Marijuana – The cannabis controversy continues

The cannabis controversy continues. Though nine states have legalized cannabis for recreational use (i.e. for getting high), and 29 have legalized it for medical purposes, in Washington, Attorney General Jeff Sessions sees it as a sinister threat. Sessions put this bluntly when he was a senator, saying, “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.”

Sessions would rather people suffer and die from opioid prescriptions than reduce the need for these dangerous addictive drugs that has people dropping like flies in America. Two separate peer-reviewed studies in the journal JAMA Internal Medicine found significant drops in opioid prescribing in US states that had relaxed their cannabis laws. Both studies appear to offer insights into possible ways to solve a crisis that saw 17,087 people die from prescription opioid overdoes in the US in 2016.

Former U.S. House Speaker John Boehner has had a change of heart on marijuana and will promote its nationwide legalization as a way to help veterans and the nation’s deadly opioid crisis. "I decided to get involved because of the struggles of our country’s veterans and the opioid epidemic, after learning how de-scheduling the drug can potentially help with both crises," said Boehner.

Marijuana is a beautiful gift from Nature, yet some people prefer toxic pharmaceutical drugs that kill more than 100,000 people a year in America alone. Marijuana is still not known to have officially killed anyone!

“Marijuana has remarkably low toxicity and lethal doses in humans have not been described. This is in stark contrast to a number of commonly prescribed medications used for similar purposes, including opiates, anti-emetics, anti-depressants and muscle relaxants, not to mention legal substances used recreationally including tobacco and alcohol,” writes Dr. Gregory T. Carter, Clinical Associate Professor of Rehabilitation Medicine, University of Washington School of Medicine. Notice Dr. Carter said low toxicity not no toxicity.

Marijuana does have side effects and can be addictive but not in the same sense as opioids. Many people smoke marijuana their entire lives and it still does not cause the same problems as alcohol and many other drugs.

Ron Paul called the war on drugs “un-American,” believing we should all be able to think for ourselves or alter our consciousness if we want. Though marijuana is associated with alternative lifestyles many of the straightest people in the country smoke marijuana, scientists, writers, politicians and even policemen. School teachers do it too and everyone else you can think of because when used as a medicine to alleviate pain and suffering, no one is counted out.

Yet the government has nothing better to do than destroy peoples’ lives. On any given day in the United States, at least 137,000 people sit behind bars on simple drug-possession charges, according to a report released by the American Civil Liberties Union and Human Rights Watch.

Nearly two-thirds of them are in local jails. The report says that most of these jailed inmates have not been convicted of any crime: They’re sitting in a cell, awaiting a day in court, an appearance that may be months or even years because they can’t afford to post bail.

"It’s been 45 years since the war on drugs was declared, and it hasn’t been a success," lead author Tess Borden of Human Rights Watch said in an interview. "Rates of drug use are not down. Drug dependency has not stopped. Every 25 seconds, we’re arresting someone for drug use."

In Texas 116 people are currently serving life sentences on charges of simple drug possession. Seven of those people earned their sentences for possessing quantities of drugs weighing between 1 gram and 4 grams, or less than a typical sugar packet. There never seems to be a shortage of cruelty in the world and we see this clearly in the war against marijuana.

Marijuana as a Medicine

Cannabinoids are usually well tolerated, and do not produce the generalized toxic effects of conventional pharmaceuticals. However, at Columbia University’s National Center on Addiction and Substance Abuse, researchers have found that abrupt marijuana withdrawal leads to symptoms like depression and nicotine withdrawal.

The American College of Physicians (ACP) issued a policy statement years ago endorsing medical marijuana use. The group has urged the government to reverse its ban on medical treatments using marijuana. "ACP encourages the use of non-smoked forms of THC (the main psychoactive element in marijuana) that have proven therapeutic value." The Philadelphia-based organization, the second largest doctor’s group in the United States, cited studies into marijuana’s medical applications such as treating severe weight loss associated with illnesses such as AIDS, and treating nausea and vomiting associated with chemotherapy for cancer patients.

Marijuana and Cancer

Cannabinoids offer cancer patients a therapeutic option in the treatment of highly invasive cancers. Medical science is in favour of hemp oil as a cancer therapy, not just in a supportive role to control the side effects of chemotherapy.

According to Dr. Robert Ramer and Dr. Burkhard Hinz of the University of Rostock in Germany medical marijuana can be an effective treatment for cancer. Their research was published in the Journal of the National Cancer Institute Advance Access in 2007.

Marijuana cuts lung cancer tumor growth in half, a 2007 Harvard Medical School study showed. The active ingredient in marijuana cuts tumor growth in common lung cancer in half and significantly reduces the ability of the cancer to spread.[1]

Researchers reported in a 2004 issue of Cancer Research, the journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, that marijuana’s constituents inhibited the spread of brain cancer in human tumor biopsies.

Researchers at the University of Milan in Naples, Italy, reported in the Journal of Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics that non-psychoactive compounds in marijuana inhibited the growth of glioma cells in a dose-dependent manner, and selectively targeted and killed malignant cells through apoptosis. “Non-psychoactive CBD produces a significant anti-tumor activity both in vitro and in vivo, thus suggesting a possible application of CBD as an antineoplastic agent.”

Cannabis though is not a stand alone cure all for cancer or anything. There now are so many good natural medicines and therapies that should be used together when attempting to treat serious disease.

Resolving the Marijuana Legal Issue

Of course, the legal problems around marijuana could be easily disposed of by congress adopting a simple law to the effect that the cultivation and sale of cannabis shall be regulated by the states. The craven members of congress apparently don’t even dare to raise the issue of resolving this conundrum. The New York Times, The Washington Post, CNN, Fox-News and any of the other media organs of public debate are in on hunting down humans and putting them behind bars for something most people want legal.

America began destroying democratic principle when they started its war on drugs. They still cannot help themselves but many states and now countries are turning the tide against the mean nastiness that has swept the world.

The world has followed Americas lead in marijuana prohibition (cruelty against domestic populations) and now it is time for them to lead the world out of political malice and end this human tragedy. Sadly, they are looking to start more wars and kill more people instead.

The arrogant evil that is afoot in the world is risking all our lives in a nuclear inferno. We did not stop the war on drugs in time and now perhaps its too late to choose love over the mentality of, “Good people don’t smoke marijuana.” It is a small step from war against one’s own people to war against people of other nations, something that the European Union and the USA is pressing hard for.