After Coloradans decreed in 2000 that the cannabis plant had medical value, scientific evidence has had to play catch-up with the anecdotal cases.

The list of claims of healing powers of marijuana is long, while the list of full-scale U.S. studies on medicinal benefits is short, largely because pot use is still against federal law and doesn’t get many federal research dollars.

Colorado voters approved themedical use of pot in 2000 and recreational use in 2012.

Now Colorado is leading the nation in state spending on studies of medical marijuana.

The state’s Medical Marijuana Scientific Advisory Council considered Dec. 17 how to spend $9 million set aside by the state legislature for two- to three-year studies on marijuana treatment for chronic pain, post-traumatic stress disorder, Parkinson’s disease tremors, pediatric epilepsy, inflammatory bowel disease and palliative care for pediatric brain tumors.

“You can’t ignore the anecdotal evidence. It’s compelling,” said Dr. Larry Wolk, director of the Colorado Department of Public Health and Environment. “I wouldn’t want to deprive families’ hope or treatment. But medical effectiveness still needs to be verified. With these studies, we could have some answers within the next year.”

There were 116,287 people holding medical marijuana cards in Colorado at the end of September — about 3,400 more than at the end of last year before recreational pot became legal — and 816 physicians with medical pot patients. About 66 percent are male, the average age is 42 and 427 patients are under age 18.

Most patients, 93 percent, are using medical marijuana to treat severe pain. Muscle spasms are the reason given by 15 percent of card holders. Some patients have listed both as a reason.

Conditions recognized for medical cannabis use in Colorado are cachexia (or wasting syndrome), cancer, chronic pain, chronic nervous system disorders, epilepsy and other seizure disorders, glaucoma, HIV or AIDS, multiple sclerosis and other muscle spasticity disorders and nausea.

“It’s unlikely that marijuana is effective for the wide range of health problems approved under Colorado law,” said the University of Colorado’s Dr. Andrew Monte, who co-wrote a viewpoint piece on legalizing marijuana published Dec. 8 in the Journal of the American Medical Association.

Yet hope and desperation can be stronger than scientific evidence. Colorado has become a beacon for those seeking a marijuana cure for their illnesses and suffering.

Boulder County medical marijuana caregiver Jason Cranford said he and others are flooded with requests from around the country to treat cancer, seizure disorders and countless other conditions in children and adults.

Teri Robnett, with the Cannabis Patients Alliance, was the only non-scientist, non-medical person named to the Medical Marijuana Scientific Advisory Council.

Robnett has suffered 27 years with fibromyalgia, a disorder characterized by widespread musculoskeletal pain and fatigue and sleep, memory, mood and digestive issues. In 2009 she began experimenting with cannabis.

“It completely changed my life,” Robnett said. It’s the only thing that’s alleviated her symptoms without serious side effects, she said.

She discerns a recent shift in the medical community’s attitudes toward marijuana. Scientists are less interested in questioning whether it has value as medicine, she said, and more interested in determining just how effective it is and how patients should be dosed.

Studies going back 40 years showed marijuana can be used to treat and prevent glaucoma, an eye disease that increases pressure in the eyeball, damaging the optic nerve and causing loss of vision.

More recent research has found that chemicals in marijuana can lessen the incidence of epileptic and Dravet’s syndrome seizures, alleviate the chronic pain of cancer, arthritis and nerve pain — and may be safer than opioids. It lessens the nausea of chemotherapy and is an appetite stimulant.

Marijuana likely has anti-inflammatory effects and appears to benefit some patients with inflammatory bowel disease, other studies show.

Claims that cannabis limits tumor growth, slows the progression of Alzheimer’s disease or eases muscles spasms, alleviating symptoms of multiple sclerosis or the tremors of Parkinson’s, among other conditions, are not substantiated by research, said Monte, who works in CU’s emergency medicine department and with the Rocky Mountain Poison and Drug Center.

Medical professionals point out that smoking or ingesting a plant is not “pharmacological” and that it’s impossible to administer a consistent dose and predict a consistent result.

“Something given in a known and consistent dose, that’s medicine,” Wolk also said. “I’m uncomfortable with a plant as a medical model.”

Medical marijuana generally means the whole unprocessed marijuana plant or crude extracts, which are not approved as medicine by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration.

The National Institutes of Health has funded some investigations into therapeutic uses of plant constituents, THC, CBD and other active chemicals called cannabinoid.

Studies have led to the development of two FDA-approved medications, dronabinol (brand name Marinol), which contains THC, and nabilone (brand name Cesamet), which has a synthetic form of THC. They are used to treat the nausea caused by chemotherapy and the weight loss and muscle atrophy caused by AIDS.

A CBD-based drug called Epidolex has been created to treat certain forms of childhood epilepsy, and clinical trials are underway.

Electa Draper: 303-954-1276