April 2, 2010 – “There’s one thing that helps my Tourette’s more than anything, and it’s marijuana,” says Louis Centanni, the 24-year-old actor and comedian featured in Patient Voices: Tourette’s Syndrome. Dr. Robert A. King and Dr. James F. Leckman of the Yale School of Medicine, who recently joined the Consults blog to answer readers’ questions about Tourette’s, here respond to readers asking about the use of marijuana for easing the tics, vocalizations and jerking movements of the syndrome.

Is Marijuana Effective for Tourette’s?

A number of individuals with severe Tourette’s regularly use marijuana and report that it calms them and eases their tics. And a few randomized clinical trials of delta 9-tetrahydrocannabinol, or THC, the active ingredient in marijuana, have been carried out. Some of the investigators are convinced that THC and related compounds in marijuana called cannabinoids are helpful; others are more equivocal.

The most comprehensive review to date of the efficacy of cannabinoids in Tourette’s comes from a research group in Britain, the Cochrane Collaboration, that reviewed all the available data. They found that “the improvements in tic frequency and severity were small and were only detected by some of the outcome measures.” The group concluded that there is not enough evidence to support the use of cannabinoids in treating tics and obsessive-compulsive behavior in people with Tourette’s syndrome.

In addition, regular use of marijuana also has potential physical and psychological side effects, including apathy, depression or even psychosis in vulnerable individuals. As with other drugs, suitability depends on the patient, and risks and benefits must be weighed. We certainly wouldn’t recommend it for adolescents.

As for mode of action, there is a growing scientific literature concerning the body’s ability to make substances called endocannabinoids, which resemble the active compounds in marijuana. Our bodies contain various  enzymes that make these endogenous cannabinoids, and two specific types of receptors for these substances are distributed throughout our body, including the brain.

It appears that the cannabinoids can modulate major neurotransmitter systems in the brain – including those involving GABA and glutamine.  These pathways provide one hypothesis for why marijuana sometimes has the effect of reducing tics.  Source.

July 10, 2009-The legalization of marijuana has been a controversial topic for many years now. It remains to be illegal in much of the country, but California is one state in which it is legal for medical purposes, as long as patients have a note signed from their doctor and buy the marijuana from a dispensary that is regulated. But this is upsetting to some government officials, including the federal government who regularly raid the dispensaries, and some local government officials who say 800 dispensaries in one city is too many. One city council member said that a dispensary near a high school looked “like an ice cream shop from the 1950s” with the amount of teenaged kids crowded around it.

Maybe a high school isn’t the place for a dispensary or any other avenue to sell drugs, but the use of marijuana by responsible adults should not be a criminal activity. Medical marijuana can be used as a viable treatment for cancer, Glaucoma, Depression, PMS, lack of appetite, Crohn’s Disease, migraines, Fibromyalgia, Multiple Sclerosis, Tourette’s syndrome, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder, Alcoholism, Attention Deficit Disorder, Lou Gehrig’s disease, Rheumatoid Arthritis, Autism, Bipolar Disorder, Hypertension, morning sickness (though no one will endorse the smoking of marijuana, or any other substance, by pregnant women), Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, staph infections, Sickle Cell Anemia, Parkinson’s, and Sleep Apnea (snoring). Many more without a medical condition that would warrant their doctor to write a note specifying a need for the drug, feel that marijuana relaxes them after a hard day at work and one dispensary even set up a movie theatre in the shop where the patients could unwind and meet new people. There is even a dispensary selling marijuana online on social marketing websites like Twitter and Facebook that will deliver the drug free to Los Angeles residents who may not want to venture outside.

Marijuana is a relatively harmless drug and one that is a lifesaver to the many people who use it in its proper form. While there is always potential for abuse, alcohol used in an irresponsible way, as many people in the United States use it, is more harmful than marijuana used by responsible adults. Barney Frank and Ron Paul introduced legislation earlier this summer to legalize small amount of marijuana by adults, whether they would like to use it for medical or recreational purposes, and hopefully it will start to put an end to the billions that we spend on the drug war each year and the lives and businesses lost in the process of government nannyism. Source.