Marijuana as Medicine

[Queso]

Ever seen that movie...?

It's...really...hilarious.

Dumbest film I've ever seen.

[CraigD]

This sort of campaign is tragic.

If you tell fibs, soon no one will believe you.

There are some health risks that need to be explained.

 

Or is this the point?

If your campaign backfires, your $12 Billion dollar budget (gravey train ) goes up.

 

The Austin Chronicle: News: Reefer Madness: This Is Your Brain on Drugs

While you’ll hear no argument from me that the US and other governments have very poor public credibility, due in large part to a long history of “fib telling”, I think Jordan Smith’s Austin Chronicle article is as guilty of wild exaggeration as the worst government-sponsored propaganda.

 

My initial impression, upon reading

When in doubt, go old-school – or, at least, why not give it a shot, especially if you don't have anything – and I mean anything – else going for you? But remember: Retro isn't always hip – and when it comes to the sad, sad (and ever more sad) White House Office of National Drug Control Policy, "retro" is just plainass embarrassing.

Next to a cover art for a DVD release of the 1936 movie ”Tell Your Children” (better know as “Reefer Madness”), was that ONDCP had embarked on a bizarre attempt to present their usual material in retro-chic style, and, as one might expect, failed badly.

 

Here is ”Teens, Drugs, and Violence: A Special Report, the “tidy little five-pager” Smith cites as the inspiration for his article. It’s theme is generic business presentation graphical, not retro or in any way artistic. It’s information is not new or controversial, its statistics awful, devoid of even the mention of significance, sample size or range of error.

 

IMHO, not only has an entrenched, mostly ineffective, multi-billion dollar government bureaucracy grow up around the issue of drug laws and their enforcement, a smaller but equally ineffective journalistic industry has grown up to be cynically critical of it.

 

Warning: the following is based on anecdotal personal experience and unverified speculation

 

In the US, the production, sale, and distribution of illicit drugs, including marijuana, is a multi-billion dollar business. Many very wealthy, well-educated, and legally and politically knowledgeable people derive much of their income from it. Were current US laws illegalizing these drugs repealed or substantially modified, allowing competition in these markets, the income of many of these people would be dramatically reduced. Therefore, the people who supply the current black market are among those most opposed to legalization, and among the most effective at lobbying state and federal government to oppose legalization efforts.

 

As I stated in my warning, I base this “conspiracy theory” on inadequate and statistically indefensible evidence – it is based entirely on conversations with a personal friend who claims to have an annual income, almost exclusively from managing the growing and distribution of Cannabis, in excess of US $10,000,000, the confirming observation that he/she seems to have practically unlimited personal wealth, and the confirmation of two friends that they purchasing over $100,000 of pot each year from this person.

 

Supporters of more scientifically based policies for the promotion of public health involving drug use should, I think, be aware that those who appear their most obvious opponents – such as strongly anti-drug politicians and very right-wing police officers – are not their only, or even their most effective, opponents. Some very left-wing, ordinary-seeming (though actually very wealthy, and wishing to be more so) people are, also.

Ever seen that movie...?

It's...really...hilarious.

Dumbest film I've ever seen.

Not only have I seen the short (66 min) 1936 film, I saw the 2005 comedy adaptation of it, ”Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical”. I though the 2005 movie a well-done example of over-the-top retro. Also, ironically, it appeared to be the sort of movie made specially to be enjoyed by people under the influence of powerful illicit drugs! Other movies of this kind include the 1982 music movie ”The Wall”.

[Michaelangelica]

and other governments have very poor public credibility,

not the case in Oz the health Dept(s) in Eastern states in particular have been straight. When asked by pollies to do a job on the most dangerous drugs they did - on Tobacco and alcohol.

 

 

 

IMHO, not only has an entrenched, mostly ineffective, multi-billion dollar government bureaucracy grow up around the issue of drug laws and their enforcement,

Who gets the lion's share of the money?

seems abillion goes to S> America, columbia and Agfganistan for "law inforce ment"

a smaller but equally ineffective journalistic industry has grown up to be cynically critical of it.

Arn't you defining "Journalist here? (with afew notable exceptions)

 

Warning: the following is based on anecdotal personal experience and unverified speculation

Good stuff anecdotes

A canadian friend says canada's major $ export to the USA is Marijuana

Were current US laws illegalizing these drugs repealed or substantially modified, allowing competition in these markets, the income of many of these people would be dramatically reduced.

Yes

lobbying state and federal government to oppose legalization efforts.

lobbying or putting them on the payroll? It is impossible to have a corruption free political,banking, justice or police system with that much drug money sloshing about.

 

$10,000,000, the confirming observation that he/she seems to have practically unlimited personal wealth, and the confirmation of two friends that they purchasing over $100,000 of pot each year from this person.

I am definitely in the wrong business.

Not only have I seen the short (66 min)

1936 film, I saw the 2005 comedy adaptation of it, ”Reefer Madness: The Movie Musical”. I though the 2005 movie a well-done example of over-the-top retro. Also, ironically, it appeared to be the sort of movie made specially to be enjoyed by people under the influence of powerful illicit drugs! Other movies of this kind include the 1982 music movie ”The Wall”.

They sound like fun

 

Do you think the USA illegal drug Industry is a billion or a trillion $ industry? (PA)?. Including all the nasties crack cocaine, heroin,ice etc and perhaps some that go under the radar like prescription pain killers valium abuse etc

 

this will upset the Canadians

FOXNews.com - New Law Requires New Mexico to Grow, Distribute Marijuana - Local News | News Articles | National News | US News

 

Changing laws

Medical pot weeds way thru Albany - NY Daily News

Journal Inquirer - Medical marijuana bill in Rell's hand

Medical Marijuana: Rhode Island Bill Passes With Veto-Proof Majorities | Stop the Drug War (DRCNet)

 

I would have thought a quadraplegic was already in Jail, by definition?

Quadriplegic Serving 10-Day Sentence For First-Time Marijuana Charge Dies In DC Jail - NORML

 

Look out for "frisky" deer

Frisky deer lead police to marijuana farm

 

More money for lawyers

cbs4denver.com - Medical Marijuana User Sues Over State Policy

 

Firefighters "didin't inhale!

Firefighters Inhale As 2,000 Pounds Of Pot Burn - The Huffington Post

 

Lastly an Old Doc bows out

Tod H. Mikuriya, 73, Dies; Backed Medical Marijuana - New York Times

Dr. Tod H. Mikuriya, 73, Dies; Backed Medical Marijuana

 

Published: May 29, 2007

 

Dr. Tod H. Mikuriya, a California psychiatrist who was widely regarded as the grandfather of the medical marijuana movement in the United States, died on May 20 at his home in Berkeley. He was 73.

Marcio Jose Sanchez/Associated Press

The cause was complications of cancer, his family told California news organizations.

 

Dr. Mikuriya, who helped make the use of marijuana for medicinal purposes legal in California, spent the last four decades publicly advocating its use, researching its effects and publishing articles on the subject.

 

He was an architect of Proposition 215, the state ballot measure that in 1996 made it legal for California doctors to recommend marijuana for seriously ill patients. He was also a founder of the California Cannabis Research Medical Group and its offshoot, the Society of Cannabis Clinicians.

. . .

He maintained a list of more than 200 ailments whose symptoms it was said to relieve, including stuttering, insomnia, premenstrual syndrome, writer’s cramp, poor appetite and some side effects of cancer treatment, among them nausea and vomiting.

 

Dr. Mikuriya saw his work, he often said, as a means of righting a historical wrong, namely the backlash against medical marijuana that began in the “Reefer Madness” era of the late 1930s.

 

“It had been available to clinicians for one hundred years until it was taken off the market in 1938,” he told The East Bay Express, a Northern California newspaper, in 2004. “I’m fighting to restore cannabis.”

[Queso]

photo of a bag that was once filled with 1/8th ounce of medical marijuana purchased for 50$ in Alameda, CA in a small shop (cannabis club)

It even has a bar code!

Above it it says

"Blueberry Grandaddy"

 

mmmmmmm ;)

[jungjedi]

As a medical marijuana patient for many reasons, I can say that some people on this Earth really need cannabis in their lives.

 

Some people don't.

 

In California, I am legally allowed to grow, posess, and smoke cannabis because I went to the doctors one day and explained to them everything, and they helped me.

 

To me, and millions of other people, it is a wonder drug. There's nothing like it.

 

I'm a very unstable person. (If you didn't know that one already)

I suffer from severe depression. I can be anorexic. Sometimes I get so anxious I can't even sleep.

I experienece a lot of disconfort in my intestines that I at first thought was an ulcer, but the doctors could never figure it out.

 

I blamed it on Kundalini syndrome, and stopped doing Kundalini yoga, and the pain suppressed but it's still there.

premature kundalini?

[Queso]

Yes I was toying with energy I had no idea how to harness.

Kundalini is powerful.

Those spinal chills...that sexual energy....

 

I'm nowhere near ready for it.

I have healed.

No longer do I need marijuana to ease the pain

the pain is gone.

 

thank you yoga

[Moontanman]

First of all, medicine in the sense implied here have not existed for 5,000 years. Only a few centuries ago in Western Europe, the entrials of animals were still consulted to determine the cause of a patient's sickness, and the cure. Honestly, I don't care what 'medicine' thinks of mariuana, if that's the kind of medicine you're talking about.

 

The second point, that smoked mariuana is effective at relieving extreme pain, is more valid and useful, simply because it can be tested. But then we have to ask ourselves: The physical workings of mariuana simply plays around with the neurons and the synapses. It does absolutely bugger-all to the cause of the pain, and only serves to desensitize the smoker. This should come as absolutely no earth-shattering surprise. In such extreme cases of pain, morphine is used regularly. Morphine is also addictive, and there are rules and regulations against the free distribution of morphine for that very same reason. I don't see anybody running around protesting the legalizing of morphine. Now why would that be?

 

I'm not in disagreement with the legalizing of mariuana, not at all. The fact that we deem it illegal creates an artificial black market of an easily come by drug that serves as a stepping stone, or a point of entry, if you will, of the criminally inclined to the underworld. Legalize it, and the bottom will fall out of the market. Then mariuana usage can be attacked via the same methods that tobacco smoking is attacked. Which is just dandy with me. But if we want to legalize it, we should do it for the right reasons - not because of some misplaced notion of weed being the end-all and be-all of all wonder drugs.

 

I take extreme exception to you comparing morphine and marijuana as both being addictive. Either you have a very strange body chemistry or you have never been addicted. I have smoked marijuana quite heavily at times in my life and never experienced anything even close to withdrawal. I have on the other hand also taken morphine under a doctors care and experienced withdrawal and it was hell on earth. I came quite close to dying. It was the most horrifying experience in my life. Cannabis has no withdrawal symptoms at all from what I've experienced and if what morphine does to you is addiction then marijuana is not addictive in any way shape or form!

 

Michael

[InfiniteNow]

I take extreme exception to you comparing morphine and marijuana as both being addictive. Either you have a very strange body chemistry or you have never been addicted. I have smoked marijuana quite heavily at times in my life and never experienced anything even close to withdrawal. I have on the other hand also taken morphine under a doctors care and experienced withdrawal and it was hell on earth. I came quite close to dying. It was the most horrifying experience in my life. Cannabis has no withdrawal symptoms at all from what I've experienced and if what morphine does to you is addiction then marijuana is not addictive in any way shape or form!

 

While I appreciate your point, I believe you overstate. While morphine is more physiologically addicting and the withdrawal from which can cause serious illness, marijuana is ABSOLUTELY psychologically addicting. The basic issue is how much overlap there is in the term "addiction."

 

Smoke daily for several years, and then try going a week without. See then just how "not addictive in any way shape or form" it really is.

 

It may not lock in with our receptors the same, but it still causes cascades of neurochemicals, the effects of which are themselves highly "addictive."

[CraigD]

A gentle reminder: this thread is beginning to stray toward the “to promote non-scientific experimentation of drugs” quality spoken of in the rules. The psychology and physiology of addiction are excellent subjects, but the discussion needs to be kept objective and supported by objective, reproducible scientific data, not just subjective personal anecdotes and opinions.

[Megatron]

Personally, I don't see what the big deal is with Marijuana. We've been at "war" against it for several decades now and all its really done is screw up our country's treasury and economics and crime rates shot through the roof.

 

I know Marijuana (or more specifically, THC) has been considered for use to relieve symptoms of chemotherapy and AIDS. But what I'm wondering is if it has to be smoked, rather than encapsulated, because smoking damages your lungs.

 

Just my two cents on the subject

[Queso]

Nope. You can cook with it. Rub it on your skin. Breathe it. Love it.

It's a divine herb. :]

[CraigD]

But what I'm wondering is if it has to be smoked, rather than encapsulated, because smoking damages your lungs.

Nope. You can cook with it. Rub it on your skin. Breathe it. Love it.

It's a divine herb. :]

As orby notes, there are many ways to ingest the pharmacologically active substances (primarily THC) in cannabis – though, to my knowledge, unless combined with other chemical compounds, and contrary to urban folklore, it can’t be ingested through unbroken skin.

 

Other than smoking, the most common method of ingestion is oral – eating the raw or cooked plant, alone or with other foodstuffs, typically sweets. This method, however, negates ones of the major benefits, very rapid effect and precise dose control. Many people who taken either cannabis or synthetic variants, such as the US CSA Schedule III drug Marinol report dissatisfaction with the loss of this dosing control. Also, particularly with synthetics, it’s actually possible to overdose when taking the drugs orally, which is practically impossible when smoked.

 

The health risks of typical cannabis smoking are less than those associated with typical cigarette smoking, because the amount of smoke inhaled over a specific period (eg: lungfulls/day) is much less. As many of the ill effects of smoking are due to non-pharmacologically active combustion by-products such as carbon ash and other carbon compounds (eg: benzene), the ill effects of any smoked drug can be reduced by volatilizing the desired compounds by heating rather than combustion. With cannabis, this is typically done using an electric heat gun and a glass volatilizing chamber. In the mid 1980s, a major cigarette company (R. J. Reynolds) attempted to sell a self-contained, cigarette-sized device that would do this with oils extracted from tobacco and other flavorings, but were denied US FDA approval. The system was deemed a new drug delivery system, so was denied the “grandfather” legal approval granted to cigarettes, requiring that its maker show it offered a medical benefit, which they (obviously) could not. They tried again in the 1990s, and were successful, bringing the Eclipse cigarette to market in 2000.

[Michaelangelica]

 

if cannabis was legal

would it look like this?

 

Medical Marijuana: Rhode Island Bill Passes With Veto-Proof Majorities

Printer Friendly Version Printer Friendly Version Email this Article Email this Article

from Drug War Chronicle, Issue #488, 6/1/07

 

Only one man now stands between Rhode Islanders and a permanent medical marijuana law, and even he isn't going to be able to stop it. On Wednesday, the state Senate voted overwhelmingly for the bill. Last week, the state House passed it by a similar margin.

 

Gov. Donald Carcieri ® has vowed to veto the bill. But with both houses passing the bill with more than 80% of the vote, the bill's legislative supporters should have no problem in securing the two-thirds vote needed to override the expected veto.

 

It wouldn't be the first time. In 2005, Gov. Carcieri vetoed a medical marijuana bill that is scheduled to sunset June 30, but in January 2006 the legislature overrode that veto -- the only time that any state legislature has overridden a veto in order to legalize medical marijuana.

Medical Marijuana: Rhode Island Bill Passes With Veto-Proof Majorities | Stop the Drug War (DRCNet)

[Queso]

cannabis is legal for some of us. you saw my CCAC bag!

It would be hilarious to buy a pack of joints.

that's something I've yet to see.

they usually have a card-holding binder set up with buds and THC content information next to them. you can flip through and choose which buds you want. different qualities. sativa or indica? both? mmmmmkay.

[DougF]

whether Cannabis has no withdrawal symptoms at all, or whether medical marijuana has a leg to stand, is not relay the point (although I think it can stand on it's own quite well) the point is the governments well not legalize it, I mean it's a weed it grows every where and if they can't control it, and get there two cents (taxes) you will never see it in a pack at your local store. ;) IMHO:shrug:

[CraigD]

the point is the governments well not legalize it, I mean it's a weed it grows every where and if they can't control it, and get there two cents (taxes) you will never see it in a pack at your local store.

If you check either various encyclopedias, or speak to regular cannabis users, DougF, I believe you’ll change you opinion that “pharmacutical grade” cannabis is a weed that grows everywhere. Though many people might wish it were otherwise, it’s practically impossible to forage cannabis in the wild (For safety’s sake, if you ever do find it growing outdoors, assume someone owns it, and leave it alone!).

 

Nearly all members of its family, including the almost completely non-psychotropic fiber hemp varieties, require as much care as crops such as corn and wheat, and will not thrive if simply released into the wild. Much high-quality cannabis is grown in very artificial conditions, with elevated atmospheric gas levels and artificial light intensities and shortened day/night cycles. Nearly all is prevented from uncontrolled pollination and reproduction, which reduces its psychotropic strength.

 

Historically, Cannabis was taxed in the US, between 1937 and 1970 (at a minimum rate of $1/oz), when it could be legally prescribed by licensed physicians. As I described in “Remembering my father’s marijuana license” in the 6309, my father was one of the last “generations” of physicians to have this license, which was arguably useless after 1970.

 

The wikipedia article “Legal history of marijuana in the United States” contains a good summary of this complicated and ongoing history.

[DougF]

CraigD:

I know that

(cannabis) was legal in most states' date=' as hemp to make items such as rope, sails, and clothes, and was used for medicinal purposes; however, after the Mexican Revolution of 1910, a flood of Mexicans immigrated to the United States and introduced recreational marijuana use. A public misconception that Mexicans and other minorities committed violent crimes while under the influence of marijuana, which caused many states to criminalize marijuana.

1937 Marihuana Tax Act - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The act did not itself criminalize the possession or usage of cannabis, but levied a tax equalling roughly one dollar on anyone who dealt commercially in marijuana. It did, however, include penalty provisions. Violations of proper procedure could result in a fine of up to $2000 and five years' imprisonment. The net effect was to make it too risky for anyone to deal in the substance.[/Quote]

but my point is IMHO once recreational marijuana use was introduced into the United States they started making laws agents it's use, because any one could grow it ( “not todays pharmaceutical grade” ) but dame good homegrown that was comparable to what I/you/they could buy on the streets at the time.

 

BTW thanks for the "Why is Marijuana Illegal?" link sounds like a good read (next on my list) if I have a opinion I'll post after I've finished the read.

 

Join Date: May 2007 threads read 110 Subscriptions 91, I don't know how many threads are here but I'll have them all read one day. :)