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05/06/05

Dr. O'Connell's Statement to Medical Board of California

Although, cannabis had been widely used as an herbal palliative in Western Medicine for nearly a century, all prescriptive use was abruptly ended by passage of the Marijuana Tax Act in 1937. Thus, whatever evidence persuaded California voters to pass Proposition 215
in 1996 must have been provided by individuals engaging in what was- of necessity- illegal self-medication during the late Eighties and early Nineties.

In fact, the disclosure of those illegal experiments by Doblin and Kleiman in the peer-reviewed medical literature in 1991 had called attention to the phenomenon and also provided some initial impetus for what eventually became a successful initiative.

After I began screening cannabis applicants in late 2001, the discovery that nearly all were already chronic users who had originally tried it during adolescence-- at about the same time most had also tried alcohol and tobacco-- led me to develop a structured interview aimed at a better understanding of that same self-medication phenomenon. Over three thousand such encounters have
now been recorded and enough data from over 1200 structured interviews has been analyzed to permit the admittedly startling conclusions I will share with you this morning:

1) Demographic data amply confirm that a vigorous illegal "marijuana" market didn't begin until cannabis was first made available to large numbers of adolescents and young adults during the 'hippie' phenomenon of the late Sixties.

2) The subsequent sustained growth of that illegal market, although difficult to measure precisely, is widely acknowledged. Those same applicant demographics also suggest that the continued growth has resulted from chronic use by an unknown fraction of the teen initiates faithfully tracked by annual federal surveys since 1975.

3) The striking temporal association between initiation of cannabis on the one hand, and tobacco and alcohol on the other, first noted by researchers in the early Seventies was confirmed; however, the "sequence" they also noted in which cannabis was usually the third agent tried no longer obtains. All three are now tried at similar
ages-- and in random order.

4) Those findings, together with an almost universal acknowledgement of similar emotional symptoms, suggests that rather than acting as a "gateway" to other drugs, cannabis has, since the late Sixties,
become a third agent tried unwittingly along with alcohol and tobacco by troubled adolescents-- and for similar emotional symptoms.

In other words, what the three agents have in common is an ability to treat symptoms of adolescent angst and dysphoria; and thus function as self-medications.

5) That interpretation is further supported by several other findings developed by systematic inquiries into their family and school experiences- plus their initiations of a menu other illegal drugs- including both psychedelics and "street" drugs.

6) There is also startling-- yet conclusive-- evidence that once they had settled on cannabis as their self-medication of choice, this population then dramatically diminished its consumption of both alcohol and tobacco in sustained fashion. Federal statistics gathered since 1970 also show a gradual parallel decrease in the consumption
of both-- plus some related improvements in health outcomes.

7) The bottom line seems to be that in addition to its better-known ability to relieve several somatic symptoms, cannabis has also been a beneficial psychotropic medication for many of its chronic users since their adolescence.

This unique clinical evidence also suggests that cannabis was a benign and safe anxiolytic/antidepressant long before any pharmaceutical agents were even available for those purposes-- and that it still outperforms most of them in both efficacy and safety.

This evidence further suggests that current attitudes toward cannabis are not only profoundly mistaken; but that continued aggressive prohibition inflicts great damage on both individuals and society.

My primary reason for sharing this information with you at this early phase is precisely because it is so radically at odds with both official policy and popular beliefs; a collateral reason is to point out that gathering such data wasn't even possible until 215 was passed.

Finally, because the 'medical marijuana' laws passed by other states have been so restrictive, the acquisition of such data has only been possible in California.

A more detailed account of these findings is available at:
http://www.ccrmg.org/journal/05spr/anxiety.html.

Respectfully,
Thomas J. O'Connell MD
CA Lic. G20034