Page 3249 - Week 11 - Wednesday, 21 September 1994
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One of the other disadvantages - and I am going to use the word "environment" in the broad sense today - of the environment in which people deal with each other is that cannabis is particularly useful as a medicine. There are a number of areas where other medicines simply do not deliver what cannabis does. One of the most interesting writers on this is Lester Grinspoon. Dr Grinspoon is quoted in the latest briefing notes published by the Australian Parliamentary Group for Drug Law Reform, which would have been distributed to all members. Professor Grinspoon and Dr James Bakalar from Harvard have given anecdotal evidence about what happens when people use cannabis as a medicine. I am going to quote just a small part of the briefing notes:
Grinspoon describes in his book how he first became interested in the potential benefits of cannabis when his ten year old son developed leukaemia in the early 1970s. Chemotherapy for his son's leukaemia inevitably resulted in a wretched state of profound nausea and projectile vomiting. Soon, just the thought of the next day's session of chemotherapy was enough to start the process.
People who undergo chemotherapy in our hospitals will tell you that, even when they walk into hospital, they get an overwhelming feeling of nausea simply from the smell. The people who are working there do not recognise that smell. It is only those people who have been through chemotherapy who recognise that distinctive smell. It has that impact on them.
The briefing notes go on to state:
All conventional treatments were tried and failed. A colleague suggested that Grinspoon and his wife try giving their son some cannabis.
He resisted at first; but, seeing the wretched state of his son, he decided to try it. Parents will, of course, try anything when they think it is going to be of benefit to their children. The document continues:
The results were dramatic. Of course the Grinspoons did not dare tell their son's oncologist that they were going to give their son an illegal substance to control his suffering. However, at the next chemotherapy session, the oncologist noticed that their son was unusually cheerful. On the way home, the Grinspoons were delighted that their son was ravenously hungry and happily demolished large quantities of food.
As I remember, in the original telling of the story it was at McDonald's or one of those outlets. The question remains: Should the Grinspoons have been made to feel like criminals for trying as hard as they could to relieve their dying son's distress?
Mr Deputy Speaker, I had a grandmother approach me not so long ago with a problem with glaucoma. She had been trying a series of other medicines. The pressure behind the eyes caused by glaucoma, we know, can be relieved by the use of cannabis. Other drugs will work in a majority of cases, but in some cases other drugs simply do not do so or their side effects are very significant. With minimal side effects, cannabis, in
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