This is highly misleading
Labour backbencher and former health minister Godfrey Farrugia called for the decriminalisation of specifically NON-SMOKABLE cannabis: medications made with cannabis content, for the relief of pain and extreme nausea in cancer patients and others suffering from certain conditions.
He made a direct comparison to morphine, which is perfectly legal for use in medicine, and which has long been used by doctors to bring down the pain levels of patients in extremis. Yet that does not mean that morphine is available in pharmacies or in morphine cafes to be used by any Tom, Dick and Harry out for a buzz.
Nor did Farrugia suggest that cancer patients should be able to buy regular street cannabis and smoke joints under special licence.
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But confirmation bias sufferers will interpret it they way they need it it to be and not the way Dr. Farrugia meant it to be.
Hi Daphne,
I really do not see what all the fuss is about legalizing this. Maybe its that the big boys are trying to find ways they can control it and make billions from it.
But I am also sure that you know that Canada sells weed and hash in vending machines to the general public. They say the only problem they have with the vending machines is:
1.) Long Cues.
2.) Keeping them stocked.
Like alcohol, once the big boys secure rights to distribute this stuff, you will see it legalized here where no man worships god.. they worship money.
I take it you also subscribe to quite a few other conspiracy theories.
Perhaps even totally contradictory ones, like “the big boys are trying to find ways they can control it” and “Canada sells …. in vending machines”
It also seems the “big boys” there have problems with the absolute basics, such as keeping up with demand, so says you.
P.S. another hot tip – Cues are used to play snooker and the like with.
Cannabis is not sold to just anyone off the street from vending machines.
Your statement is a bit misleading, as to gain access to this vending machine, one needs to show a dispensary membership card which is only given out with a doctor’s consent form.
These vending machines are very rare right now but they are a delight to the news media, as short attention span readers get blasted with sensationalist headlines of cannabis sold in vending machines to any Tom Dick or Harry, which is not true.
http://www.theprovince.com/technology/Vancouver+marijuana+vending+machine+first+kind+Canada/9815601/story.html
Not quite sure where in Canada this happens. I must be living in some sort of parallel universe. Canada allows the use of marijuana for medical purposes, if “authorized by a physician”.
http://www.hc-sc.gc.ca/dhp-mps/marihuana/index-eng.php
And, yes, Daphne, patients literally smoke joints.
……joints that are bought from licensed suppliers, suppliers who are now becoming part of a new big industry.
QUEUES….
In the U.S. licensed “patients” can buy smokable marijuana like any other medication from the chemist. It is of course legal in Colorado and more states will probably legalise it within the next few years. I am all for it being legal, it certainly is not more dangerous or addictive than alcohol.
After having been shifted to the back benches by Muscat, is Dr. Farrugia looking for his fifteen minutes of glory?
We already have Michael Falzon, who in his ‘deal world’ is defending the FKNK and the hunters’ lobby. We have Manuel Mallia who is pushing for the decriminalisation of drug abuse, pushing the agenda of the famous Santian Barunijiet. Now we have Dr. Farrugia. Who’s agenda is he pushing? Is this also fishing for votes from ‘minorities’?
Manuel, this backbencher proposed a very useful drug when it comes to reducing the side effects of chemotherapy. It is useful and an effective antiemetic. Stop with your theories…
Malta’s society must be on guard against ANY proposal to liberalise self-medication with any psychotropic medicine. That would evidently be a Trojan horse destined to explode the hedonist abuse of mind-distorting drugs. We already have a big enough problem with nicotine and alcohol. There is absolutely no need to add cannabis today and God knows what else tomorrow.
Dr Saliba, quite obviously you are lucky enough to have been spared the excruciating pain that cancer patients endure otherwise you would be singing to a different tune.
As a doctor you know more than anyone else how many different and poisonous pain medications we cancer patients have to ingest (mainly morphine), sometimes with little or no effect, therefore I find it strange, to say the least, that you would be against the use of medical cannabis oil in a controlled way as is the case with other narcotic drugs.
Nobody seems to find anything wrong with the daily dose of methadone given to drug addicts at the detox centre, and yet you would begrudge cancer patients like myself (who are not sick by choice) the opportunity of enjoying a better quality of the life that they may have left.
Although I have so far escaped the excruciating pain of cancer myself, my family has not escaped.
What I find excruciatingly and needlessly painful is the horrible truth that even as a qualified doctor I was prevented from alleviating the wracking cough and pain of my dying wife with traditional heroin-cocaine official medicine because I could no longer obtain them across the pharmacy counter as a result of the selfish hedonist abuse of those precious medicines by junkies.
Now perhaps you may understand that it is not the medical profession that is denying you relief from pain but it is the egoist pleasure seeking drug culture that is doing it.
I do not think that you are commenting “as a doctor” (that is what you wrote). Had that been true you would not be surprised that I, a real doctor, would prefer that mind-altering drugs should be used only under strict supervision by trained qualified people and not also by junkies pretending to be self-treating themselves when they are only after “kicks”.
So this has nothing to do with the decriminalisation of marijuana. It simply means that the health authorities will approve and register medicines containing marijuana as an active ingredient.
In actual fact, we do not know whether any importer has ever applied for registration for such a product and been refused.
Good God, they make it sound like cannabis based medicines are something new, which they are not.
One could have gotten a doctor’s prescription for cannabis tincture or even raw cannabis flower buds in powdered form, all from the usual big pharmaceutical manufactures like Eli Lilly and Parke-Davis etc. in the USA till 1941 and in Britain till the early 1970s.
http://www.pinterest.com/420buds/old-cannabis-medicine/
Powerful useful psychotropic medicines ceased to be available by medical prescription for justified therapeutic use because of the rampant abuse of those useful medicines by hedonist junkies. That is where the blame should be laid, not at the door of the medical profession, the law-givers with a social conscience, the police and the law courts.
[Daphne – Doctors played a huge part in this, Dr Saliba, with GPs writing out repeat prescriptions because it was easier for them to do this than to handle the withdrawal symptoms of the diazepam addicts they had created. And those diazepam addicts were and probably still are not hedonist junkies but just average men and women with the usual life problems.]
I am referring specifically to psychotropic drugs deliberately abused frequently by the drug culture for recreational purposes. Diazepam and other benzodiazepines are anxiolytics that do not fall in that category.
Unfortunately they are very habit forming and doctors are always trying to dissuade anxious persons from resorting to them for long periods. These genuinely anxious patients often move from doctor to doctor who wouldn’t know that they have already become dependent on it.
Hats off for Dr Godfrey Farrugia for having the courage and conviction to propose the introduction of medical cannabis in Malta.
There is still much ignorance about this subject with most people associating medical cannabis with the same substance which is found on the streets and which is clandestinely acquired for “so called” recreational use.
All over the world medical cannabis has improved the lives of many cancer patients who otherwise depended on very strong and damaging pain killers like morphine to alleviate their daily suffering.
Many people like myself who live in constant pain thank Dr Farrugia for the time and effort he has put into researching this subject before bringing it before parliament and we look forward to its introduction as part of a controlled programme for acute pain management.
It certainly has improved my life when dealing with my arthritis.
I would never take any doctor prescribed opiate based painkillers when cannabis works so much better and with much less side-effects when coping with this disease, in my case anyways.
On another note, this makes for an interesting read.
http://www.theguardian.com/education/2014/jun/09/boarding-schools-bad-leaders-politicians-bullies-bumblers?CMP=fb_gu
I definitely agree with cannabis being used as a controlled drug (with a green prescription).
All controlled drugs are addictive like cannabis yet they have their benefits if used properly.
The level of control over such drugs is so good that never have there been any cases of abuse (as far as I know). Every part of the transport and storage is recorded with a specific pharmacist being personally in charge. The system is (almost) foolproof.
I don’t know if you are joking when you say that ‘there have never been any cases of abuse’ because people are admitted into hospital, with an overdose of the controlled drugs you mention, almost daily. These patients have a different profile from those that people are used to, they are mostly middle aged women and young ladies with or without a previous history of depression.
There have also been a number of cases where professionals have abused of drugs found in hospital and transfers from places of work have resulted due to this.
The system is controlled to a certain extent but far from foolproof. Off the cuff, one of the worries I would have is increased pressure and manipulation of the elderly to get a prescription for the use of some other person.
The Baltimore Sun reports:
“According to a report … by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, hospitalizations for poisoning by prescription opioids, sedatives and tranquilizers jumped 65 percent from 1999 to 2006. One-third of new addicts report that their first drug experience was with prescription drugs.”
[Daphne – The most common form of abuse of prescription psychotropic drugs is doctors keeping their patients permanently on what should be a short-term course of, say, diazepam. The result is many people hooked on diazepam for years, and others who cannot get through life without anti-anxiety pills. Did you notice the panic when supplies of Buspirone ran out at the hospital pharmacy, which is the only dispensing outlet for this anxiety drug? People were emailing me telling me that they were literally terrified because their supply was running out. The government had to airlift in special emergency supplies. http://www.mayoclinic.org/drugs-supplements/buspirone-oral-route/description/drg-20062457 Keeping people hooked on psychotropic drugs because of the problems of normal adult life is the creation of an army of ‘legal’ addicts. They remain addicts all the same, and the situation is worrying.]
Incidentally, Buspirone happens to be one of those drugs that need to be tailed down slowly before they are stopped.
This has nothing to do with addiction. Prednisolone and other oral steroids need to be tailed down too, so we’re not just talking about psychiatric drugs only.
The anxiety caused by Buspirone was even worse because patients on this drug could not get their supply from private pharmacies.
As for Diazepam and the like, you’re right, very often it’s the doctor’s fault that the patient becomes addicted. They are only licensed for short periods and the doctor is expected to prescribe drugs which will help correct the imbalance of chemicals in the brain.
However, make no mistake about this, depression and anxiety are real illnesses which require real medication. True, sometimes they are triggered by life events and the patient is unable to overcome the situation, but others develop such conditions spontaneously. It’s not fair to lump everyone in one sack and say that these are people who are unable to face their problems.