Part 2: The Fall and Rise of Medical Marijuana
“This book should be required reading for all medical professionals, elected officials,
and everyone interested in health and wellness”.
-Dr. Andrew Weil
“Gateway to Health” explains the latest science about the vast usefulness of cannabis as medicine.
Then it details how that immense potential was hijacked, showing “just how cruel and
counterproductive federal marijuana policy is”
-Dr. Weil
To question the value of cannabis as medicine is to question the truth of human history, and to ignore that Americans used medical cannabis from 1840 to 1937. Our medicine went “From Sacred Plant to Evil Weed in Just 6000 years”. By 2300 B.C.E. cannabis was already a “Supreme Elixir of Immortality” in China, and their shaman were buried with bags of bud, (bud from cultivated plants, not wild). In India, devotees of Shiva revere the holy cannabis plant. The US government turned cannabis into an instrument of racial persecution and social control. We are now returning cannabis to its valued place in human culture.
In the USA “Tincture of Cannabis” was used for medical needs. Cigarettes were manufactured as bronchodilators for asthmatics. It was used well into the 20th century for depression and indigestion. Cannabis based medicines “fell out of favor with physicians” because of a) the difficulty of standardizing dosage and potency, b) the “impossibility of administering the drug through the newly developed hypodermic needle” and c) the invention of easy to use synthetic drugs like aspirin.
Top prohibitionist Harry Anslinger would not allow science. When the scientific “LaGuardia Report” said that marijuana was a “matter of trivial importance”, Harry threatened to arrest the doctors if they did any more studies. In “Marijuana,Assassin of Youth” he wrote, (with no data) “how many murders, suicides, robberies, criminal assaults, holdups, burglaries, and deeds of maniacal insanity it causes each year…, can only be conjectured”.
This is the “Big Lie” theory that Hitler loved. In fact, cannabis is deeply good for you, not bad; as told in the story of Rimonabant.
We all know about “the munchies”, and about how pot allows some sick people to eat rather than die. Years ago smart drug companies in Europe figured out that if you could block the “CB1 receptor” (which the cannabinoids -both self created and plant based- attach to), you might be able to make a “diet pill” and get rich. Rimonabant resulted, and was on sale in 56 countries. It became “a disastrous failure”. Blocking the body’s own cannabinoid system led to problems with: suicide, panic attacks, sleep disorders, agitation, sexual response, mood, cancer, neurodegenerative diseases etc.
Specially bred “CB1 knockout mice” experienced “devastating effects on physical and mental health”, including “reduced ability to forget traumatic memories”. Mothers milk contains cannabinoids that stimulate the sucking process; baby mice with no cannabis receptors fail to thrive.
The dastardly origin of the scandalous “Schedule 1” federal classification of pot is explained. Many of us know that the United States “Schaefer Commission” of 1972 “backfired” on Nixon. He chose the members carefully, but still they decided that cannabis prohibition was really just a “misunderstanding”, and both the use and small time sale of pot should be legalized.
Few of us know that a case by Tim Leary had knocked out the old 1937 Marijuana Tax Act in 1970. Nixon filled the void with the Controlled Substances Act, and the five tiered scheduling system. Pot was arbitrarily made Schedule 1, despite meeting none of the “Schedule 1” criteria. Even fewer of us know that “The Shaefer Commission had been assembled as part of the Controlled Substances Act in order to gather evidence that would determine the appropriate schedule for marijuana”. According to the evidence cannabis should be a Schedule 5 substance or “removed from the CSA entirely”. Nixon haughtily blew off his “renegade” commission. Pot’s ludicrous Schedule 1 status has brutal consequences for consumers, and makes the US government look shamefully stupid.
The media has been a major cause of cannabis prohibition and drug war; constantly being ignorant and/or complicit with parroting government lies.
Nearly nobody in the USA studies the effect of cannabis on humans. Research money is flowing to study the effects of synthetic cannabinoids on animals.
Research shows that the more pot you smoke the less likely you are to be involved in accident or injury. It increases cautious behaviors.
Top Israeli researcher Dr. Mechoulam reminds us “Don’t think that forgetting is less important than recalling”. Pot can treat Post Traumatic Stress.
What about the “love type reaction” that is reported…the “profound sense of mental and physical well being”…the “ability to make every day shine with qualities that were previously overlooked”. If people felt less needs and wants could that be subversive to capitalism?
Buy this book, read it, then give it to a doctor.
