Pubdate: Fri, 04 May 2012
Source: Bancroft This Week (CN ON)
Copyright: 2012 OSPREY Media Group Inc.
Contact:  http://www.bancroftthisweek.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/3853
Author: Robert Snefjella
Referenced: http://www.mapinc.org/drugnews/v12/n240/a04.html

MEDICAL USE OF MARIJUANA

To the Editor,

Thank you to Barbara Shaw for a highly professional and informative 
April 27 report ("Patients caught in the middle") on the tribulations 
of Dr. Kammermans and his patients in regard to the medical use of marijuana.

The historical facts pertaining to the issue should be part of public 
education. The cannabis plant arguably offers the most actual and 
potential benefits of any plant in all of nature. And it was this 
broad spectrum of real and potential benefits of any plant in all of 
nature. And it was this broad spectrum of real and potential benefit 
which was cannabis's (historically temporary, hopefully, if sanity is 
to prevail) undoing: it was several decades ago targeted as a major 
threat to the profits of the big pharmaceuticals, conventional 
medicine, the paper making industry, and the emerging synthetic 
clothing (nylon, rayon, etc) industry, among others.

It was variously estimated early in the 20th century that there were 
tens of thousands of potential applications of this plant.

The deliberate demonizing and criminalizing of cannabis took place 
between the two world wars via a concerted media campaign of lies and 
lurid horror stories. Prohibition of alcohol in the United States had 
made a terrible mess, strengthening organized crime and spawning 
police and official corruption, and much violent crime. Prohibition 
of alcohol was lifted, and transmuted into prohibition of cannabis 
and certain opiates, substances that had until that time been 
commonly and beneficially used in medical practice.

Among the many beneficiaries of the criminalizing of cannabis are the 
massive and burgeoning North American Prison Industry, as well as 
organized crime, in high and low places.

The hemp seed is a singular marvel as nourishing food, combining an 
ideal proportion of omega-6 to omega-3 essential fatty acids with a 
complete protein.

In 1974, the Medical College of Virginia on behalf of the National 
Institute of Health in the United States undertook to show that 
marijuana damaged health and caused cancer. What they found was 
disturbing: an ingredient in marijuana acted as an anti-cancer agent.

More recent research has confirmed and amplified those findings. For 
example, a Harvard Medical School study in 2007 showed that THC (a 
component of marijuana) reduced the ability of cancer to spread.

The so-called "properly prescribed pharmaceuticals" are now infamous 
as one of the leading causes of death in North America. Prescribed 
opiates have led to a widespread addiction problem. Tobacco is 
implicated in over half a million deaths and alcohol is roughly a 
hundred thousand North American deaths, annually.

I've obviously just scratched the surface of the subject. Among much 
available literature, Chris Conrad's Hemp for Health, published 1997, 
is valuable. The online article The Marijuana Conspiracy offers an 
illuminating 2009 examination of the issue.

Robert Snefjella
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MAP posted-by: Jay Bergstrom