MARIJUANA PROHIBITION MAKES WAR ON MIRACULOUS GIFT If a miracle suddenly appeared, would we try to learn from it or try to destroy it? A common plant can relieve pain and muscle spasticity. The plant's components show promise to inhibit tumor growth and control diabetes. The plant contains remarkable substances identical to substances which already flow through human bodies and are thought to regulate critical functions from memory to mood. A close relative of the plant also offers profitable but environmentally-friendly alternative fiber and food crops. Research continues on the plant in the United States, but most studies focus on allegedly negative effects. The plant is cannabis (more commonly known as marijuana), and the government does not see it as a miracle. The government denies that marijuana and similar plants (like the very useful buy wholly non-intoxicating hemp) can ever be good. But that denial took another hit from the facts recently. Marijuana prohibitionists have long argued that since cannabis smoke contains more tars than tobacco, it must cause cancer. A thorough study presented recently at The American Thoracic Society's annual conference showed that even heavy marijuana smoking did not increase the risk for lung cancer. Indeed, in the study by Donald Tashkin of UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine, marijuana smokers showed slightly lower cancer rates than non-smokers. This is not an entirely new finding, as a review of the literature on lung cancer and marijuana smoke by Dr. Robert Melamede suggested last year. Tashkin's study results should have been on the front page of every newspaper in the nation. Why? Because we have been wasting lives and resources on a war based on faulty intelligence, only this war has been going on for close to 70 years. And because the media has helped to disseminate this faulty intelligence for an even longer time, it bears the responsibility of correcting the record fully. The initial reasons given for marijuana prohibition included its supposed propensity to turn users violent. That misconception finally got cleared up as the drug became more popular in the 1960s and 1970s despite prohibition. That era had its own litany of false stories about cannabis, including the absurdity that it made teenage boys sprout breasts. More recently we heard that marijuana smoking will lead to lung, head and neck cancer. It's a lie that is especially damaging considering the reality. In other places in the world, marijuana is being studied medically, and not only for the relief from cancer treatments like chemotherapy. Research suggests cannabis might actually be an anti-cancer agent (which would explain why Tashkin's study showed marijuana smokers with lower lung cancer rates than non-smokers). Italian researchers last week seemed to show anti-cancer properties in substances found in cannabis. This hasn't been widely publicized, similar to other promising research released in 2003, as well as research that goes back to the early 1970s. If any other substance was involved, this would have been on the cover of major U.S. news magazines. As it stands, unfortunately, most U.S. media have missed most of the amazing new science related to cannabis and human health. Substances called cannabinoids found in cannabis plants also occur naturally human bodies. Special receptors exist around the body specifically to interact with the cannabinoids that we make or that cannabis makes. The cannabinoids don't appear in any other plant. Kind of, well, miraculous, isn't it? More research needs to be done on how cannabis and cannabinoids can be used beneficially. For now, that research won't take place in the United States. All U.S. government-funded research starts with the presumption that marijuana is bad. Researchers trying to learn about possible benefits report being denied a legal supply of the plant. This notion that sending a wholly negative message about marijuana (even devoting a multi-billion dollar taxpayer financed ad campaign equating the plant with badness) will somehow keep our young people away from marijuana has also been exposed as a lie. For the past several years teenagers surveyed on drug use say it's easy to get marijuana if they want it. There are reasons for young people not to use marijuana. Hearing over hyped scare stories about the substance isn't one of them. A recent study of that multi-billion dollar taxpayer financed ad campaign showed many teenagers who viewed the ads became more interested in marijuana, not less. The rationale for the war on marijuana, and the tactics used to fight that war, have been exposed as false and counterproductive. Each year police arrest more than 700,000 Americans for marijuana. This summer, police across the nation will be out cutting down wild hemp plants that can't intoxicate anyone. Certainly all that police time could be spent on more pressing issues, and otherwise law-abiding citizens don't need to get drawn into the criminal justice system. As it stands, we are wasting vast resources to destroy another beneficial resource and to ensure that our country stays behind the curve in terms of scientific research. The next medical breakthroughs related to this easily available plant won't occur in our country solely due to ingrained political myopia and cowardice. We must take off the ideological blinders that decades of drug war have forced on us. We could have new medicine, new crops for farmers, even new revenue streams for government through legitimate taxation, along with regulation schemes to better keep young people out of the market. In fact, these things will happen one day. It's all coming, and we could all save ourselves a lot of shame and misery by trying to learn from the miracle now, instead of wasting billings trying (but failing) to destroy it. The miracle itself does not suffer for our actions, but we do.

Pubdate: Fri, 2 Jun 2006 Source: DrugSense Weekly (DSW) Section: Feature Article Webpage: http://www.drugsense.org/dsw/2006/ds06.n451.html#sec6 Website: http://www.drugsense.org/current.htm Author: Stephen Young Note: Stephen Young is an editor with DrugSense Weekly and a member of the Board of Directors for Illinois NORML. __________________________________________________________________________ Distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake