by Chuck Ream
Second in a series exploring the
most important books about cannabis.
This month we check out “The Pot Book, A
Complete Guide to Cannabis, its Role in Medicine, Politics, Science, and
Culture” edited by Julie Holland M.D. This 500 page treasure trove is a
selection of 42 short essays about cannabis, each a crystallized gem by the
expert in their subject.
Dr. Lester Grinspoon , a retired
professor of Psychiatry at Harvard, argues in the “Foreward” that medical marijuana can never be fully
utilized as long as pot is illegal, since patients are constantly harassed by
police. He says “the only way out is to cut the knot by giving marijuana the
same status as alcohol”.
A historical overview includes how
the Marijuana Tax Act was steered through congress by the DuPont Corporation in
1937. Top financiers like Rockefeller and Mellon had paid for earlier major
“studies” that attacked the failings of “herbalism”. The real money is made
when companies can “outlaw the natural to monopolize the synthetic”.
“Drug use does not seem to be
related to drug policy” is the amazing conclusion that must be drawn from the
data. Terrible penalties don’t seem to have any effect on the use of illegal
drugs in the USA.
Sometimes people mock our claims about how
many medical symptoms cannabis can mitigate. That’s because they don’t
understand that the recently discovered “endocannabinoid system” (already
present in your body) regulates nearly every physiological system and has been
fundamental to all higher animals for the last 500 million years. (Cannabis is
a bit over 30 million years old). This system is so critical that it has
“breathtaking implication for nearly every area of medicine”. Endocanabinoids
(made in your body all the time) are involved in pain, stress, hunger, sleep,
circadian rhythm, blood pressure, body temperature, bone density, immune system
response, inflammation, blood formation, fertility & reproduction,
digestion, mood, metabolism, memory, etc.
The miraculous cannabinoids are the
only neurotransmitters that can send signals backward along the neural pathways to make sure a system
stays in balance. “Retrograde signaling serves as an inhibitory feedback
mechanism that tells other neurotransmitters to cool it when they are firing
too fast”. Now we can see why our medicine helps so many systems and symptoms,
and is so close to being a “miracle”. It is an “integral part of the central
homeostatic modulatory system”.
The federal government shames
itself with the fantasy that cannabis “has no recognized medical use” (a
Schedule 1 drug). At the same time they have secured U.S. Patent # 6630501 for
the anti-oxidant and neuroprotective powers of pot. We are facing an epidemic of Alzheimer’ as
our population ages, while the federal government is fully aware that cannabis
protects brain cells.
Despite this massive potential the
USA uses pot to create criminals. For instance, pot is decriminalized in New
York, but in New York City the police will stop people, (usually minorities),
and say “We are going to search you, but if you empty your pockets right now we
will go easy on you”. The poor citizen doesn’t know that the cops are legally
allowed to lie, and no crime has been committed until the marijuana is “in
public view”. “And for cooperating with
the police, the young people are handcuffed and taken off to jail”.
All the slander directed against
our holy healing and teaching herb will never blind us to its glory. Dr. Julie
Holland knows what drugs do, after serving for ten years as the attending
psychiatrist at the Psyche ER at Bellevue hospital in New York. She says “It
can create an occasion for personal growth, psychospiritual exploration, and
enlightenment. The problem, in the government’s eyes, is that drugs are
potentially subversive. I think that people pull back and see the “big picture”,
and sometimes they so think about revolution. I’m sure that the government
would prefer that we aren’t so enlightened”.
In Michigan, the man who provided
the money to put medical marijuana on the ballot is the great Mr. Peter Lewis.
He has been busted, and was profoundly irritated – now he funds the Marijuana
Policy Project. He says that the only reason for continued pot prohibition is
“to imprison certain segments of the population so that the jailers can make a
living”.
“For me”, says Lewis, “marijuana
relaxes, lessens anxiety, connects feelings to thoughts, enhances sensuality,
stimulates appetite and makes me enjoy being by myself. Smoking marijuana has
helped me accomplish what I set out to do, and made me easier to be with and
easier on myself. It allows me to be more accepting of, and caring for, other
people.
Marijuana being illegal is a
tragedy I want to correct”.
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