Reading practice 3. 4EOI. With the key.

THERAPEUTIC   USES   OF   CANNABIS

Indian hemp (cannabis) has been described as having therapeutic properties in a variety of conditions in clinical literature. William B. O'Shaughnessy, M.D., who in 1839 introduced cannabis to western medicine, acknowledged its non-medical use but was able to recognize and study its therapeutic potential despite the drug's adverse reputation. From 1839 to 1938 cannabis was available by prescription and utilized for a variety of conditions before removal after the passage of the 1937 Marihuana Tax Act. _______________1_______________ Since 1976 the U.S. government and the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) say the side effect of being “high” is not acceptable, no matter how many years or lives it saves. In 1991 clinical studies on the therapeutic applications of marijuana were suspended by the Chief of the Public Health Service, James O. Mason. In December 1993 the San Francisco Cannabis Buyers Club began to sell illicit cannabis to patients with a referral note from their physician or health facility. Some 90 million Americans have tried marijuana, and 25 to 30 million still smoke marijuana relaxationally, or use it responsibly as a form of daily self-medication. In spite of this there has not been one single death from overdose ever.

There are more than 60 therapeutic compounds in cannabis that are healing agents in medical and herbal treatments. Researchers at the Medical College of Virginia discovered that cannabis is an incredibly successful herb for reducing many types of tumors, benign and malignant. Since 1996, the Medical College of Virginia has applied to receive grants for cannabis research and has been turned down by the DEA. ________________2______________ But chemo has some serious side effects, including nausea. “Marijuana is the best agent for control of nausea in cancer chemotherapy,” according to Dr. Thomas Ungerleider, who headed California’s Marijuana for Cancer research program from 1979 to 1984. This is also true in AIDS and even in the unsettled stomach common in motion sickness. Pharmaceutical nausea-control drugs come in pills that are often swallowed by the patient only to be thrown back up. _______________3_______________ Cannabis is beneficial for 60% of all epileptics. Medical World News reported in 1971: “Marijuana is probably the most potent anti-epileptic known to medicine today”. Cannabis users’ epileptic seizures are of less intensity than the more dangerous seizures experienced by users of pharmaceuticals.

At the same time, cannabis lowers blood pressure, dilates the arteries and reduces body temperature an average of one-half degree, thereby relieving stress and depression. One well-known effect of THC is to lift the spirit, or make you “high.” Cannabis users in Jamaica praise ganja’s benefits for meditation, concentration, consciousness-raising and promoting a state of well-being and self assertiveness. _______________4_______________  Prescription sleeping pills are often just synthesized analogs of truly dangerous plants like mandrake, henbane, and belladonna. For millions of Americans cannabis can safely curtail or replace Valium, Librium, alcohol, or even Prozac. Every U.S. commission or federal judge who has studied the evidence has agreed that cannabis is one of the safest drugs known. With all its therapeutic uses, it has only one side effect that has been exaggerated as a concern: the “high”. The DEA says this is not acceptable, so cannabis continues to be totally illegal in utter disregard for both doctor and patient. New research is outlawed, of course. Every day we entrust physicians to determine whether the risks associated with therapeutic, yet potentially dangerous, drugs are acceptable for their patients. _______________5_______________ Recent Reports of increasingly potent marijuana represent a major medical advance. U.S. statistics of the 1970s indicated that you will live eight to 24 years longer if you substitute daily cannabis use for daily tobacco and alcohol use. But incredibly, the government uses these very numbers to solicit bigger budgets and harsher penalties.

(Adapted from the internet)

THE  FOLLOWING  SENTENCES  HAVE  BEEN  REMOVED  FROM  THE  TEXT  ABOVE.   RE-INSERT  EACH  OF  THEM  IN  THE  CORRESPONDING  GAP

A.    Chemotherapy is claimed by practitioners to benefit cancer and AIDS patients.

B.     Nevertheless, doctors are not allowed to prescribe the herb that Federal Judge Francis Young, in 1988, called “one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man”.

C.     Since then it has been legally defined as having no medicinal redeeming virtue and having high potential for abuse by the Controlled Substances Act of 1970.

D.    Using cannabis allows most people a more complete rest with a higher amount of “alpha time” during sleep as compared with prescription or sleep-induced patent sedatives.

E.     Because cannabis can be ingested as smoke, it stays in the system and keeps working even if vomiting continues.

THE  FOLLOWING  WORDS  HAVE  APPEARED  IN  THE  READING  PASSAGE.  CHOOSE THE  BEST SYNONYM  FOR EACH OF THEM  IN THE  CONTEXT

6.healing:                   a. unidentified                        b. curative                   c. aggravating

7.seizures:                  a. Syndromes              b. attacks                    c. injuries

8.curtail:                    a. improve                   b. prevent                   c. reduce

9.utter:                       a. absolute                  b. permanent               c. constant

10.harsher:                a. faster                       b. safer                                   c. tougher

KEY:

1. C 2. A 3. E  4. D 5.B

6.healing:                    b. curative         

7.seizures:                   b. attacks           

8.curtail:                      c. reduce

9.utter:                         a. absolute         

10.harsher:                  c. tougher