that humans, and all animals, make and use internally produced cannabis-like products (endocannabinoids) as part of the evolutionary harm reduction program. More specifically, endocannabinoids homeostatically regulate all body systems (cardiovascular, digestive, endocrine, excretory, immune, nervous, musculo-skeletal, reproductive). Therefore, the health of each individual is dependant on this system working appropriately.

A little explored question is what does harm reduction specifically mean with respect to cannabis consumption? This article will address cannabis harm reduction from a biological perspective. Two directions will be examined: what are the biological effects of cannabis use and what are the social effects that emerge from the biological foundation.

Like many substances that are put into the human body, there can be positive or negative consequences that result from cannabis consumption, depending on amount, frequency, quality, and probably most importantly, the idiosyncratic biochemistry of the user. Prohibitionists concentrate their efforts on the negative effects of cannabis use, while anti-prohibitionists tend to focus on the positive effects. If we assume that both sides have valid arguments, the issue to be resolved is one of balance between the negative and positive effects. Would a policy of tolerance, or prohibition, be more likely to reduce harm overall? Which policy would better serve society as a whole, as well as problematic drug users?

Biological science can be more objectively evaluated than social science. The central theme that will be presented in this article is that appropriate cannabis use reduces biological harm caused by biochemical imbalances, particularly those that increase in frequency with age. Proper cannabis use, as distinguished from misuse, may have significant positive health effects associated with the way cannabis mimics natural cannabinoids. In essence, it is proposed that the endocannabinoid system, selected by 600 million years of evolution, is a central mediator of biological harm reduction through its homeostatic activities. The social implications of cannabis use will be viewed as emerging from the biological platform. Herein lies the paradox of cannabis and harm reduction. Is appropriate use of cannabis better than no use?

This article contains a lot of useful links to peer-reviewed research into medical cannabis and an interesting approach to cannabinoids because of their regulatory functions.

[AndyTiedye]

1. k/r

[drokhole]

2. From Aldous Huxley's "The Doors of Perception"...

Happened to be reading it now, thought it was somewhat apropos to the idea of "harm reduction":

For unrestricted use the West has permitted only alcohol and tobacco. All the other chemical Doors in the Wall are labeled Dope, and their unauthorized takers are Fiends.

The universal and ever-present urge to self-transcendence is not to be abolished by slamming the currently popular Doors in the Wall. The only reasonable policy is to open other, better doors in the hope of inducing man and woman to exchange their old bad habits for new less harmful ones.
...
What is needed is a new drug which will relieve and console our suffering species without doing more harm in the long run than it does good in the short.
...
It must be less toxic than opium or cocaine, less likely to produce undesirable social consequences than alcohol or the barbiturates, less inimical to heart and lungs than the tars of nicotine and cigarettes. And, on the positive side, it should produce changes in consciousness more interesting, more intrinsically valuable than mere sedation or dreaminess, delusions of omnipotence or release from inhibition.

He was, as readers know, speaking more towards mescaline here. But, as studies and anecdotal experience has shown, this is wholly applicable to the effects/benefits of cannabis, as well.

[RainDog]

3. interesting quote

haven't read that one in a long time.

we're so far from seeing the value in seeing things in another way in this society. funny thing, tho, is that so many of the innovations that make it possible to use DU at this time were part of this other way of looking at the world.

http://www.americanscientist.org/bookshelf/pub/early-computings-long-strange-trip

John Markoff's What the Dormouse Said (the title is taken from the lyrics of the Jefferson Airplane song "White Rabbit") tells the story of the important period when the personal computer and the Internet as we know them came into being. He also describes how a new culture of drugs, sex and rock and roll was created at the same time as the computers, sometimes in the same rooms, by some of the same people. Some readers may be shocked by the degree to which the design of modern computing was a central component of the 1960s counterculture in Northern California.

Markoff's book covers the years 1960 to 1975 and the area south of San Francisco around Stanford University that would later come to be known as Silicon Valley. I arrived in Palo Alto in 1980, after the period described in the book, but got to know most of the people Markoff depicts. I can report that if anything, he underplays the degree to which they behaved in ways that would today be considered outrageous and radical, and what I saw was said to have been mild compared with what had come before.

...Masses of wires blossomed out of the rear ends of hot, giant early computers, looking rather like the hair on the heads of the engineers building them. The ragged, broken walls and ceilings were softened by the hippie décor and the fragrance of marijuana and candles, which created a warm ambience. And yes, there were drugs and naked people in the rooms where some of the code that now drives your e-mail around the globe was first set down. The people who conceived of critical aspects of modern computing moved in the same social circles as the musicians who became the Grateful Dead and the people who invented drug "tripping" and New Age spirituality.

What's also interesting now are studies about the value of psychotropics to help people overcome addictions of alcohol, to deal depression with the approach of death in terminally ill patients - I'm so tired of having a bunch of propaganda pass for reasonable policy in relation to anything associated with counter culture.

[drokhole]

4. Amazing.

I remember having read about some LSD experiments in the 60s involving both analytical executives and creative-types (led, I believe, by Leary) that produced some pretty astounding insights/breakthroughs. And, additionally, the somewhat famous account of Francis Crick being "under the influence of LSD when he first deduced the double-helix structure of DNA." Thanks for the link!

And I couldn't agree more with your assessment! In addition to LSD's promising results with rehabilitating alcohol addicts (and prisoners) in the '60s, there's the emerging research of Ibogaine's potential for treating hard-drug addictions (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=syztZcpj69U), and DMT's therapeutic effect for, as you said, assisting terminally ill/end-of-life patients (see Dr. Rick Strassman's work). And, as great as that is, it doesn't even include the fact that psychotropics most definitely can widen ones "normal" perspective of the world - usually in a way that begins to grasp the beauty of it all, which can lead to a more empathic individual. It's absolutely criminal that these things are not only dismissed, but vilified.

[libguy_6731]

5. +1

[Harry J Asslinger]

6. I dream of the day when they are acknowledged as our most powerful medicines and sublime tools.

Add to that the immense potential of MDMA therapy, opening for individuals not only an opportunity for "life review", but a new purview. Psilocybin mushrooms and the spiritual experience they bring forth. The potential that remains so unexplored because of their prohibition beggars description. I believe these materials could heal the world, if they were not verboten. But prohibition will end one day - a day that cannot come soon enough. More than ever, we need these things and their ability to reveal so much about ourselves and the world.

[RainDog]

7. The reality is if these substances were not associated with the counterculture

the prejudice against research into their uses would not exist. I don't know why psychedelics are considered more dangerous than heroin.

I have no desire to use anything like that for religious or recreational or medical reasons - but I also know that there is no reason to not consider their medical uses and if someone thinks such things enhance their religious experiences - I see no reason to stop them from using them either.

as with all of these things - I don't think children should have access to them.

and, of course, cannabis is SOOOOO much milder than any of these other things - it's strange it's included in a drug schedule with them.