Quote Originally Posted by ABooksNightmare:
This question came up yesterday to a group of people I was around and it was an interesting discussion to say the least. The question was this.
Whether you are a proponent of Marijuana or not there are scentific facts that support its use for Medical purposes. We know that the Pharmaceudical Industry, and Doctors for that matter, would much rather write you a Prescription for medication other then look at alternative or holistic medicine practices. All of us know how dependent one can become on Prescription pills, however, they write these to millions of people every day. Not to mention the effects it has on ones body to handle the drug.
With that being said, if you had a child that was in need of medical attention and you could either have them on Prescription medicine for the remainder of their life or have the choice to get them on Medical Marijuana, which would you choose for them and why?
To answer your question, in the field of behavioral health, I have seen some pretty horrible things with children on all type of psych meds like ADD/ADHD meds (adderal, concerta, ridilin) and then go through eventual psychosis from long term use...
I have seen 8 years olds on SSRIs (prozac, zoloft, celexa) and then to treat the side effects giving them more meds (wellbutrin, clonadine, benzos: xanax, klonopin, vallium)
I have seen 10 year olds prescribed anti psychotic medications (risperdal, zyprexa, geodon) and when they become teenagers and things they dont work anymore clozaril which is so dangerous it requires bi weekly blood testing and being on a national registry...
I would go on and one about the things I have seen with psych meds and children and parents pushing their kids pills for a quick fix for what may be a result of attachment/abuse/neglect issues...
And kids with no parents and instead foster parents/state guardians are even worse in terms of the pills pushed to them so that the case manager who is overwhelmed with poorly funded services can have to spend less time on the case...
With that said, if it were my kid, like i said earlier i would consider the least intrusive/invasive practices first before giving any medication... but in the end if it were medical THC over meds it would have to depend on the meds being prescribed, but I actually think that if parents are regulating and administering the dosages I see no reason why it would be worse then meds from the drug companies...
And from personal experience drug companies are adopting good business practices from having someone dependent on the medication and never getting improvement with out the medications, so THC and other alternative therapies/practices will always take a back seat to companies that dont pay taxes