The war on drugs keeps us from helping people

Marijuana stops child’s severe seizures

Wow. Powerful story.

And this part really hit home:

“I literally see Charlotte’s brain making connections that haven’t been made in years,” Matt said. “My thought now is, why were we the ones that had to go out and find this cure? This natural cure? How come a doctor didn’t know about this? How come they didn’t make me aware of this?”

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48 Responses to The war on drugs keeps us from helping people

  1. claygooding says:

    It cries out for action by congress to remove cannabis from the CSA so medical collages could offer the proper training to update doctors to the methods and uses of cannabis,,,somehow a certification from a major medical school seems more appropriate than going through web searches and the few sites where doctors can go for the info..
    I am sure any major school even offering a class right now would be nudged about losing federal research funding and student loans being denied.

  2. kaptinemo says:

    For an answer, one should ask the surviving members of the University of Virginia team that found out in 1974 that cannabis shrank glial cell brain cancer tumors why the news wasn’t trumpeted from the rooftops. The silence about how that happened speaks volumes.

    A Pulitzer Prize awaits the (as Al Giordano of NarcoNews would put it, ‘authentic’) journalist who breaks that story wide open. Maybe even a Nobel Prize.

    • Dante says:

      I believe it was a Virginia University, but not UVA.

      • Matthew Meyer says:

        That’s a good point, one I had not seen made.

        The Alternet article cites the “Medical College of Virginia” as the location of the research.

        That’s apparently a part of Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) in Richmond:

        “The VCU Medical Center used to be known as the Medical College of Virginia, which merged with the Richmond Professional Institute in 1968 to create Virginia Commonwealth University.” (From Wikipedia)

        Is this confusion part of the reason it’s been hard to follow up?

  3. Howard says:

    Here’s a link from way back in 2000 describing researchers in Madrid learning what the 1974 US study already revealed;

    http://www.alternet.org/story/9257/pot_shrinks_tumors%3B_government_knew_in_%2774

    The main reason an ‘authentic’ journalist should really dig into this story is the suppression of the results by certain US presidents.

    I think the reason for the original study was to prove, once and for all, that cannabis caused irreparable brain damage. When the researchers could not prove that outcome AND found positive tumor reduction, well, that was just too much. Those results didn’t fly with the propaganda machine.

    I’ve had friends and relatives die from cancer. The blacklisting of this information from the very taxpayers who funded this study is — dare I say it? — a crime against humanity.

    • DdC says:

      Webster’s Dictionary 1952
      Bhang-(bang). n [Hind.from Sans.. bhanga,hemp] An Indian variety of the common hemp, the resin of which is highly narcotic and intoxicant, and a popular Oriental stimulant, otherwise called hashish. Also employed in medicine, for its anodyne, hyponotic, and anti-spasmodic qualities; also spelled bang, beng.

      The Effect of Controlled Substances Scheduling on Research

      Cannabis Shrinks Tumors: Government Knew in 74
      The Madrid study marks only the second time that THC has been administered to tumor-bearing animals; the first was a Virginia investigation 26 years ago. In both studies, the THC shrank or destroyed tumors in a majority of the test subjects. The ominous part is that this isn’t the first time scientists have discovered that THC shrinks tumors. In 1974 researchers at the Medical College of Virginia, who had been funded by the National Institute of Health to find evidence that marijuana damages the immune system, found instead that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer in mice — lung and breast cancer, and a virus-induced leukemia.

      The DEA quickly shut down the Virginia study and all further cannabis/tumor research

      Now They’re Coming For The 1st?

      “The media’s the most powerful entity on earth.
      They have the power to make the innocent guilty
      and to make the guilty innocent, and that’s power.
      – Malcolm X

    • Duncan20903 says:

      Don’t forget about the Rat Park study.
      http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rat_Park

    • DdC says:

      High Price: Drugs, Neuroscience, and Discovering Myself
      by Carl Hart – review
      Carl Hart argues persuasively that drug abuse is a symptom of a sick society rather than the cause.

      Ethan Nadelmann ‏@ethannadelmann
      http://nyti.ms/14lKIsf
      Bloomberg & NYPD back down on stop&frisk.
      City Agrees to Expunge Names Collected in Stop-and-Frisk Program. Progress!

      Piers Morgan Live ‏@PiersMorganLive
      “I’ve apologized for (my) earlier reporting..I think we’ve been terribly misled” @drsanjaygupta, who now endorses medical marijuana. @CNN

      ScottsdaleGolferGal ‏@AZGolferGal007
      @PiersMorganLive @drsanjaygupta @CNN Wow that 19 year old’s story was amazing. “Hope” has arrived for many! Thnx, Dr. Gupta.

      CAMarijuana2016 ‏@CAMarijuana2016
      @PiersMorganLive @EatsInTheBed Welcome to the dark side master Gupta! @drsanjaygupta @CNN #cannabis

      TheMLKofMarijuana ‏@themlkofweed
      @PiersMorganLive @drsanjaygupta @CNN welcome doc….we always have room for one more….we appreciate you speaking truth #choomgang

      Ethan Nadelmann ‏@ethannadelmann
      Exclusive: IRS manual detailed DEA’s use of hidden intel evidence http://reut.rs/13OcvhF At last! Solid investigation into DEA’s antics.

  4. Howard says:

    And from the Equally Galling Department;

    US Patent 6,630,507 Cannabinoids as Antioxidants and Neuroprotectants

    “Cannabinoids have been found to have antioxidant properties, unrelated to NMDA receptor antagonism. This new found property makes cannabinoids useful in the treatment and prophylaxis of wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuroprotectants, for example in limiting neurological damage following ischemic insults, such as stroke and trauma, or in the treatment of neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer’s disease, Parkinson’s disease and HIV dementia. Nonpsychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidoil, are particularly advantageous to use because they avoid toxicity that is encountered with psychoactive cannabinoids at high doses useful in the method of the present invention.”

    So how does this patent square with cannabis being listed in Schedule I? It doesn’t of course. How does a government hold a patent that directly contradicts that same goverment’s incessant claim that cannabis has no medical value?

    I noticed pitchforks on sale recently…

    • curmudgeon says:

      All those beetle killed pines in Co. would make great torches.

    • frijoles jr. says:

      Regarding medical benefit and Sched. I, I think that it’s legit if not factually correct because of a little thing called a congressional finding of fact. As I understand it, it works thusly:

      If Congress passes a law with the preamble “Whereas the sky is green …” then, legally speaking, the sky is green and you cannot argue in court that it is blue.

      The law provides administrative remedies to the scheduling of any given substance, but good luck with that.

  5. I have had a family member pass from glial cell brain cancer, and it does not sit well with me that this info was hidden from view.

    • Rick Steeb says:

      Both of my parents could have benefited from the medical use of cannabis during their terminal declines from brain infarcts. Its beneficial use in dementia patients was documented by O’Shaugnessy. It is STILL the most promising treatment for Alzheimers, both in prevention of the plaque deposits AND treating the agitation. What an unforgivable atrocity is “Schedule I Cannabis”.

  6. claygooding says:

    One In 25 Americans Was Arrested In 2011

    http://tinyurl.com/mpu2np9

    We’ve heard a lot of talk lately about mass incarceration, the stop-and-frisk policies in New York, reforming the drug laws, and mandatory minimum sentencing. There’s also been discussion about over-criminalization — that we have too many laws, too broadly enforced — from groups as ideologically diverse as the Heritage Foundation, the ACLU, the Cato Institute, and the National Association of Criminal Defense Lawyers.

    But here’s a related statistic that’s pretty mind blowing in and of itself: According to the FBI, in 2011 there were 3991.1 arrests for every 100,000 people living in America. That means over the course of a single year, one in 25 Americans was arrested.

    The FBI also reports that the arrest rate for violent crime was just 172 per 100,000, and for property crimes, it was 531. That means that in 2011, one in 33 Americans were arrested for crimes that didn’t involve violence against another person, or theft of or damage to property. More people were arrested for drug crimes than any other class of crimes — about one in every 207 of us. One in every 258 of us was arrested for drunk driving. The FBI doesn’t keep track, but presumably the remaining arrests were for crimes like prostitution, vandalism, public intoxication, disorderly conduct, and other consensual crimes and relatively minor offenses. ‘snip’

    Radley at Huffpo and Salon has an article about the statistics also.

    • DdC says:

      One Drug Arrest Every 19 Seconds Oh Gilligan!
      New FBI Numbers Reveal Failure of the “War on Drugs”

      Pot Smokers Are The Most Officially Oppressed Minority In America Sep 14 2011
      Old Hippie: “Would the American public put up with this treatment if it was happening to gay and lesbian people? To Jews? To Muslims? Certainly not!”

      http://i38.tinypic.com/f27lmw.jpg

      Trying to arrest our way to victory pg/dwr
      Police made 853,838 arrests in 2010 for marijuana-related offenses, according to the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s annual Uniform Crime Report, released today.

      Overall, law enforcement agents nationwide arrested 1,638,846 people last year for drug abuse violations, surpassing arrests for all other crimes.

      Since 2000, law enforcement have reported making an estimated 7.9 million arrests for marijuana violations.

      2010 @ 52.1%
      US Marijuana Arrests Percentage Share of Total Drug Arrests

      $10,400 per arrest x 853,838 arrests = $8,879,915,200.00
      NORML Releases Most Comprehensive Analysis Of US Marijuana Arrest Data To Date

      Drug Detention Centers
      Kochroach & Aleech
      Religious drug treatment in Texas
      Money Grubbing Dung Worriers
      Forfeiture $quads
      Got SqWAT?
      Policing for Profit

      NeoConflicts of Interest
      MJ Research Cut as Support Grows
      Bush Barthwell & Drugs

      Slavery: Another Fine Product Still Made in the USA!
      ALEC, the Koch Brothers Led CABAL
      History of Mandatory Minimums
      Military & Prison Industrial Complex’, Are the Police State

      The Obama Admin’s Anti-Marijuana Manifesto
      Multiple DEA Raids Target Marijuana in Hawaii
      Obama: “An Entirely Legitimate Topic for Debate”
      Hil and Gil on the Drug War
      Obombo’s Sublingual Attack on Ganja
      One Drug Arrest Every 19 Seconds Oh Gilligan!
      President Obama takes a dump on California
      Obama Doesn’t Need Congress
      Drug Czar linked to deception
      IRS Targets Medical Marijuana Businesses
      Obama spent nearly $300 million busting Ganja â„ž ops.
      The Human and Fiscal Cost of the Ganjawar

  7. darkcycle says:

    I no longer react with surprise to these stories. In fact, I’m nearly out of indignation with which to react. My reaction to this story was more along the lines of “Of course it does.”

    • darkcycle says:

      I had just run here with that… Nice catch, DdC.

      • DdC says:

        This tweety stuff is a lot easier to send and get stories. From more sources. Still have to code forums. Now is the time to watch Holder closely. Time to let it go, and no more appeasements and compromises on insanity.

    • N.T. Greene says:

      Sweet Jesus. While I have my doubts, I am reading this as their long awaited response to the CO and WA efforts.

      There is, of course, a chance, a small chance in all honesty, that someone in power will execute common sense and this will get set in a better direction. They are right to say that this could, if done correctly, be the Obama administration’s lasting legacy (for good?).

      My guess is that the lawyers all got together and came to the conclusion that they could not beat back the state level legalization actions. At least not legally.

  8. DdC says:

    Jeffrey’s Journey
    Pediatrics: W.A.M.M. has been documenting the use of medical marijuana for young people with multiple behavior disorders. A report on this subject will come out shortly. For now, please read the articles below regarding one of WAMM’s patients.
    Debbie Jeffries shows CorrespondentHarold Dow
    the bag of marijuana she keeps in her freezer. (CBS)

    “My thought now is, why were we the ones that had to go out and find this cure? This natural cure? How come a doctor didn’t know about this?

    From Whom Did the Fascists Get Support?
    Italian fascism and German Nazism had their admirers within the U.S. business community and the corporate owned press.

    “All propaganda must be so popular and on such an intellectual level, that even the most stupid of those towards whom it is directed will understand it. Therefore, the intellectual level of the propaganda must be lower the larger the number of people who are to be influenced by it.”
    Benito Mussolini,
    London Sunday Express, December 8, 1935

    The inbedwith dis-infotainment: Gaza to Iraq

    “Another weapon I discovered early
    was the power of the printed word to sway souls to me.
    The newspaper was soon my gun, my flag –
    a thing with a soul that could mirror my own.”
    ~ Benito Mussolini

    The Corporate Muzzle
    Trolls of Fascism

    “If you’re not careful,
    the newspapers will have you hating the people who are being oppressed,
    and loving the people who are doing the oppressing.”
    ~ Malcolm X

    • DdC says:

      How come they didn’t make me aware of this?”

      Legalizers, Common Sense & Wrong Dollars

      Prohibitionists are living in the “Airplane” movie.

      Elaine : The gear is down and we’re ready to land.
      Kramer : Alright, he’s on final now,
      put out all runway lights except 9er.
      Towerguy Captain,
      maybe we ought to turn on the search lights now.
      MCrosky: No, thats just what they’ll be expecting us to do

      Plus dung worriers cannabinoid levels are bottomed out from generations of abstaining.

      Clinical Endocannabinoid Deficiency

      leading to

      Having Larger ‘Fear Centers’ in Their Brains

      Meanwhile…

      Using Pot To Save Brains!

      But then some how he did find out about it and I see no real reason anyone can’t find out about it if they choose to look and discern for themselves what is best for them. Those who put their kids or anyone at risk over political correctness or blind faith in government, church or corporations, are watching their kids die. From the many side effect killers of the Ganjawar, not from using Ganja. Deadly chemicals easier to get from over demonizing or causing more panics in the proverbial needle park. Low supply and high demand people look for substitutes, that kill. As for the AMA insurance corporation, there is little if any connection to healing or prevention and certainly not cures. The hypocratic oath is now the hypocritical oath. When it all comes out, after we take back the public airwaves or subsidized cable. When it becomes as normal for them as it is for us. I don’t see how they can keep this pig in the poke with their same old gossip.DARE and SWAT coming from one guy should have been a red flag. Are DARE classes recruiting stations for future Narks? The kids needing the most attention grappling onto the authoritah figure and his gossip to a future Sabet or Humpty.

      But some are starting to get it.

      HIGH TIMES ‏@HIGH_TIMES_Mag
      RT @APkristenwyatt Kind of a big deal –>
      CNN’s @drsanjaygupta just called medical pot “necessary, safe and effective”

  9. Francis says:

    The story has a poll next to it. Current results:

    Do you think medical marijuana should be available for kids?

    Yes – 92%
    Undecided – 6%
    No – 2%

    • darkcycle says:

      It’s the ghost of Francis! Hiya daddy…see why I get scarce now and again??

      • Francis says:

        “Hiya daddy…see why I get scarce now and again??”

        Indeed I do. Indeed I do. (Just so everyone’s clear, I’m a new father. darkcycle is not my child.)

      • allan says:

        yeah… been there done that… bless all you gnu daddies. Daughter was up from Portlandia and told me she asked her boyfriend to marry her. I looked at him and asked, “so, what did you say?” and the next thing I know I’m getting punched in the arm.

        Son is looking at the military. No problem with that on my part. All vets on my side. But it means the nest be empty! Can you hear me sighing from there?

  10. Servetus says:

    It’s the government that keeps us from helping people, specific members of said government being too scared to piss when it comes to drug reform.

    Governments are fragile things. France can testify to that. The French Dreyfus affair, known to historians as the scandal that destroyed the French government, involved little more than an innocent, Jewish/French military officer erroneously charged with espionage and sent to Devil’s Island for ten years (he did five). The government knew he was innocent, but believed revealing Dreyfus’s innocence would harm the faith the French had in their government. They were right. The French citizens found out. The cover-up changed history. The Dreyfus affair is blamed for leading to WWII, along with the Nazis’ surprising ability to waltz through France in a takeover. (ref: The Collapse of the Third Republic: An Inquiry into the Fall of France in 1940, by William Shirer).

    Today we have a government guilty of prohibiting a treatment or cure for various cancers, and a host of other common illnesses. This is happening in a country noted, and in fact on top of the world, for its technical and scientific savvy. The U.S. government has covered up their prohibition scandal. They have been detected; so they failed.

    The question is what’s next. Human rights cannot exist without a government and a legal infrastructure to protect human rights. If a remediation of human rights violations is impossible, or too expensive for any normal citizen to achieve, no rights can be said to exist.

    Can we solve this problem without overthrowing the government? Stay tuned as the marijuana melodrama continues.

  11. allan says:

    and they think when some of us mention war crimes and reparations that we’re being hyperbolic… we haven’t even begun laying out our case against them

    • Viggo Piggsko Flatmark says:

      They should be given a bad opiate addiction and thrown into a cell for some cold turkey – repeat as many times as necessary.

      • kaptinemo says:

        I don’t know off-hand how many people have died from cancer since the 1974 UofV study discovered cannabis’s anti-neoplastic (anticancer) properties, but I’m willing to bet the number meets or exceeds the Holocaust. Given that, it can be argued that the suppression of that research was done for no less heinous purposes.

        In short, it was deliberate mass murder. And someone, somewhere, ‘pulled the trigger’ by giving the order to deep-six that study. A paper trail must exist somewhere for this to have happened. Someone in the Nixon Too Administration (Ford was Nixon’s tool, and doesn’t count) made the decision. It is not hyperbole to say that the real story of the times back then was not Watergate, but UVAgate…and like Watergate, has left a lasting legacy whose ramifications are felt today.

        • strayan says:

          If big tobacco are culpable for suppressing the dangers of cigarettes, I don’t see why big government are not culpable for suppressing benefts of cannabis. That would be one mother of a lawsuit.

        • Windy says:

          So let’s see those who’ve lost family members to cancer get started on bringing that lawsuit! That’ll rattle a few cages.

  12. kaptinemo says:

    OT, but of great interest: from Digby’s Hullabaloo, we have Drugs, Terrorism and the Homeland.

    As is typical of most ‘progressives’, the presence of DEA in A-stan comes as a ‘shock’ to la Digby. Most of us reformers have known about this for years. I recall very clearly a few years back at DEAWatch how the DEA agents assigned to go there bitterly complained that they were being sacrificed and punished for speaking out against their superiors. Those sentiments are echoed in this article.

    But what is most interesting are the comments of those who, for decades, wanted to “Fight the DrugWar like a REAL war!” and are now getting a chance to see what it’s like to actually deal with someone who shoots back, unlike the easily-targeted cannabis growers and sellers they’ve preyed upon with impunity all these years.

    Needless to say, they don’t like it.

    • darkcycle says:

      No, they really did not want that. They wanted more money to go after easy victims. And maybe shoot a few dogs along the way. Sometimes getting what you ask for IS the best medicine.

  13. claygooding says:

    Gupta: Why I changed my mind on weed

    http://tinyurl.com/khuuo78

    “”I traveled around the world to interview medical leaders, experts, growers and patients. I spoke candidly to them, asking tough questions. What I found was stunning.

    Long before I began this project, I had steadily reviewed the scientific literature on medical marijuana from the United States and thought it was fairly unimpressive. Reading these papers five years ago, it was hard to make a case for medicinal marijuana. I even wrote about this in a TIME magazine article, back in 2009, titled “Why I would Vote No on Pot.”

    Well, I am here to apologize.”” ‘snip’

    “”We have been terribly and systematically misled for nearly 70 years in the United States, and I apologize for my own role in that.”” “snip”

    Gupta “gets” it.

    • Howard says:

      While I’m not a big fan of celebrity doctors (Dr. Gupta, DR. Phil, Dr. OZ, Dr. Who…), Gupta’s mea culpa is rather significant. It represents yet another crack in the cannabis prohibition wall. A slightly bigger crack than most.

      Now I’d like to see him discuss his turn around with a few others. Calvina Fay recently described medical cannabis as a “sham”. Not long ago NY Gov. Michael Bloomberg described it as a “hoax”. And on and on.

      A debate for the ages is in order.

    • darkcycle says:

      Quite the mea culpa. I had written off Dr. Gupta when he made that original statement in 2005 or six. Unfortunately I don’t write people off easily, and it takes more than a simple mea culpa to get off my shit list. Let’s see him do something….and is there any way to find out if he just bought a bunch of shares of G.W. Pharma? Like I said….takes a bit to make it off that list.

    • Citizen Teus says:

      Gupta may get it now, but he has a long way to go before I forgive him for his 2009 Time magazine article. He claims to have researched it and come to a conclusion back then. And he couldn’t manage to find the excellent information put forth by Drs. Mikuriya and Grinspoon? Bullshit!

      • Howard says:

        I agree. I’m still on the fence as to whether Dr. Gupta has fully atoned for his sins. Time will tell if he’s putting out his report this Sunday to seem current and relevant. One thing that will change my mind is if he sticks with this topic and uses his ‘celebrityness’ to further the agenda. If he quickly moves on to the next hot topic, well, it’s back to the salt mines Sanjay!

  14. Howard says:

    This research was described in articles a while back;

    http://www.cpmc.org/professionals/research/programs/science/cannabidiolarticles.html

    What this paper does not mention is the fact that when ld-1 is inhibited by CBD and metastasis is curtailed, cells formerly cancerous return to their normal state (this was described in other articles). Consider that for a moment: Instead of wholesale destruction of cancer cells and surrounding normal cells via chemo therapy and/or radiation, CBD doesn’t kill anything. Essentially CBD is a non-toxic form of cancer treatment. The terms ‘non-toxic’ and ‘cancer treatment’ are almost never used in the same sentence. It’s an oxymoron.

    Now consider how much research progress could have been made and how many lives could have been saved if the US government had turned over their 1974 findings to the Mayo Clinic or Johns Hopkins University or similar research institutions.

  15. Jean Valjean says:

    The story of Charlotte Figi and the improvements in her life since her parents started to give her low THC cannabis oil got me thinking. For a number of years until I retired in 2008 I was the assessment unit teacher for a large epilepsy research facility and school. Every week i attended a multi-disciplinary meeting of doctors, nurses, therapists and care staff and other medical specialists to discuss the progress of students being assessed. Most of the meeting was taken up with the pros and cons of the various drug combinations being tried in the attempt to stabilize seizures and improve learning. As all our students had severe epilepsy and many, like Charlotte had begun seizures before reaching a year old, their learning was often seriously affected. All of the staff were very dedicated to helping their patients/students and i believe would have done anything if they thought it might help. Not once however did I ever hear anyone discuss the possibility of cannabis as a treatment method. Charlotte’s story suggests to me that at least some of these students were denied the hope of a brighter future.

  16. DdC says:

    Sanjay Gupta, Terribly & Systematically Misled
    Gupta says he was too dismissive of the “loud chorus” of legitimate patients whose symptoms improved with help from medical marijuana. He now says, “I mistakenly believed the Drug Enforcement Agency listed marijuana as a schedule 1 substance [a category of dangerous drugs] because of sound scientific proof.”

    “They didn’t have the science to support that claim, and I now know that when it comes to marijuana neither of those things are true,” wrote Gupta, citing patient cases including a 3-year-old whose seizures were dramatically reduced from 300 a week to three a month with medical marijuana’s help.

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