New York judge with cancer makes case for marijuana
David Cohen, M.D.·Published 18 May 2012·8 min read
Key points
A cancer-stricken judge in New York has become an unlikely voice in support of legalizing the use of medical marijuana with the admission that he smokes pot to ease the side-effects of his treatments.
The greatest health danger of marijuana is due to smoking, like cigarettes.
In New York, disciplinary actions involving judges are handled by the state's Commission on Judicial Conduct, which reviews allegations of criminal activity and other wrongdoing and decides on an appropriate reprimand.
Last year, five scientific journals published prominent articles trumpeting cannabinoids (compounds in marijuana) as potential anti-cancer agents.
A cancer-stricken judge in New York has become an unlikely voice in support of legalizing the use of medical marijuana with the admission that he smokes pot to ease the side-effects of his treatments.
Brooklyn Supreme Court Justice Gustin Reichbach, who is being treated for pancreatic cancer, wrote in a New York Times article on Thursday that he had been using marijuana provided by friends at "great personal risk" to help him cope with the nausea, sleeplessness and loss of appetite from chemotherapy treatments.
"This is not a law-and-order issue; it is a medical and a human rights issue," wrote Reichbach, 65, who has spent 21 years on the bench in Kings County Supreme Court, and continues to hear cases even as he receives cancer treatment.
In the past, admitting to taking a few puffs of marijuana has been enough to derail some judges' careers. U.S. appeals court Judge Douglas Ginsburg saw his nomination for the U.S. Supreme Court go up in smoke in 1987 after admitting he had used marijuana several times in the 1960s and 1970s.
In 2011, a Georgia judge was removed from the bench for various infractions including publicly admitting to smoking pot regularly.
Does Marijuana Cause Cancer?
The greatest health danger of marijuana is due to smoking, like cigarettes. While THC is a relatively safe drug, smoked marijuana is hazardous. Careful scientific analyses have identified at least 6,000 of the same chemicals in marijuana smoke as are present in tobacco (Iversen, 2008). The main difference between the two is THC in marijuana and nicotine in tobacco. Otherwise, smoked marijuana and smoked tobacco are chemically very similar.
Furthermore, one of the most potent carcinogens in tobacco smoke, benzo(?)pyrene, is present in even greater amounts in marijuana smoke. As marijuana smokers frequently inhale and hold the smoke in their lungs, this increases the amount of tar deposited in the respiratory system by about a factor of four. No wonder, research shows that approximately 20% of regular pot smokers (and it only takes 3 to 4 joints a day) complain of chronic bronchitis, coughing and excess mucus (Tashkin, 2005).
A burning tobacco cigarette can be thought of as a "miniature chemical factory" (Iverson, 2008). The process of combustion creates extra chemicals on top of those already present in the plant material. Smoke consists of two components. They are minute droplets in the particulate phase and volatile gases in the vapor phase. Experienced pot smokers inhale more deeply and hold their breath longer when compared to cigarette smokers. Wu el al. (1988) compared the amount of particulate matter (tar) and carbon monoxide absorbed in volunteers who smoked both pot and tobacco. Compared to tobacco, smoking pot resulted in 5 times the amount of absorption of carbon monoxide and four to five times more tar being retained in the lungs.
Written and revised by
David Cohen, M.D.
Our doctors write and review articles for accuracy and keep them up to date.
health.am provides general information, not medical advice. Always consult a qualified health professional about your own health.
New York is not among the U.S. 16 states and the District of Columbia that allow medical marijuana. Cannabis remains an illegal narcotic under federal law.
Under New York's Code for Judicial Conduct, judges are required to "respect and comply with the law." First-time possession of less than 25 grams of marijuana is punishable by a $100 maximum fine.
Marijuana cures cancer – US government has known since 1974 The term medical marijuana took on dramatic new meaning in February 2000 when researchers in Madrid announced they had destroyed incurable brain cancer tumors in rats by injecting them with THC, the active ingredient in cannabis.
The Madrid study marks only the second time that THC has been administered to tumor-bearing animals; the first was a Virginia investigation 26 years ago. In both studies, the THC shrank or destroyed tumors in a majority of the test subjects.
Most Americans don't know anything about the Madrid discovery. Virtually no U.S. newspapers carried the story, which ran only once on the AP and UPI news wires, on Feb. 29.
The ominous part is that this isn't the first time scientists have discovered that THC shrinks tumors. In 1974 researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institute of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, found instead that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice - lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia.
The DEA quickly shut down the Virginia study and all further cannabis/tumor research, according to Jack Herer, who reports on the events in his book, "The Emperor Wears No Clothes". In 1976 President Gerald Ford put an end to all public cannabis research and granted exclusive research rights to major pharmaceutical companies, who set out - unsuccessfully - to develop synthetic forms of THC that would deliver all the medical benefits without the "high."
The Madrid researchers reported in the March issue of "Nature Medicine" that they injected the brains of 45 rats with cancer cells, producing tumors whose presence they confirmed through magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). On the 12th day they injected 15 of the rats with THC and 15 with Win-55,212-2 a synthetic compound similar to THC.
"All the rats left untreated uniformly died 12-18 days after glioma (brain cancer) cell inoculation … Cannabinoid (THC)-treated rats survived significantly longer than control rats. THC administration was ineffective in three rats, which died by days 16-18. Nine of the THC-treated rats surpassed the time of death of untreated rats, and survived up to 19-35 days. Moreover, the tumor was completely eradicated in three of the treated rats." The rats treated with Win-55,212-2 showed similar results.
The Spanish researchers, led by Dr. Manuel Guzman of Complutense University, also irrigated healthy rats' brains with large doses of THC for seven days, to test for harmful biochemical or neurological effects. They found none.
"Careful MRI analysis of all those tumor-free rats showed no sign of damage related to necrosis, edema, infection or trauma … We also examined other potential side effects of cannabinoid administration. In both tumor-free and tumor-bearing rats, cannabinoid administration induced no substantial change in behavioral parameters such as motor coordination or physical activity. Food and water intake as well as body weight gain were unaffected during and after cannabinoid delivery. Likewise, the general hematological profiles of cannabinoid-treated rats were normal. Thus, neither biochemical parameters nor markers of tissue damage changed substantially during the 7-day delivery period or for at least 2 months after cannabinoid treatment ended."
While Reichbach's editorial amounts to an admission he broke the law, his story is more likely to elicit admiration than condemnation, judicial ethics experts said.
{pagebreak}
"It's brave and wonderful, but it's heart-wrenching," said Ellen Yaroshefsky, a law professor at the Benjamin Cardozo School of Law. "There are key moments in history where a judge makes a bold stand. This is one of the moments, and we should be proud of it."
LEGAL CONSEQUENCES UNCLEAR
In New York, disciplinary actions involving judges are handled by the state's Commission on Judicial Conduct, which reviews allegations of criminal activity and other wrongdoing and decides on an appropriate reprimand. That could range from a confidential cautionary letter to dismissal, although more serious forms of punishment require approval from the state's chief judge.
Robert Tembeckjian, counsel for the commission, declined to say whether any inquiry could or would be opened into Reichbach's statements.
"Information relating to the conduct of judges that appears in newspapers is routinely reviewed by the commission," Tembeckjian said.
The Brooklyn District Attorney's Office did not immediately comment on whether any action was being contemplated against the judge. But first-time possession of a small amount of marijuana is classified only as a civil offense.
THE EMERGING EVIDENCE
Last year, five scientific journals published prominent articles trumpeting cannabinoids (compounds in marijuana) as potential anti-cancer agents.
These include:
- Clinical trial data published in January 2003 issue of the Journal of the American Society of Clinical Investigation that found cannabinoids significantly inhibit skin tumor growth in mice. Investigators of the study concluded, "The present data indicate that local cannabinoids administration may constitute an alternative therapeutic approach for the treatment of non-melanoma skin cancer." - Clinical trial data published in the March 2003 issue of The FASEB Journal that found that the "local administration of a non-psychoactive cannabinoid inhibits angiogenesis (tissue growth) of malignant gliomas (brain tumors)." - A clinical review in the October 2003 issue of the prestigious journal Nature Reviews Cancer that concluded that cannabinoids’ "favorable drug safety profile" and proven ability to inhibit tumor growth make them desirable agents in the treatment of cancer. According to the review’s author, tumors inhibited by cannabinoids include: lung carcinoma, glioma, thyroid epithelioma, lymphoma/leukemia, skin carcinoma, uterus carcinoma, breast carcinoma, prostate carcinoma, and neuroblastoma (a malignant tumor originating in the autonomic nervous system or the adrenal medulla and occurring chiefly in infants and young children). - Clinical trial data published in the November 2003 issue of the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics that found the administration of the cannabinoid cannabidiol (CBD) inhibits the growth of human glioma cells both in vitro (e.g., a petri dish) and in animals in a dose-dependent manner. Investigators concluded, "Non-psychoactive CBD produce[s] a significant antitumor activity both in vitro and in vivo, thus suggesting a possible application of CBD as an antineoplastic agent (something which prevents the growth of malignant cells.)" - And finally, a clinical review in the December 2003 issue of the journal Expert Opinion on Therapeutic Targets that summarized "the demonstrated antitumor actions of cannabinoids," and elaborated on "possible avenues for the future development of cannabinoids as antitumor agents."
AND SUBSEQUENT MEDIA BLACKOUT
Despite these stunning findings, media coverage of them in North America has been virtually non-existent. As noted by Richard Cowan, editor of the website MarijuanaNews.com, "The New York Times, The Washington Post and Los Angeles Times all ignored this story, even though its newsworthiness is indisputable: a benign substance occurring in nature destroys deadly brain tumors."
Why the media blackout? For starters, all of these studies were conducted overseas. And secondly, not one of them has been acknowledged by the U.S. government.
A spokesman for the state court system, David Bookstaver, also declined to address whether Reichbach might face consequences for the editorial, saying only that "everyone's thoughts in the court system are with Justice Reichbach as he battles a very serious disease."
One potential conflict that may arise from Reichbach's comments is his ability to hear cases involving marijuana possession, said Monroe Freedman, a law professor at Hofstra University.
"He has admitted to unlawful conduct," Freedman said. "Ordinarily, that could be a problem, but it's a very narrow, specific situation and I would hope nothing would come of it that would be adverse to the judge."
Support for medical-marijuana legislation is gaining support among New Yorkers. A poll from Siena Research Institute released on Wednesday found 57 percent of New Yorkers supported establishing a legal framework for allowing doctors to prescribe marijuana for cancer, chronic pain and other illnesses.
On Tuesday, a New York Assembly committee approved medical-marijuana legislation, and the Democratic-controlled Assembly appears poised to pass it for the third time in five years. A spokesman for the state Senate Republican majority said that chamber was unlikely to act on the measure this year.
News
News
News
