Using opiods for pain is a hard thing for many people. Sure, the painkillers provide temporary relief from pain, but the side effects can be horrific. They tear up your organs, and often times lead to a level of addiction that ruins lives. If only there was another medicine out there that was effective that didn’t come with all of the problems…You see where I’m going with this. Medical marijuana is a proven form of treatment for pain, specifically neuropathic pain.
Recently researchers in Canada started pushing for Canadian doctors to substitute opioid based painkillers for medical marijuana. Per The Globe and Mail:
Canadian doctors should use medical marijuana instead of frequently abused opioids to treat patients with neuropathic pain and a host of other conditions cannabis has been proven to combat, Vancouver-based HIV/AIDS researchers argue in a newly published editorial.
Thomas Kerr, Julio Montaner and Stephanie Lake of the B.C. Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS argue the Canadian Medical Association is holding pot to a higher standard than other pain-relieving pharmaceutical drugs and is ignoring high-quality, peer-reviewed studies on the use of cannabis. Their editorial is in the latest edition of the Journal of the Canadian Public Health Association.
Dr. Kerr, co-director of the centre’s Urban Health Research Initiative, said five recent randomized control trials and two systemic reviews have found marijuana helps relieve neuropathic pain. Yet many doctors are still loathe to prescribe a drug that has not been approved by Health Canada.
Doctors should want their patients to get better, and in the meantime reduce their suffering. Getting patients hooked on pharmaceutical painkillers may reduce their suffering for a brief time, but it rarely results in patients getting better. As I said earlier, it often times ruins the person’s life with addiction and the creation of other ailments due to the side effects of the painkillers. Marijuana is medicine, proven by science, and it’s a much, much better alternative to pharmaceutical painkillers. It’s time that doctors in Canada, and around the world, got on board. People’s lives are depending on it.
