Monday, 29 November 2010

• Marijuana and Autism Debate [Revisited]

  
  

  In the face of growing news about prescription drug addiction and marijuana legalization, it is important to remember that the ways we look at drugs, addiction, and medical treatment are as influential as the solutions themselves. A perfect example of this is a story covered by Good Morning America about the use of medical marijuana to help people with autism. 

  The basic gist of the story is mother Mieko Hester-Perez saw that the medications for her son, Joey’s, autism weren’t working. Instead, he was not eating and she believed he was dying. She then started giving him marijuana in brownies, and “within hours” he was asking for food. Over the course of using marijuana, Joey has become more “calm and balanced” says Hester-Perez.

  At the time the story aired, there were many articles written by autism and marijuana sites about the story. However, few, if any, focused on the lack of analysis given to the prescriptions Joey was previously taking for his autism.

  Most notably, Dr. Sharon Hirsch, the “authoritative voice” on medical treatment of autism of the story, said that the boy shouldn’t use marijuana as a medication because

  “He’s intoxicated. He’s stoned. It means he is under the influence of a drug and may have an addiction.”

  30 seconds before, the report said that when the boy started using marijuana, he reduce his use of thirteen prescription medications to three. Thirteen prescriptions?! Does the doctor really believe he wasn’t intoxicated and possibly addicted to one of the thirteen different drugs pumping through his body?

  The doctor’s reaction implicitly says that, unless marijuana is legal and available for government inspection and approval (i.e. able to be manufactured and sold by pharmaceutical companies), like Vicodin or Oxycodone, it is dismissed as a viable solution to autism because it causes intoxication and may cause addiction – consequences also caused by FDA approved medications.

  Furthermore, stereotypical phrases like marijuana makes the child “stoned” conjure up associations so far away from a professional and clinically tested solution, that marijuana is dismissed based on lowest common denominator clichés. In fact, Diane Lane recognizes Mieko Hester-Perez, the mother, and her visceral reaction to the term.

  But two second later Lane goes right back to a fairly stereotypical reaction, asking Hester-Perez, “What were the behaviors that drove you to seek out this dramatic, if not controversial, [solution]?”

   

   

  If considered logically, which is more dramatic – 13 medications versus 3? Giving your child a medication that comes from the earth or developed in a lab by combining chemicals, some synthetic, that you have no idea what they are, where they come from, how they affect your child’s brain?

   

  In this report, the doctor’s lack of balance in the analysis of the pros and cons of marijuana as a treatment immediately shuts off a debate about the actual results of marijuana as a medication. Making marijuana look illegitimate eliminates the scrutiny needed to look at what the other medications have been doing to the child, why they didn’t work, and the real possibilities that they cause intoxication and addiction, maybe to an even greater extent then marijuana.

   

  Granted, the doctor’s statement is a sound bite needed for the show and the limited in-depth discussion is probably due to time. This story was aired about a year ago and the debate has expanded in some ways. However, reexamining this story points to continued need for the community surrounding drugs, addiction, and rehabilitation to continually question available status quo answers or lack thereof.

   

   

  ABC's The Practice, Marijuana & Autism

   

  After tweeting this story, the folks at http://drugrehabtreatmenthelp.com/blog/Marijuana+and+Autism+Debate+Revisited+/

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