Cancer is a condition that seems to enjoy universal acceptance in terms of medical cannabis qualifying conditions. To my knowledge, every state that has legalized medical cannabis allows doctors to recommend it to cancer patients. But why? Is cannabis a cure for cancer? Absolutely not.
Anyone who would promote cannabis as a cancer cure would be guilty of outright lying. As far as we know at this point, cannabis doesn’t cure anything. It is recommended simply as a means of alleviating symptoms. Medical cannabis offers a way to help people feel better in the midst of trying medical conditions. Cancer just happens to be one of those conditions.
Cannabis is a recommended treatment for cancer patients to offer both symptom relief and treatment-related comfort. The easiest way to understand is to look at the two primary ways in which cannabis helps cancer patients.
1. Alleviating Cancer Pain
Some types of cancer manifest no symptoms in their earliest stages. But the one thing most cancers have in common is that they produce pain as they progress. Cancer pain can be excruciating depending on the type of cancer you are talking about and where it is located within the body. Along those same lines, cancer pain can also be debilitating.
A body already struggling against cancer is in no position to fight off the potential negative effects of prescription painkillers. As such, an oncologist might be reluctant to prescribe painkillers if it is believed that the medication could hamper otherwise successful treatment. But where does that leave the cancer patient?
Medical cannabis is recommended in such cases to help relieve the pain. Just as with prescription painkillers, there is no guarantee that cannabis will work. But according to the operators of the Utahmarijuana.org website, pain is consistently at the top of a list of conditions for which patients request medical cannabis.
Treatment Pain Is Very Real
Anyone who has been treated for cancer can tell you that the treatments themselves can produce additional pain. I have even heard people say that their treatment-related pain was more severe than the pain of the disease itself. Medical cannabis can help relieve that pain.
Considering just how bad cancer often is, it is natural to want to relieve a patient’s suffering. If nothing else, medical cannabis can do that.
2. Treatment Symptoms
Cancer is such an invasive disease that we hate to take drastic steps to treat it. The two most common forms of cancer treatment are chemotherapy and radiation therapy. Both have devastating impacts on the body. Both also create additional symptoms patients are left to deal with.
A fairly routine symptom of chemotherapy is persistent nausea. Imagine being a cancer patient dealing with physical pain and mental anguish. The last thing you need going into a chemotherapy session is the promise of feeling terribly nauseous afterward. Nausea is another experience you could do without.
Medical cannabis can be recommended to alleviate the nausea. Although the amount of clinical evidence proving its efficacy is limited, countless numbers of cancer patients report that it works. So if relieving patient suffering is part of the treatment equation, it makes sense to provide medical cannabis upon request.
Cancer is a terrible disease I would not wish on anyone. Several of my relatives have died from it. I am thankful that their medical teams did everything they could to provide comfort and relief. And although none of my relatives asked for medical cannabis, at least one of them could have. I think that is a good deal and something we should continue to promote.
