Healthy News for Healthy Nation

As Michigan’s medical marijuana law takes full effect next month, sufferers of chronic pain and other ailments cheer while police predict problems

By Tim Jones |Tribune correspondent

Ron Stephens, who has a chronic neck disorder and depression, built his own marijuana “grow room” with high-powered lights and reflective paper on the walls. (E. Jason Wambsgans / Tribune photo / March 12, 2009)

PAW PAW, Mich.—At first glance they look like old pals, maybe a bunch from the Rotary Club leisurely gabbing away over the hamburger special, making the waitress work overtime for her tip.

But these guys are different. Their eyes, their fidgeting and their restlessness betray a shared bond of chronic pain, sleepless nights, depression and a reliance on heavy-duty prescription drugs. Around this lunchtime table, they talk about the only thing that gives them a measure of peace, the only thing that, for perhaps a few hours, sets them free: marijuana.

They’ve been smoking or eating marijuana for years—privately and illegally. And now, because Michigan voters approved marijuana use for the treatment of certain serious maladies, Bob White soon will be able to get himself together in his Three Rivers home “without having to draw the shades.”

Legalized medical marijuana is about to make its debut in Michigan, which becomes the 13th state and the first between the Rockies and the East Coast to embrace the controversial pain treatment. In a vote last November that defied the culture war/reefer madness connotation to the illegal drug, 63 percent of the state’s voters—and a majority in every county—said yes to medical marijuana. The measure collected 250,000 more votes than Barack Obama, who won the state easily.

“This shows that, bottom line, medical use of marijuana is not very controversial with the public,” said Wendy Chapkis, co-author of “Dying to Get High: Marijuana as Medicine.”

“Politicians are afraid to look soft on drugs, but the public understands that cannabis is not a problem for medical use,” Chapkis said.

The police disagree, and so do many politicians. In a change in federal policy, the Justice Department this week said it will go after California’s medical marijuana distributors only if they violate federal and state laws. Sen. Charles Grassley (R- Iowa) warned Thursday that such a policy will encourage use of harder drugs.

Opponents appear to be a minority protest against a movement gaining momentum. In the wake of the Michigan vote, legislatures in other states, including Illinois, Minnesota and New Jersey, are advancing bills to legalize the medical use of marijuana, and Michigan will be watched carefully to see how it works for people like the men who recently sat around a table at a west Michigan diner.

There is no sense of euphoria among the men, each weary from grinding pain. Their maladies include cancer, rheumatoid arthritis, neck, back and spinal problems, nerve disorders, depression and sleep apnea, for which they take a cabinetful of prescription painkillers and other medications. Marijuana provides only temporary relief. For them, marijuana is not the ticket to a better life, but to a temporarily less difficult one.

Some, like bleary-eyed Bill Kelly, who grew up in a conservative family, came to it apprehensively. Kelly, 26, suffers from nerve disorders and depression. His foot went numb over lunch.

“It got to the point where my psychiatrist was my drug dealer,” said Kelly, who said a turning point for him was when his doctor prescribed anti-psychotic drugs “and all I saw was red and green colors.” The Kalamazoo man said he started smoking marijuana in the past year.

Technically, medical marijuana became legal in Michigan in December, a month after the public vote. The law takes full effect in April, when doctors begin receiving applications from patients seeking authorization to use marijuana for illnesses such as cancer, HIV-AIDS, glaucoma and other maladies that provoke chronic pain. Once they receive cards authorizing marijuana use, patients can grow their own—up to 12 plants—or designate a “caregiver” who will grow marijuana for them. Unlike California, there will be no public dispensaries that sell marijuana.

But there are legal holes and inconsistencies in the law that, in many ways, will likely preserve the underground nature of marijuana use. Patients can legally buy marijuana on the street, but sellers can be prosecuted. Although patients can grow their own plants, they cannot legally obtain the seeds to grow them. Medical doctors are not required to participate. And, despite the imprimatur of legality from the state of Michigan, there is nothing in the law to protect medical marijuana patients from being dismissed by their employer for using marijuana.

Ron Stephens lost his job in 2007 after a urine test detected marijuana. Stephens, 50, suffers from depression and a chronic neck disorder that limits his neck, shoulder and arm movements. He’s undergone a spinal fusion operation, has lost the use of his right hand and cannot sit for more than 10 or 15 minutes. He spent a decade taking prescribed painkillers, including Vicodin, Percocet, and the synthetic narcotic methadone, which he took for two years.

“Somehow it was OK for me to show up for work with all those drugs in me,” said Stephens, who asked that his hometown not be identified. “Marijuana carries such a stigma. It’s so … stupid.”

Stephens is now growing his own marijuana, out of economic necessity, given its $125- to $300-per-ounce cost, he said. He built his own “grow room” with high-powered lights and reflective paper on the walls, which is really silver Christmas wrapping.

The grow-it-yourself decision presents a big problem because it puts patients at risk of break-ins and theft, said Greg Francisco, executive director of the Michigan Medical Marijuana Association, which led the successful ballot campaign.

So-called “grow-rippers” are only part of the concern of the police, who predict the law will ignite widespread marijuana abuse.

“You can call it medical marijuana, but this is the nose under the tent to the legalization of marijuana,” said George Basar, chief of police in Howell and president of the Michigan Association of Chiefs of Police. “My biggest fear is large, sophisticated growing operations and, eventually, storefront operations, which will lead to narcotics robberies.

“I think what we’ve done here is taken the pot needs of a small segment of the population and blew the door wide-open to lots of others,” Basar added.

Some supporters of the new law acknowledge the potential for abuse. Bob White, who suffers from myasthenia gravis, a muscle wasting disease, and arthritis of the back and knees, predicted “a few idiots will abuse it.” John Targowski, a criminal defense attorney in Kalamazoo who specializes in drug cases, said he worries that “opponents will succeed in convincing people that it is a Trojan horse for legalization.”

Targowski, 31, is a paraplegic who used cannabis under California’s medical marijuana law when he practiced in that state. He cautions against letting opponents define the law as a boon for bearded hippies and potheads. “This isn’t about people smoking joints, but I’m afraid it could turn into a culture war instead of a rational scientific discussion,” Targowski said.

The public seems to be miles ahead of the political establishment on the issue. Eleven of the 13 states that have approved medical marijuana have done so through public referendums, not the legislative process.

Majorie Russell, a professor at Thomas M. Cooley Law School in Lansing, said the measure passed in Michigan because large numbers of Baby Boomers either have personal experience or know someone who has gone through chemotherapy or suffers from chronic pain. “That changed a lot of attitudes,” Russell said.

That debate is not on the mind of Jack Hemsworth, who suffers from cancer and depression and did not want his hometown identified. The news media are to blame for portraying marijuana as “Reefer Madness,” he said. The issue that should be discussed, Hemsworth said, is choosing addiction to damaging prescription painkillers or embracing a drug, marijuana, that makes you—if only for a while—functional.

To him, there is nothing to debate.

“If you can escape time, that is bliss,” said Hemsworth, who, just a few minutes later, was doubled over by a severe spasm in his left hand.
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Photo: Jupiter Images

Faddish cryotherapy spas—reverse saunas in which below-zero temperatures allegedly tighten skin—may not have arrived stateside yet (they’re already hot in Europe), but the FDA is on the verge of approving an innovative fat-blasting device that could give new meaning to the phrase “freezing your ass off.” Cryolipolysis is a noninvasive procedure in which a doctor places a coffee-saucer-size suction-cup-like apparatus on the skin to gradually extract body heat until the subcutaneous levels of fat are frozen. Because the epidermis remains within a normal temperature range (and is also fundamentally more resistant to cold), skin remains undamaged. “Think of it as being essentially like an air-conditioning compressor,” says New York dermatologist David J. Goldberg, MD, who is involved in clinical trials of Cryolipolysis for the FDA. “The heat that gets sucked out of the fat layer is deposited in the outer layer on its way out, so the skin is protected.”

Pioneered by researchers at Harvard Medical School and Massachusetts General Hospital, Cryolipolysis derives from their discovery that fat cells are uniquely sensitive to cold. A study published in Lasers in Surgery and Medicine found that intense, localized freezing caused a loss of adipocytes (the cells involved in making and storing fat) in Yucatán pigs. Cold triggers the breakdown of fat by damaging the cells enough that they wither and, over time, will be naturally metabolized by the lymphatic system. For years, we’ve been heating and pummeling cellulite to melt it away, but now it appears that the opposite approach is more viable. “This is a complete reversal of everything we’ve been doing with lasers for the past 20 years, which has involved cooling the outer layer of skin so that it doesn’t blister while heating the layer below,” Goldberg says. Although quantifiable comparisons can’t be made until FDA approval is granted, Cryolipolysis promises to be more effective than other noninvasive procedures (such as those that employ radio frequencies and acoustic waves) and safer than lipo. Also, the results are uniform. “All of the cells respond the same way when frozen, so you get a smooth reduction in the area that has been treated,” says Goldberg, who projects that the device will be approved and in use within the next few months.

Cryolipolysis has shown no side effects in the 200 subjects tested so far; the process is painless (“barring a little numbness,” Goldberg says); and the results are impressive. “You can have about a 25 percent reduction in fat deposits from a single session,” says New York dermatologist Neil Sadick, MD. One treatment is likely to be sufficient, but follow-up sessions may be required for some patients, depending on the amount of fat they wish to lose. Currently, the patent-holding manufacturer, Zeltiq, has designed suction cups only large enough to target love handles and saddlebags (the technique is most effective where fat is densest), but broader areas such as stomachs or thighs may be treatable down the road. The only drawback might be that it takes a few months to see the full results, as the fat breaks down gradually. And the procedure itself might not be as quick as some would like: “Because the fat has to be cooled incrementally, it takes about an hour,” Goldberg says. “But then, it’s not like it’s laborious: Once the doctor positions the machine and switches it on, all you need to do is grab a magazine and sit there.”

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By Amy Norton

NEW YORK (Reuters Health) - A cup of green tea per day may help keep gum disease at bay, a new study suggests.

Researchers found that among middle-aged Japanese, the odds of having gum disease declined as the men’s intake of green tea rose.

For each daily cup they drank, the risk of having signs of gum disease — including receding, easily bleeding gums — inched downward, the researchers report in the Journal of Periodontology.

The findings do not mean, however, that green tea is a substitute for seeing the dentist. The relationship between green tea and lower odds of gum disease was fairly weak, Dr. Yoshihiro Shimazaki, one of the researchers on the study, told Reuters Health.

Good overall oral care, Shimazaki said, is what’s most important.

For the study, Shimazaki and his colleagues at Kyushu University in Fukuoka, Japan, examined 940 men between the ages of 49 and 59 for signs of gum disease. The men also completed a questionnaire on smoking and drinking habits, tooth-brushing habits and green tea intake.

In general, the study found, the odds of gum disease declined as green tea intake climbed, even with the other lifestyle factors considered. The researchers did, however, lack information on the men’s overall diet, and past studies have suggested that certain foods and nutrients — like whole grains, fiber and vitamin C — may protect against gum disease.

If green tea itself does combat gum disease, it may be because of its concentration of antioxidant compounds called polyphenols, according to Shimazaki.

Gum disease arises from bacterial infection, and lab research suggests that green tea polyphenols can inhibit those germs and the damage they cause.

SOURCE: Journal of Periodontology, March 2009.

By Claire Suddath

Dr. Peter J. Bentley, a research scientist at University College London, can answer questions on almost any scientific topic. His book Why Sh*t Happens: The Science of a Really Bad Day explores 39 typical mishaps — breaking a bone, losing your balance, getting crapped on by a bird — and explains exactly what happens and why. Bentley talked to TIME about the science behind a bad day.

TIME: You write about why we get dizzy — the liquid in our inner ears sloshes around. Is that similar to when people get motion sickness?
Yes, it is. We’re all hardwired to correlate a jolt in our balance with a jolt in our vision systems; that helps us maneuver through the world. If one happens without the other, it’s a bit weird and we don’t like it so much. Basically, if you’re in a vehicle, your vision is stationary. You aren’t seeing the bumps in the road, but you are feeling them, and that’s when you start getting uncomfortable.

It reminds me of an experiment you can perform on yourself. When we move around, our eyes are hardwired to balance things out, a bit like an antishake mechanism in a camera. As we wobble about, our eyes wobble to smooth out the picture. They can move up and down and left and right, but our eyes balance in a rotational way as well. If you look in a mirror and tilt your head all the way to one side so that one ear is pointing to the ceiling, and then tilt your head all the way to the other side, look at what your eyes are doing in the mirror. Your eyes are actually rotating around in their sockets, on an axis from your nose to the back of your head. It looks really weird and a bit freaky.

You also talk about honeybees, and you mention the dance that bees do to tell other bees where food is. I’ve always wondered, How did we figure something like that out? Did a bunch of scientists sit around one day and suddenly go, “Oh, so that’s what they’re doing!”?
Basically, we ran a bunch of experiments on bees and it was clear that they had some way of telling each other what was going on. They were definitely communicating something, but it wasn’t clear what. So a number of trials were conducted where certain factors were controlled. One of the factors [that was] changed was the direction of the sun. And the bees’ behavior changed. When they went back in the hive, they started wiggling about differently. The next step is to correlate the exact position of the sun with the direction in which they do their dance. It’s detective work, basically. (Read about honeybees in California’s almond orchards.)

You also write about bird poop.
That I did.

One of the things you mention is that white bird poop means a bird is stressed. But when I see it around, it’s almost always white. Are birds always stressed?
I meant when it’s almost completely white. Um, I don’t know how much detail you want, but the dark bits in the middle? If you don’t see any of that and it’s all white, then the bird is a bit more stressed.

You talk about blood and muscles. One of the things you mention is varicose veins. What exactly are they?
Well, your blood runs all over your body, so it obviously has to go against the direction of gravity sometimes. The only way you can do that is to have valves. They keep the blood from falling back down in between your heart pulses. Varicose veins are when valves don’t work. Blood can’t work its way up anymore, so it starts to pool and the vein starts to swell and it gets painful and horrible. At the moment with our technology, we can’t replace the valve, so the cure is often to strip them out and rely on the remaining healthy veins.

You claim that if you scratch the top part of a CD, where the label is, it’s actually worse than if you scratch the bottom.
Yes, it’s surprising, isn’t it? The laser looks through the clear bit, so we assume that’s the delicate side. But actually, because of the way they’re made — you start off with this lump of clear plastic and then you stick the foil on it, and then you stick a label on top of that — it’s much thinner on the label side than it is on the other side. If you scratch the clear side, you can kind of polish it out. But if you scratch the label side, you’re screwed. This is why jewel cases are designed to hold CDs in the air and stop [both sides] from touching.

So you pretty much know everything about everything?
Obviously, I can’t answer everything, but the point of the book is to encourage people to be curious. Little kids have it right — running around and asking “Why?” all the time is the right thing to do. I think we should all keep doing that. And that’s why being a scientist is the best job in the world. There’s a lot of misinformation out there, like the CD thing, and it’s nice to be able to explain the truth to people. With a little effort, you can learn something that lets you see the world in a completely different light.

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