Can marijuana be an effective treatment for glaucoma?

3
  by: mariathc Tue June 19, 2012 at 4:16 PM MDT

 Medical marijuana has also been used to reduce acute and chronic pain associated with cancer patients terminally ill with remarkable efficiency. It also has a rich history of providing relief from such things as nausea, headaches, menstrual cramps and painful muscle spasms.

After cataract, glaucoma is the leading cause of blindness worldwide. He reached over 60 million people worldwide. Glaucoma is caused by a progressive accumulation of excess fluid in the body of the eye. When excess fluid causes increased pressure in the eye, the optic nerve can become seriously compromised leading to blindness. Research results from as far back as 1970 found that marijuana contains active ingredients that can both reduce intraocular pressure in the eye and the pain caused by the actual state.

The medical benefits of marijuana are not a new phenomenon in this country. In contrast, before 1937, there were about 27 different types of prescription drugs that contain THC, the active ingredient in marijuana. A pharmaceutical company like Eli Lilly and Squibb has developed several of these drugs based on THC with relatively high degrees of success. However, the federal government, by adopting the Marijuana Tax Act of 1937, caused the general prohibition of marijuana to be used as a medicine legally.

Works exactly how medical marijuana in glaucoma is not completely understood, but it is thought that marijuana produces certain chemicals that can effectively reduce intraocular pressure in the eye.

Conventional treatment for glaucoma has focused on the preservation of vision by slowing the deterioration of the optic nerve caused by a dangerous increase in intraocular pressure. Treatment options involve drugs that lower the pressure inside the eye. This is why medical marijuana has received much attention in patients with glaucoma. However, a new generation of glaucoma is now released promising to be more efficient, while medical marijuana because of the ability of these drugs actually reverse the disease progression.

A major disadvantage of having to use medical marijuana to relieve symptoms of glaucoma is that marijuana has a fairly short-lived duration of its effectiveness is usually limited to only two or three hours. This requires that glaucoma patients use cannabis to eight times a day to get the same kind of relief other glaucoma medications currently provide.

Like most of the marijuana taken to treat glaucoma is consumed by smoking, a patient must consider the risks associated with smoke inhalation. Street marijuana is not organically grown and therefore often contains impurities that can irritate and cause damage to both the lungs and trachea of the patient. This is less true with medical marijuana, which is one reason why patients with glaucoma have urged lawmakers to legislate the use of medicinal marijuana.

Currently there are 17 states that allow medicinal use of marijuana for certain types of diseases. Glaucoma is one of them. Currently, in states like California, medical marijuana is legal as long as the patient can produce identification medical marijuana card and the recommendation of 420 doctor use, which identifies the patient as a person who received a recommendation for physicians to treat disease medical subject.

Upon obtaining these documents, a patient may consult a medical marijuana dispensary in local or clinic and get their medicine themselves.  


Full story: Can marijuana be an effective treatment for glaucoma?

3 Community Comments, Facebook Comments

  1. Gray in Mountains says:
    Tue June 19, 2012 at 9:54 PM MDT

    because you can’t do it in the past. But, you can edit this diary and improve it.

    Yes, pot has been used for several decades efficaciously for glaucoma. If I were using it for that purpose I would use an edible to better titrate dosage. Or, one big blunt and take a hit every 2-3 hours.

    • Leonard Smalls says:
      Wed June 20, 2012 at 1:26 AM MDT

      Granted, it’s a change of pace from payday loan spam, but spam nonetheless.

      • CaninesCanines says:
        Wed June 20, 2012 at 7:09 PM MDT

        http://www.drugsense.org/dpfwi…

        The first legal user of marijuana for medicinal reasons, Mr. Randall also was a key figure in a lawsuit that resulted in a controversial 1987 ruling. The decision, which was subsequently ignored by Drug Enforcement Administration officials, was written by the agency’s chief administrative law judge, who wrote that marijuana was “one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man”…

        [Randall] said he first noticed that marijuana helped his eyesight when smoking it with a friend at an Arlington apartment in 1973.

        Mr. Randall and O’Leary had been on vacation in 1975 when marijuana plants were discovered on their porch during a raid on a neighboring apartment. He presented the court with the then-novel claim that the glaucoma from which he was suffering was alleviated by smoking marijuana, an idea that even his lawyer found hard to hear at first without chuckling.

        But it was no laughing matter to Mr. Randall, who found supporting research and went through a battery of tests conducted by a UCLA researcher to support his claims.

        In November 1976, D.C. Superior Court Judge James A. Washington ruled that Mr. Randall “has established a defense of necessity. . . . The evil he sought to avert, blindness, is greater than that he performed.”

        The charges were dismissed. Working on a separate track, Mr. Randall’s attorneys successfully petitioned the Food and Drug Administration to have him included in a research program that allotted him 10 marijuana joints a day.

        The marijuana was grown at a University of Mississippi farm, rolled into cigarettes at a facility in North Carolina, and shipped in a tin to pharmacies near Mr. Randall, where he would pick them up to good-natured joking from the pharmacists.

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