Pubdate: Sat, 27 Jun 2015 Source: Daily Courier, The (CN BC) Copyright: 2015 The Okanagan Valley Group of Newspapers Contact: http://www.kelownadailycourier.ca Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/531 Author: Jason Broome Page: A11 Reefer Madness Redux MARIJUANA PROPAGANDA WARS HAVE STARTED ALL OVER AGAIN Is a tomato grown in your garden good for you? Have you seen a study demonstrating in a double-blinded fashion that definitive fact? Has that tomato been submitted to Health Canada for approval? No, it hasn't. That tomato doesn't need to because we know that it has health benefits and so we grow it in our gardens, we buy it at stores, in various forms, and consume it and live our lives free of tomato prohibition. Marijuana and its many strains used to be that way. For thousands of years, we grew marijuana, consumed it and benefited from the cannabinoids and terpenes in its flower, not just recreationally (like alcohol and tobacco, then and now) but also to manage ailments such as epilepsy. Then, in early '20s, '30s and '40s, our political leaders around the world decided that marijuana needed to be controlled. They banned the plant, in all its various forms by placing it (and its active cannabinoids) on lists such as Schedule II of the Controlled Drugs and Substances Act here in Canada. And so marijuana prohibition began augmented by reefer madness propaganda ensuring that we as a population would no longer consume this plant. Despite the obvious challenges prohibition creates such as the War on Drugs or running clinical trials on a plant the U.S. government deemed had "no accepted medical use,"during the next 90 years, people around the world continued to use marijuana to address their own medical and recreational needs, finding strains that worked for them and in some countries such as Israel running controlled clinical studies on a number of disease states. Our awakening came with advent of the internet and social media where individual stories and studies could be shared and consolidated forming a cohesive rationale as to why marijuana prohibition should end. People mobilized in the U.S. and slowly governments were swayed and so began the accepted concept of "medical marijuana" where recreational use piggy-backing on medical use both found a legal but sadly quasi regulated way forward. There are many challenges to forcing medical professionals to be the gate keepers to accessing this new medical marijuana paradigm the most obvious is one of a lack of controlled evidence, specifically so called phase III pivotal trials that are necessary for drugs to be approved for use by regulatory bodies such as Health Canada. And there in lies the nexus of the issue. Marijuana, as a dried plant or even in extract or edible form, is not, and never will be, a medical drug and we should stop thinking about it that way. It is, at its most basic level, a form of recreation and, at its theoretical best, a natural health supplement that may have medicinal qualities and it should be treated as such from established regulatory mechanisms that we have for food, alcohol and other natural health supplements at local, provincial and federal levels. Jason Broome, Kelowna - --- MAP posted-by: Matt