Fifth National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics

ISO2BWELL

This is looking like a very good conference to attend if you have interest in the more technical side of Medical Marijuana and the progress in research. I do plant to attend, if possible.

http://www.medicalcannabis.com/conference.htm

ISO

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Mogie

They look like a great group. Here is some more info.

PATIENTS OUT OF TIME
In 1995, following the deaths of a young AIDS couple who were in the IND program, my husband and I felt the need to take this issue more seriously. With the help of several legal patients and other health care professionals, we founded a national nonprofit organization, Patients Out of Time. We kept our mission simple: to educate the public and health care professionals about the therapeutic use of cannabis. Initially, we focused on getting more professional organizations to issue resolutions in support of patient access to cannabis. Next on our list was the American Public Health Association (APHA). I drafted and submitted a proposed resolution to the APHA, and it was passed at their annual meeting in California in 1995. I sent out copies of the Virginia Nurses Association's resolution and a letter to the leadership of all the state nurses associations. Colorado, Mississippi, and New York were among a few states that took action. The California Nurses Association had already passed a resolution in 1994. We posted a list of these organizations on our Website (medical marijuana. patient advocacy for cannabis as medicine, clinical conference), which we continually update as more organizations join the list. We verify accuracy before placing any organization on our list. In 2002,1 received a call from a New York nurse who was drafting a resolution on therapeutic cannabis to present at the American Nurses Association (ANA) 2003 House of Delegates meeting. I assisted in developing its content and went to the convention to speak on behalf of the resolution. It easily passed. I believe the ANA resolution most clearly encompasses the issues of concern regarding the marijuana prohibition. In 2005,1 was appointed to the National Organization for Women's (NOW) newly created Women and Drug Policy ad hoc Committee; among other issues, I will advocate for the organization to pass a resolution supporting therapeutic cannabis.


CHALLENGES IN DISSEMINATING INFORMATION ABOUT CANNABIS
In 1993,1 sent a manuscript on the ethical and legal dilemmas for nurses related to therapeutic cannabis to the American Journal of Nursing (AJN) to try to increase professional awareness on this issue. I received a rejection letter from the editor of AJN that said it wasn't appropriate. I called Mary Mallison, the editor-in-chief, and after a discussion she suggested I submit a second article on cannabis dosing. On receipt of that manuscript, I received a letter from the editorial director, Martin DiCarlantonio, which stated: "We'd like to accept your manuscript and run it as soon as marijuana is moved to Schedule II category (if that day ever comes)." In 1995, I was asked by Mary Gorman, RN, to write a manuscript for AJN's Substance Abuse column on the medical use of marijuana. I prepared it and submitted it with the projected publication date for the fall of 1996. Again, it was considered too controversial and remained in their files for more than a year until a change in editorial staff occurred. It was published in November 1997 (Mathre, 1997b). In the May 1998 issue, several positive letters to the editor were printed. I was told that no negative letters to the editor had been received.
In 1999, I decided to submit another article to AJN after reading an editorial by Dr. Diana Mason,A/N's new editor-in-chief, in which she urged nurses to work to influence health policy. This manuscript was published in 2001 (Mathre, 2001), and again, only positive letters to the editor were received. In 2004, I was asked to submit a manuscript to Nursing 2004 on therapeutic cannabis. It was accepted for publication, but in 2005 I received a letter stating it would not be published because they could not get anyone to submit an opposing view.


BIRTH OF A BOOK AND DEATH OF A JOURNAL
In 1995,1 began work on a cannabis book and began finding experts on various topics who were willing to contribute a chapter. Cannabis in Medical Practice was published in 1997 by McFarland, containing the work of 17 contributing authors (Mathre, 1997a). The book received great reviews. Although it wasn't a big seller, Dr. Geoffrey Guy, a physician and drug researcher from Great Britain, read my book which, per his acknowledgment, motivated him to start a pharmaceutical company to develop cannabis-based pharmaceuticals (GW Pharmaceutical). In large part because of my book, I was invited to serve on the editorial board of a new quarterly journal, The Journal of Cannabis Therapeutics, which premiered in 2001, published by Haworth Press. Unfortunately, due to the continued illegal status of cannabis, :his journal was not picked up by many university libraries or individual subscriptions, and the publication ceased by 2004. I served as coeditor along with Ethan Russo, MD, and Melanie Dreher, RN, PhD, FAAN, on Women and Cannabis: Medicine, science and Sociology (Russo et al, 2002), which A as published as a monograph in 2002.


RAISING AWARENESS AT PROFESSIONAL CONFERENCES
In 1995, I went to the continuing education department at the University of Virginia Health System and asked if they would host a national conference n cannabis therapeutics. My formal written proposal went to the top of the administration. Here it was immediately rejected. I countered with a request to limit it to a statewide nursing conference on the topic, since the 1994 Virginia Nurses association resolution called for the "education of Virginia Nurses on evidence-based use of cannabis." I was then informed by the director of the Continuing Education department that they wouldn't support such a conference because "it still had the same political issues." In 1996, my proposal for the 100th Anniversary Convention of the ANA to present Therapeutic Cannabis & the Law: Ethical Dilemma for Nurses was accepted, and in 2002 I presented "Evidence Based Support for Cannabis Therapeutics" as part of the NOLF Lecture series at the ANA convention in Philadelphia.


THE FIRST NATIONAL CLINICAL CONFERENCE ON CANNABIS THERAPEUTICS
In 1999, Dr. Dreher, who was now the Dean of the College of Nursing at the University of Iowa (and also on the Board of Directors for Patients Out of Time), was able to gain local support to hold a national conference at the University of Iowa. Patients Out of Time managed the agenda and faculty. In 2000, Patients Out of Time held The First National Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics with the University of Iowa's Colleges of Nursing and Medicine as cosponsors. We had an international conference faculty that included researchers, clinical experts, patients, and patients' care providers, and the conference was teleconferenced to seven other sites. One of them (second conference) was in Oregon sponsored by the Oregon Public Health Department, since their new law allowed patient use of cannabis under a physician's recommendation that was regulated by the Health Department. The Oregon Public Health Department broadcast the conference throughout its system, which led them to co-sponsor the second conference in Oregon with the Oregon Nurses Association in 2002. Since the first conference, we continue to hold biannual conferences. The audience feedback has been very positive, and the faculty has been very impressed with our "nursing" approach for the conference content.
At the third conference in 2004, which was cosponsored by the University of Virginia Schools of Medicine, Nursing, and Law (persistence pays off), we applied for and received grant funding to provide scholarships to legislators and health care professionals in leadership positions to attend the conference. Some of these scholarships were nurses representing various state nurses associations. These nurses took this information back to their leadership and had articles published in their state newsletters; subsequently, the nurses from Illinois and Connecticut were able to get resolutions passed by their state associations, and the nurse representing the Virginia nurses convinced the association to reaffirm their support of the issue with the passage of a second resolution supporting therapeutic cannabis. Laurie Badzek, the director of the ANA's Center for Ethics and Human Rights was also one of the scholarship recipients and informed me that she hopes to attend our fourth conference so that she can keep the ANA up to date on the issue. Our fourth conference was in April of 2006 in Santa Barbara, California and focused on getting funding for more such scholarships. We have DVD's of all the conference proceedings available on our Website, but we also hope to broadcast the next conference live on the Internet to increase the viewing audience.


THE NEED FOR EVIDENCE
In 2001, Patients Out of Time received grant funding from John Gilmore, Preston Parish, the Zimmer Family Foundation, and the Multidisciplinary Association for Psychedelic Studies to conduct an in-depth review of the chronic effects of cannabis on four of the surviving legal medical marijuana patients. These patients offered a unique opportunity for study because they had been receiving and using a known quality and quantity of cannabis provided by the federal government. The study was led by Ethan Russo, a pediatric neurologist and expert in cannabis therapeutics, and conducted in Missoula, Montana (Russo et al., 2002).


TAKING ON THE U.S. DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION
Attempts have been made to change the federal prohibition of cannabis and all have failed. Even the state initiatives that have been passed to allow patients to use cannabis medicinally under the recommendation of a physician have been thwarted by the federal government's prohibition. In November 2002, Jon Gettman, PhD, submitted a Petition to Reschedule Cannabis to the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) on behalf of a coalition of cannabis patients. Patients Out of Time is a leading member of that coalition and serves as the lead voice (DrugScience.org, 2005). According to the rules and regulations of the Controlled Substances Act, a drug in its natural form cannot be at a more restricted schedule than its active constituent (DrugScience.org, 2005). Synthetic THC (Marinol) was placed in Schedule II in 1980 and was approved for use as an anti-emetic and appetite stimulant. By 1989, due to a lack of diversion and its record of safety, it was moved to the less restrictive Schedule III. Following this, whole cannabis extracts should also be at a Schedule III or less restrictive category. The DEA accepted the rescheduling petition as a legitimate request and, according to protocol, passed it on to the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) for their review in 2004. Per protocol, they may take up to three years to review all of the new research that is available.


PROGRESS
The public's awareness and acceptance of therapeutic cannabis has increased over the years to 70% to 80% approval per public opinion polls (Medical Marijuana ProCon.org, 2005; NORML, 2005). Despite the federal prohibition, there are now 10 states that have passed voter initiatives for patient use of therapeutic cannabis and two states that have passed similar laws through legislative action. The recent discoveries of endogenous cannabinoids and cannabinoid receptors have spawned more research. Pharmaceutical companies are now conducting research into cannabis-based products. In 2005, an oro-mucosal cannabis extract spray, Sativex, developed by GW Pharmaceuticals in Great Britain was approved as medicine in Canada and approved for clinical trials to begin in the United States in 2006 for use with terminal cancer patients.


LOOKING INTO THE CRYSTAL BALL
International acceptance of cannabis-based medicines may help influence the United States to end its prohibition of medical cannabis. The body of science contained in the petition to reschedule cannabis hopefully will convince the DHHS about the efficacy of cannabis and get them to make a recommendation to place cannabis in Schedule III or a lower level of control. I believe that once health care professionals are familiar with this medication, it will be considered as the "drug of choice" in symptom management, because of its wide margin of safety, rather than the "last resort." Hopefully, medical cannabis will soon be on the market in the United States, and nurses are urged to increase their knowledge about how it may help their patients.

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ISO2BWELL

Mogie: Seems you got a double-post there...(I read both and saw no differences..(thought it was a test..LOL!)

Fortunately, I have to be in Vegas earlier that week, and am driving instead of flying for medicinal reasons. Plan right now is to stop in San Fran after the business is done and attend the conference. Hotel rooms around there are rediculiously expensive though...

ISO

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