Julie Gardener
New Member
Testimony of Terry Jacobs to FDA - why he prefers for medical marijuana to Marinol
2005N-0479
International Drug Scheduling; Convention on Psychotropic Substances;
Single Convention on Narcotic Drugs; Butorphanol; Delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (Dronabinol); Gamma-Hydroxybutyric Acid; Ketamine;
FDA Comment Number : EC2Hi!
Date & Time: 12/19/2005 01: 12:39
I am commenting on the medication most commonly called Marinol. For myself I use it to help me with the nausea I get real bad. I have Hepatitis C I contracted while I was a Medical Laboratory Technician. I contracted the disease it seems from a past needle stick. I now am disabled due to the many complications I have from this insidious disease. I also now have advancing cirrhosis from the Hepatitis C and am starting to have complications begining like an enlarged spleen. One of the problems I have besides bad fatigue is I deal with nausea. I have tried the whole list of current medications for nausea and none work affectively or I have even worse side effects from them also. The best antinausea medicine we have found that works the best has been Marinol. I can take up to 5mg 3 times a day. It even worked best after I had my first colonoscopy this past year. In the hospital all they could give me was Zofran which is touted as the best. It did nothing for my nausea. When I finally got home I took one 5mg of Marinol and later the nausea dissappeared. However with Marinol the side effects seem to vary. At times it does have a heavy sedation to it and the worst thing for me is that it usually takes up to 1 hour or more to start taking effect. This makes for a misearable time till the medication starts working. I understand Marinol is being worked into a sprayable form that will take effect a lot quicker and I strongly urge the research and speedy ok for it to hit the market. This will help soooo much with quickly handling the nausea. I also want at this point to encourage more research and legislation into allowing medical marijuana for persons such as me. Personally I would much rather go this route than Marinol since you could adjust the dosage better and if you need more or less you would be able to do so. Myself I will not use marijuana until it is passed as legal for medical purposes. I will not put my family or myself in danger of prison time just for me trying to relieve my nausea. It is tempting but in no way will I do so until it is legal. In the meantime I encourage more research and speedy ok for Marinol related products to help those of us ill. I also am appalled at the cost of Marinol. For me one month of Marinol is around $700 just for the one medicine. For one like me who now is on many mediciations this is outrageous. I am looking forward to the new Medicare Prescription coverage for me to handle the costs of medications. Being on disablity and unable to work anymore, my wife in college again to be able to one day support our family now and having 3 children the burden of medication costs is outrageous. I have to determine in the meantime now what medicines to get that month since our funds are very very limited now. Anyways please continue research into the benifits of Marinol, making it available as a spray, and please open more research and funding into the use of medical marijuana to also allow a more efficient way to help those like myself deal with their daily nausea. Thank you for your time and study. Terry Jacobs
Reported by Dev Meyers/Nov 2009/Examiner.com
Source: Testimony of Terry Jacobs to FDA - why he prefers for medical marijuana to Marinol - National Cannabis Revolution | Examiner.com
