It’s only fair that the death sentence of Muhammad Lukman, a 29-year-old father of one, for possessing, processing and distributing medical marijuana (cannabis oil) be reviewed immediately.
This is more so as he was distributing cannabis oil to patients who were suffering from various illnesses, including cancer.
Cancer is responsible for over 7.5 million deaths worldwide, every year, and this number is growing.
One in four Malaysian will suffer from cancer by the time they hit the age of 75. In fact every one person in twelve is diagnosed with cancer every twelve minutes.
There are many anecdotal accounts of patients curing their cancer using high-potency edible cannabis extracts.
And scientists are more hopeful about cannabis’ potential efficacy, and point to laboratory and animal studies that show cannabinoids like cannabidiol (CBD) and delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) kill cancer cells in laboratory conditions without harming the healthy cells nearby.
A number of studies involving individuals undergoing cancer treatment have shown that medical marijuana can help to relief pain, neuropathy (nerve damage, which is a common complication of chemotherapy and other cancer treatments), nausea, vomiting and anxiety.
Living with cancer is also a huge financial burden for cancer survivors, wiping out savings in many cases.
University Malaya academic, Dr Nirmala Bhoopathy, suggests that treating breast cancer on a yearly basis is about RM65,000.
A separate study by iMoney shows that someone suffering from breast cancer in Malaysia needs RM395,000 to go through a complete treatment cycle.
The George Institute for Global Health in Sydney states that 39% of Malaysians simply cannot afford the costs of cancer medicines. And at least 19% have been forced to quit their treatment as they are unable to pay the medical bills.
While the former Barisan Nasional government used budget cuts as an excuse to not even update the cancer registry or come up with the National Cancer Blueprint, we can be different and pro-active.
Pre-clinical data available gives reason to hope that success stories of patients aren’t just flukes.
The government should therefore carry out large-scale, placebo controlled clinical trials to obtain concrete scientific evidence to support the use of medical marijuana for terminal diseases such as cancer.
Handing down the death sentence to Muhammad and the labelling of marijuana as an illegal drug would only greatly limited the research of its medical applications.
We need to certainly do better than that.