Better late than never... sort of

The above figure of speech (if such it is) is quite possibly the single most trite and unhelpful expression to ever find a foothold in the English language. Offhand, and without even thinking too hard, I can picture dozens of scenarios where ‘never’ would be infinitely preferable to ‘late’. A stay of execution is perhaps the most obvious example. Not much good if it comes even a few seconds after an innocent man has been fried on the electric chair… now is it?

But there are far more commonplace (and possibly even more fatal) examples than that. Remembering your spouse or partner’s birthday or anniversary is a classic case in point. Given a choice between: a) completely forgetting it even existed, or; b) ‘remembering’ two days late – and even then, only because you were ‘reminded’ during an argument with said spouse or partner… I think most sane people would much rather go with ‘never’, thank you very much. After all, the word ‘late’ might take on a slightly different meaning in this scenario (as in, the “late” Mr So-and-So…)

Having said all this, there are undeniably other instances where ‘late’ comes in slightly ahead of ‘never’ in the desirability stakes. One rather rare example is when politicians make long overdue statements that – even if uttered far too late in the day to make any immediate difference to the situation at hand – are actually rooted in solid fact, and would, if acted upon, make a big difference to a lot of people in their everyday lives.

Well, that’s exactly what happened a couple of days ago. Speaking in parliament, Godfrey Farrugia – who was minister for health until just a few months ago, when he was rather brutally replaced in a Cabinet reshuffle – said that the time had come to start considering the legalisation of marijuana for medical purposes.

Naturally I am delighted that Farrugia has so suddenly (and so belatedly) grown aware of the acute distress caused to cancer patients who are denied potentially life-saving treatment on purely spurious grounds. In fact I have spoken to a few such people myself, and even quoted one in an article I wrote on this very subject last September.

“I am currently undergoing cancer treatment at Mater Dei Hospital, with the usual chemotherapy and medicine they stuff into you here... and I’m also a person who really believes in the medical benefits of marijuana,” this person – who for obvious reasons shall remain nameless – told me at the time.

It just so happens that ‘cannabis oil’ had in recent years been identified as an effective treatment for the precise type of cancer involved in this case. But the patient’s request for cannabis oil – the use of which is fairly widespread in other countries, by the way – was turned down at Mater Dei.

“I would like for doctors to start to think about the beneficial use of marijuana in certain diseases... I have also forwarded to my doctors some studies, but it’s all in vain…”

Naturally one can appreciate both sides of this particular dilemma. While the patient commands sympathy for being denied a potentially effective remedy, one can also fully understand the reluctance on the part of the medical establishment to provide a cure which is also ILLEGAL.

Under the present legal regime, a doctor who prescribes marijuana to a patient can conceivably be charged with ‘sharing’ a drug which is also listed on the Dangerous Drugs ordinance. Technically, Maltese law sees that as the equivalent of drug trafficking: which carries a maximum sentence of 25 years.

Given the extent of this utterly absurd situation, I would have thought it was about bloody time that the people responsible for laws in our country – i.e., parliamentarians such as Godfrey Farrugia – finally start thinking a little about the effects of the same laws they inflict upon the rest of us long-suffering citizens… including those unfortunate enough to suffer from cancer or some other potentially terminal condition. 

But like many others, I can only wonder why Farrugia came round to this view precisely now – when he is no the man directly longer responsible for government’s health policy – and not at any point while he was still minister, and therefore still able to actually oversee the much-needed culture change he himself now calls for in the House of Representatives.

For one thing, it’s not as though the medical science underpinning the therapeutic uses of cannabis has only just come into existence the past week. Farrugia himself referred to medical research, some of which has been in the public domain since at least 2007.

A study by Harvard University, published by the American Association for Cancer Research, discovered that “the active ingredient in marijuana (THC) cuts tumour growth in common lung cancer by half, and significantly reduces the ability of the cancer to spread…”

The 2007 report goes on to state that: “Researchers injected standard doses of THC into mice that had been implanted with human lung cancer cells, and found that tumours were reduced in size and weight by around 50% in treated animals, compared to the control group. There was also a 60% reduction in cancer lesions on the lungs in these mice, as well as a significant reduction in protein markers associated with cancer progression.”

Similar successes were registered in the treatment of other forms of cancer, too, including brain tumours, pancreatic, breast, blood and liver cancers.

It was in view of these findings, among others, that a sizeable cross-section of other countries have long done what Farrugia only now suggests we do here… and basically take off the blinkers that have led us to view this largely benign plant for all the world as if it were a health risk instead of a health benefit.

Farrugia himself provides a list of such countries: “Austria, Belgium, the Czech Republic, Finland, the Netherlands, Spain, Portugal, Canada, Israel, Italy, New Zealand, the UK and some part of the US,” he tells us, have all taken steps to regulate the use of medical marijuana.

What he didn’t mention were the consequences of such legislation in any of those countries… some of which (e.g., Portugal) have also effectively decriminalised the drug even for recreational purposes.

Sadly I don’t have space for a truly in-depth analysis here, but all the relevant studies I have come across point overwhelmingly towards the same general pattern. Interestingly, there seems to be no correlation in any of those of countries between the legalisation of medical marijuana, and increased use of marijuana for recreational purposes.

A study by the Prevention Research Centre of the Pacific Institute for Research and Evaluation in Berkeley, California, even found the opposite: namely, that “the legalization of medical marijuana does not seem to increase marijuana use among youths”.

The report continues: “Most research suggests that easy availability of a substance (for example, alcohol or tobacco) increases use among teens – even if they are legally prohibited from using the substance. This study, however, did not find that result.

“The study found that youths who lived in a county with a higher proportion of legal medical marijuana users were no more likely to use marijuana than youths in counties with few legal users.”

Earlier this year (March 2014), another study published in science journal ‘Plos One’ went some distance further… finding that medical marijuana not only failed to increase crime rates (as had been widely predicted by the anti-legalisation lobby), but in some cases even had the effect of lowering the rate of violent crime.

“The central finding gleaned from the present study was that [medical marijuana legislation] is not predictive of higher crime rates and may be related to reductions in rates of homicide and assault. Interestingly, robbery and burglary rates were unaffected by medicinal marijuana legislation, which runs counter to the claim that dispensaries and grow houses lead to an increase in victimization due to the opportunity structures linked to the amount of drugs and cash that are present...

“In sum, these findings run counter to arguments suggesting the legalization of marijuana for medical purposes poses a danger to public health in terms of exposure to violent crime and property crimes. To be sure, medical marijuana laws were not found to have a crime exacerbating effect on any of the seven crime types…”

In view of all this, I can’t help feeling a little cheated by the fact that a man who was health minister for over a year – a year in which he never uttered a single word about medical marijuana, despite the fact that the entire country was starting to discuss issues such as ‘decriminalisation’ – would have had nothing to say about the issue at all, at a time when a single word from the minister might have made all the difference in the world.

Still: in keeping with that annoyingly trite expression alluded to in the headline: better late than never. In other words, the present health minister had ‘better’ do what his immediate predecessor failed to do, than once again leave it too ‘late’ to be of benefit to anybody.