Marijuana, More than just a Drug

In a previous post I talked about marijuana and its uses as a medicine. In this post I am going to talk about other uses marijuana could have if it were legal.

A Food
The seeds of a marijuana plant can be eaten. They contain essential amino acids and fatty acids our bodies need. Marijuana seeds could help world hunger. Not only could humans use it as a food, the seeds can be used to feed livestock. Feeding the seeds to livestock could help with the issues we have raising cattle and give us a better organic meat.

A Fuel
Cannabis can grow easily and naturally all over the US. The seeds from the plant make hemp seed oil. This oil is a bio-diesel fuel and could help end our dependency on foreign oil. Because it can grow naturally all over our county, we could have a possible endless supply. Plants produce the seeds, some of which could be eaten, others used for oil, and the rest planted to make more plants that will make more seeds, and so on.

A Renewable Resource
As I said cannabis can grow naturally anywhere in the US, thus making it renewable. Hemp comes from the stalk of the plant and has many uses. Can be used for paper, possibly helping with deforestation. Hemp can be used to make clothing and fabrics. It is also a good replacement for wood products like studs, beams, and posts.

Indeed better

So as the last video showed everything's better with a bag of weed. Now if you have ever smoked marijuana (which I know you have), you know that everything is indeed better. No need to get angry, cause trust me there are a lot of other people out there that will agree with me. You, you are one of a few who don't want to admit. Why? Because publicly admitting to this would make you sound like a pothead after you just publicly stated that you hated weed. So many would go after you; cause you are a hypocrite. Your agenda in the big pharma companies would be attacked. How can you support something that says weed is evil, after you just announced that weed makes everything better? We would ask you sir, why lie? You are one of us. We know that you know that everything is better with a bag of weed. So that is why I am not afraid to tell you that all of this is better with weed:

My Point Exactly

Here's a video of one of many reasons why marijuana should be legalized. The video is speed up, no its not suppose to be that fast.

A Schedule I Substance

Marijuana is a Schedule I Substance which means that: the drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse, the drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the US.

The drug or other substance has a high potential for abuse.

I believe that marijuana does have the potential to be abused but I do not believe that it should be in the same category of abuse as heroin. According to the National Institute on Drug Abuse (NIDA) 9% of people who use marijuana will become dependent on it. Compare that to the 52% of adults older than 18 who are dependent on alcohol, 9% is a relatively low number.

The drug or other substance has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the US.
Agreed. But not because I don't think its medical beneficial but because the government has refused to accept a medical use. In 1972 the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) made an effort to make marijuana available as a prescription drug. In 1986 the DEA announced that they would hold public hearings. In 1988 the DEA's administrative law judge, Francis L. Young, made his decision. He said that "approval by a significant minority of physicians was enough to meet the standard of currently accepted medical use in treatment in the US established by the Controlled Substances Act for a Schedule II drug." He also mentioned that "marijuana, in its natural form, is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man...One must reasonably conclude that there is accepted safety for use of marijuana under medical supervision. To conclude otherwise, on the record, would be unreasonable, arbitrary, and capricious." Young suggested that the DEA reschedule marijuana to a Schedule II substance but the DEA "disregarded the opinion of its own administrative law judge and refused to reschedule marijuana."

History of Marijuana

Form what I have seen, everyone who opposes legalizing marijuana does not know anything about its history. Mostly, people have been caught in the drug hysteria created by our government and/or oppose it strictly because our government has said its bad and it kills.

Cannabis is an indigenous plant to central and south Asia. First use of cannabis can be dated back to pre-Jesus times and the Chinese first referenced it's medical uses in the Pen Ts'ao. The author of the Pen Ts'ao, Shen-Nung, was considered the "Father of Chinese Medicine" and he prescribed cannabis for the treatment of absentmindedness, constipation, malaria, beriberi, rheumatism, and menstrual problems. A Chinese surgeon used  an anesthetic composed of cannabis resin and wine to perform, for that era, dangerous surgeries (Bennett 18). As the Chinese welcomed the gift nature gave them, cannabis use spread out to the middle east. Here, it was not only used as a medicine but also used for religious purposes. A Caucasian tribe, the Scythians, who scholars believe spread the knowledge of cannabis, used cannabis as a way to honor the dead. In Mesopotamia cannabis was used because its "aroma was pleasing to the Gods." The Mesopotamians also used cannabis as a topical medication to treat diseases of the chest, stomach problems, skin lesions, lice, and swollen joints. There is also references to cannabis in the Hebrew Scriptures of the Old Testament. Cannabis use can be dated back to several thousand years ago, so how come its illegal today?

The cannabis prohibition we know of today stemmed for the anti-Asian riots and the prohibition of opium that followed these riots. In 1907 Vancouver was faced with an economic depression. Protesters blamed the Chinese and Japanese communities and marched down to Chinatown where they destroyed buildings and beat up innocent by-standers. The Chinese community asked for compensation and the government sent William Lyon Mackenzie King to investigate. King stated in his report that a couple of the stores were opium dens and the government should not compensate. He then sparked fear and hysteria in the public by stating "The habit of smoking opium was making headway, not only among white men and boys, but also among women and girls." King then wrote and helped pass into law the Anti-Opium Act of 1908, which banned opium sales by Chinese people (Levine 29). He then went to work for Rockefeller Institute, which helped close herbal medicine schools in the US. Before the close of these, experiments were being done on cannabis and its use in medicine (Levine 30). First laws against cannabis were established in states and towns near the Mexico border. William Randolph Hearst, a newspaper writer, stopped using the words cannabis and hemp in his newspapers when his ranch in Mexico was taken over by Pancho Villa's men. Hearst then started a propaganda campaign against marijuana which he said was "the favored relaxant of Villa's men," (Levine 31). Harry Anslinger, head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1930, used the angle of racism and drug use. "In 1937, Anslinger would select lurid newspaper stories from his famous 'gore file' and read them aloud while testifying to the House Ways and Means Committee: 'Negro raped a girl eight years of age. Two Negroes took a girl fourteen years of age and kept her for two days in a hut under the influence of marihuana. Upon recovery she was found to be suffering from syphilis...Colored students at the University of Minnesota partying with female students (white) smoking and getting sympathy with their stories of racial persecution. Result-pregnancy,'" (Levine 31). In 1937, because there was no more herbal medicine schools to campaign for marijuana, the Marijuana Tax Act was signed into law. Rockefeller did a good job at eliminating any opponent to his multi-billion dollar oil company including his natural opponent, hemp (Levine 31).

Today sponsors of anti-cannabis ads like "The Partnership for a Drug-Free America" have donors in the big pharmaceutical industry as well as companies like Chevron and ExxonMobil, Hearst, and DuPont who donate   $30,000 to $100,000 yearly. Chase Manhattan and Citibank, owned by Rockefeller, donate up to $15,000 a year (Levine 33). With big pharmaceutical companies and businesses, owned by someone who helped close schools that could have provided valuable research, donating to sponsors of anti-cannabis ads, no wonder marijuana is still illegal.

Medical Marijuana; the Benefits

In 2006 my mom was diagnosed with Multiple Sclerosis (MS). For anyone who doesn't know, MS is caused by damage to the myelin sheath, the protective covering around nerve cells. Inflammation causes the damage and results in slowed and/or stopped nerve impulses. For my mom everyday is a struggle because everyday is different. MS has forced her into a wheelchair because she has difficulty walking. She also has a lack of muscle coordination and muscle spasms, as well as an uncontrollable bladder. Though medications do help she still has periods of relapse; she can go weeks without symptoms and other times have symptoms everyday. Through a friend, my mom was recommended to try marijuana as a treatment for some of her symptoms.

For the next few things I am going to discuss I got the majority of my information from The Pot Book: A Complete Guide to Cannabis. I also recommend this book to anyone who is interested in learning about marijuana in all aspects.

So what in cannabis makes it so medically beneficial? That would be delta-9-tetrahydrocannabinol (delta-9-THC or just THC) and cannabidol (CBD) as well as many other cannabinoids. These molecules attach onto receptors in our brains, on our cells, and on tissue. This allows cannabis to treat many ailments. For MS patients cannabis acts as a muscle relaxant , smoothing out the muscle of the bladder. This allows for better control of the bladder. Cannabis has also been show to be useful as an anti-inflammatory medication giving it potential to change the course of autoimmune diseases like MS. For the treatment of HIV/AIDS patients, cannabis has been shown to alleviate many symptoms. It can treat the patients nausea from the disease itself and from the response to their medication. Cannabis is also used to increase appetite in HIV/AIDS patients and in turn increase weight. It has been shown to increase overall quality of life in these patients. Some other things cannabis has been shown to treat: epilepsy, stroke, acute head trauma, stress, loss of appetite, nausea, promote healthy bone growth, irritable bowel syndrome, and chronic pain to name a few.

For my mom marijuana has been a life saver. Marijuana helps treat her muscle spasms and gain more control of her muscles. She is also able to walk short distances with  help from someone and is in more control of her bladder. Overall her quality of life has increased ten-fold from the use of marijuana. Then there's the issue of cost. Marijuana is so much more inexpensive than the medications prescribed to my mom. Plus she prefers marijuana over all her medications because it does a better job alleviating her pain and symptoms. What I can't understand is why something that has been shown to be so therapeutic is classified as so dangerous and illegal by our government?

Reefer Madness?

Ganja, grass, dope, hash, reefer, but most commonly known as marijuana. It has been federally prohibited in our country since 1937. Today it is considered the country's most popular illicit drug; making it the most controversial. In recent years there has been momentum in our country to end the prohibition on marijuana and make it legal in the eyes of the federally government. But many people are opposed to the legalization of marijuana and I have to ask why?

Thousands of people die every year from the use of tobacco and alcohol and these substances are perfectly legal in our country. Yet nobody has ever died from the use of marijuana and it is viewed by the government as a schedule I substance, making it medically useless and a highly abused drug just like heroin and ecstasy. Yet despite the negative response marijuana receives, there are plenty of benefits it can offer: alleviation of pain, treatment of nausea, it can be used as an anti-inflammatory medicine, seeds can be used as a food for people, livestock, and birds, hempseed oil is a renewable fuel source, and hemp can also make consumer goods such as paper, canvas, rope, and clothing. There is also the fact that marijuana could be a valuable cash crop, bringing in loads of money if taxed. In California alone, marijuana brings in $14 billion in annual revenues, times that by 50 and that's a lot of money created from one plant. 

Marijuana was one of the first drugs to be criminalized and remains the number one target for the war on drugs. This so called war on drugs was just recently announced a failure by the Global Commission on Drug Policy in an report released in June. In this report the commission stated that the efforts to stop supply and consumption has wasted millions of dollars and in turn created a bigger drug crime ring. Instead of wasting money on incarcerating people for victimless crimes, in fact we spend close to $68 billion per year on corrections, one-third of those being corrected are serving time for non-violent drug crimes, we should be finding a way to reform our drug policies. There is no better time than now to change the way we view and use marijuana.From the use of this blog, I would hope to show in more detail than I have already the benefits of legalizing marijuana. As well as its possible medical uses, and explain why it should not be a schedule I substance.