Why Is Chronic
Pain The Most Prevalent Reason For Seeking a Medical Card?
In the current
era, there is a push towards individual states legalizing marijuana for
medicinal use. At this point, 16 states plus the District of Columbia have
legalized it and there are over 10 more states with it on the imminent horizon.
Federally, it remains illegal and a Schedule 1 narcotic.
One of the
ubiquitous reasons for legalizing medicinal marijuana is the debilitating
condition of chronic pain. This is the number one reason in every state that
has it legalized for usage, and in some states it is the overwhelming favourite.
Why?
First of all,
let us look at the sheer numbers for chronic pain. The Institute of Medicine
came out with a recent study showing that over 100 million Americans (1/3 of
the population) suffers from some sort of chronic pain. The cost exceeds $500
billion dollars annually between direct cost, lost work time, disability, etc.
It's a mind blowing statistic.
There are two
well known types of treatment for chronic pain that exist in the US -
traditional and alternative. Traditional includes those treatments that are
mainstream, typically reimbursed by insurance, and have significant peer
reviewed research backing up their usage. Also traditional treatments often
have FDA approval for their use, but not always.
Alternative
treatments are those that are not typically reimbursed by insurance, and may
not have a lot of research backing them up. This does not demean their
potential efficacy for chronic pain, especially when used in conjunction with
traditional treatments. It is simply a way of categorizing the two. Some
alternative methods include holistic, naturopathic, acupuncture, biofeedback,
herbal, and some still include chiropractic and massage in this category. This
is changing as more insurances reimburse for them along with more research
being available.
Patients end up
with chronic pain for innumerable reasons. It could be a failed back surgery
that only got rid of 20% of a patient's pain, or a condition such as peripheral
neuropathy that has no surgical answer. A patient may have scleroderma or
rheumatoid arthritis, that entail diffuse pain that may or may not be
responsive to narcotic medications.
One ubiquitous
issue that is seen with chronic pain is narcotics. Most patients, if they are
legitimate hard working individuals, despise taking narcotics. They hate having
to take more to get the same pain relief (tolerance), and want to be
productive, pain free, and able to stay away from a mind altering and addictive
substance to do it.
It is not a bad
thing to see such a large number of chronic pain patients turning to an
alternative method of pain relief, medicinal marijuana. The only bad part about
it is when illegitimate patients start using it (think the 18 year old faking
back pain to get a medical marijuana card). The incidence of this happening is
a very small number of the total.
With the sheer
numbers of patients in the US with chronic pain, and the variety of reasons as
to why these patients got to that point, means the pool of applicants for
medicinal marijuana cards will be much deeper than the other reasons. Giving
them an option that is non-addictive, natural, and legal will open up an avenue
of hope and optimism than continuing the negativism of narcotic addiction and
despair.
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