Posted on 12/20/2001 4:46:29 PM PST by getsoutalive
I thought it might be helpful to many of the discussions that keep coming up about cannabis to offer some actual medical information and end the childish rhetoric that is so prevalent in these threads.
I will forgo the legality issue as it is obvious that cannabis is illegal because congress says so. At least that was the finding from the SCOTUS a few months back. When they weighed the medical necessity defense, Clarence Thomas wrote "It is clear from the text of the Act that Congress has made a determination that marijuana has no medical benefits worthy of an exception." Thus cannabis is not medicine because Congress SAYS SO!
Now, it is true that there has not been much research performed on the medical value of cannabis. There are a number of reasons for this. Firstly, there is no money to be made from a plant that can be grown by just about anyone, anywhere in the world. Plus it costs a small fortune to sponsor a drug candidate through the FDA approval process. Secondly, the DEA has complete control of all legal supplies of "research material" and any requests to study medical efficacy have been rejected until very recently. Curiously, they have allowed a number of studies that hoped to prove how terrible the drug is, but we don't hear much about those because, they didn't provide the results the DEA had hoped for.
There are however, two public pharmaceutical companies that are focused exclusively on cannabis and/or synthetic derivatives. The first is Pharmos Corp. They are based in Israel and have US headquarters in NJ. They trade on the NASDAQ under the symbol PARS (PARS homepage ). The second company is GW Pharmaceuticals. They are based in the UK and trade on various European exchanges. So why would two public companies focus all there energy on a plant that "has no medical benefits"? Could it be that our congress is wrong? Lets take a look.
Pharmos has developed compound called Dexanabinol. It is a synthetic variation of THC that has been modified to remove the psychotropic effects. The lead compound is currently in the final phase of trials for its neuroprotective ability in Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), such as skull fracture from a car accident. It has shown remarkable efficacy in earlier trials and the only side effect observed thus far is a localized rash. Derivatives of this lead compound are in the lab and offer potential benefits for many more indications. A list of these further possibilities is given at the investment site linked below. Neuropathic pain, Multiple Sclerosis, Stroke, Parkinson's Disease and Nerve Gas protection are just a few. This does not mean that it will be effective for all these indications, but it is very promising and quite obviously not a neurotoxin (doesn't burn-out brain cells).
GW Pharmaceuticals is working with whole cannabis and non-smoking delivery of the active compounds of the natural plant. They have developed a sub-lingual spray form of the drug. GW?s studies are focused mainly on pain relief and are also showing great promise.
Dr Willy Notcutt of the East Anglian pilot study said, "The results so far have exceeded what I dared hope for . . . we are seeing 80% of our patients getting good quality benefit from the cannabis." Some were getting almost total pain relief, he said. "We have seen their pain scores go down to zero."
So, is cannabis the next miracle drug? The jury is still out on that question, but there appears to be incredible potential if one is willing to be open minded and do a little homework.
Not really, you will find that the favorite choice of winos(addicts) is not a good Chardonnay, but cheap and very high alcohol content wines such as MD20/20 or Thunderbird.
The same would happen with pot.
During prohibition, hard liquor was more popular than beer; today, the reverse is true.
Not really, you will find that the favorite choice of winos(addicts) is not a good Chardonnay, but cheap and very high alcohol content wines such as MD20/20 or Thunderbird.
Winos (addicts) are a tiny sub-set of the whole population of alcohol consumers. That tiny segment is not representational of the much, much larger group as a whole. Why did you chose to use such a small segment to represent the much larger whole?
-ccm
As a side note, an acquaintance controlled his schizophrenia with pot.
The first salvo of the attack was with the "Marihuana Tax act of 1937"
That was a attempt to price it out of the market,couple that with a Federal Drug Agency that needed a new "bad guy" to stem the hemorraging of it's budgets and importance,Resulted in an out right ban.
My bet is that "lots of Campaign Contributions" and Scare tactics concerning a certain minority group was smoking it and raping white girls helped push it through Congress
I'll look them up. Don't know where Brewer and Shipley are originally from or are now but they lived in Independence Mo at one time. My brother showed me aproximately where they used to live.
Another song I was listening to last night was Chicken Train by the Ozark Mountian Daredevils. Forget Katy Blue, I like the chicken song ;-)
With 40 to 60 million pot smokers in a country of 270 million,Me thinks maybe you might be working next to a lot more pot smokers than you may realize.
I used to stop almost every evening at the same store on my way home from work. Most evenings I ran into the head of security for the company I work for and he'd be buying his nightly 6 or 12 pack. He had spoken about the 'charge' he got out of performing the company pre-hire and random drug tests... weeding out all those druggies doncha know. The irony, I believe, was lost on him.
For more info read the book "The Emporer Wears No Clothes" by Jack Herer
The Emporer wears no Clothes
I've often wondered if we could actually find out how much money goes into enforcing marijuana laws... REAL figures...not just the ones the pols want us to know. And I can't help but believe that one of the main reasons marijuana won't even be considered by many pols is the fact that it can be homegrown, therefore not taxed and not make a pharm. company rich.
If I had my druthers, I'd either make marijuana use and cultivation legal, or do away with alcohol as well. Alcohol abuse has come all around destroying my family, whereas my experience with marijuana relieved chronic pain without making me brain dead like the pain meds the docs prescribed. [before some of you scream 'druggie!'; gave it up when we had kids].
Of course I did. Er, uh, I just typed Katy Blue to see if anyone was paying attention.
It can't be both?
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