Читать книгу The Medical Cannabis Guidebook - Mel Thomas - Страница 7
ОглавлениеGenus C.sativa has two main species, C. indica and C.ruderalis.
Referred to variously as marijuana, ganja, weed and herb amongst many other slang terms, cannabis is one of the safest medicines available. As well as giving us the dried buds that can be smoked, the plant produces nutritious seeds from which healthy edible oils can be pressed, the plant fibers are durable and versatile with many commercial uses, the crop is environmentally beneficial and many parts of the plant were in use for thousands of years before prohibition. Unlike many pharmaceutical medications, there has never been a single recorded fatality from cannabis use. No one has ever died as a direct result of ingesting cannabis, nor have there been any instances of brain receptor damage through its use; unlike alcohol and other drugs cannabis does not wear out the brain receptors, it merely stimulates them. One estimate of THC’s lethal dose for humans indicates that 1500 pounds (680 kilograms) of cannabis would have to be smoked within 15 minutes (approximately) for the smoker to die. If you wanted to kill someone using 1500 pounds of cannabis you would be better advised to drop it on them.
LD50, also called median lethal dose, is the standard measure of the toxicity of a material through ingestion, skin contact or injection. LD50 is measured in micrograms (or milligrams) of the material per kilogram of the test-animal’s body weight. The lower the amount, the more toxic the material. The estimated LD50 (lethal threshold) for cannabis, established in 1988 by the DEA’s appropriate fact-finder, is 1:20,000 or 1:40,000. In layman’s terms this means that in order to induce death a cannabis smoker would have to consume 20,000 to 40,000 times as much cannabis as is contained in one 0.9 gram joint.1
Studies indicate that the effective dose of THC is at least 1000 times lower than the estimated lethal dose (therapeutic ratio of 1000:1). Heroin has a therapeutic ratio of 6:1, alcohol and Valium both have a ratio of 10:1. Cocaine has a ratio of 15:1. Aspirin has a therapeutic ratio of 20:1; 20 times the recommended dose (40 tablets) can cause death and almost certainly induce extensive internal bleeding. Drugs used to treat patients with cancer, glaucoma and multiple sclerosis (MS) are all known to be highly toxic; the ratio of some drugs used in antineoplastic (cancer inhibiting) therapies have therapeutic ratios below 1.5:1.2
A small percentage of people may experience a negative or allergic reaction to cannabis use and a few patients suffer especially high heart rates and/or anxiety when being treated with cannabis oil, although this is a comparatively low number and the effects are merely unpleasant and cease when cannabis use is discontinued. Many bronchial asthma sufferers benefit from both herbal cannabis and cannabis oil extracts but for some it can serve as an additional irritant. However, for the overwhelming majority of people, cannabis has demonstrated literally hundreds of therapeutic uses.
So Why is There Almost Global Prohibition of this Plant?
Cannabis prohibition emanates from a commercial conspiracy that was started in the 1920s. The word marijuana itself was first brought into the English language by these early corporate offenders who needed to change the public’s perception of the cannabis plant from a useful fiber and medicine to a dangerous, addictive and destructive substance in order to destroy the hemp industry and replace cannabis medicines and hemp fiber products with their own toxic pharmaceutical drugs and petrochemical products. They achieved this by manipulating the media and printing fictitious stories connecting marijuana use and crime. The manipulation continues to this day, as former CBS News president Richard Salant explained when discussing the media’s role in manipulating the masses: “Our job is to give people not what they want, but what we decide they ought to have.”3
Cannabis prohibition is indisputably the result of a corrupt conspiracy founded on lies, propaganda and misinformation that for decades has denied society access to a benign and highly beneficial medicinal plant.
Female cannabis plant in flower.
Cannabis has been used medically for millennia.4 An article published in The Economist on April 27, 2006, under the heading, “Marijuana is medically useful, whether politicians like it or not,” stated:
“If Marijuana was unknown, and bio-prospectors were suddenly to find it in some remote mountain crevice, its discovery would no doubt be hailed as a medical breakthrough. Scientists would praise its potential for treating everything from pain to cancer and marvel at its rich pharmacopoeia; many of whose chemicals mimic vital molecules in the human body.”5
The medicinal use of cannabis predates written history. Cannabis preparations have traditionally been used as treatments for a wide variety of conditions for thousands of years in India, China, the Middle East, Southeast Asia, South Africa and South America. Furthermore, evidence of medicinal cannabis use dating from 1600 BCE has been found in Egypt, where it was used as a fumigant, topical salve and suppository.6
One of the earliest accounts of medical cannabis use can be found in the Chinese pharmacopoeia text Pen-Tsao Kang-Mu (The Great Herbal), which was written in 100 CE, but which actually dates back to the Emperor Shen-Nung in 2800 BCE.7 The author Li Shih Chen referred to works from previous writers who for centuries regarded cannabis and its seeds as both a food and medicine. This early text correctly identifies the flowering tops of cannabis plants (Ma-fen) as the most useful and potent for the production of medicines, and recommends cannabis to treat menstrual fatigue, fevers, arthritis and malaria, as well as being effective as an analgesic. In the second century CE, Chinese surgeon Hua Tuo is documented as using an anesthetic made from cannabis resin and wine (Ma-yo) to perform painless complex surgical procedures, including limb amputations.
The Greek physician and botanist Pedanius Dioscorides traveled throughout the Roman and Greek empires to obtain material for his publication Materia Medica, which includes references to the plant Cannabis Sativa L. (from the Greek word kannabis), described as useful in the manufacturing of rope, with the juice of the seeds reported to be effective for treating earaches and diminishing sexual desire.8 Materia Medica was translated and published throughout the known world and was used as a medical reference resource up until the 16th Century. It was a precursor to modern pharmacopoeias and is one of the most influential herbalist books ever written.
America’s very first law concerning cannabis was enacted at Jamestown Colony, Virginia in 1619. Far from prohibiting cannabis, the law stated that all farmers were “ordered” to grow Indian hemp seed.9 The U.S. Census of 1850 records 8,327 cannabis plantations in excess of 2,000 acres, all producing cannabis hemp for cloth, canvas and rope. Cannabis first appeared in the U.S. Pharmacopoeia in 1851 (3rd edition) and until prohibition was introduced, cannabis was the primary treatment for over 100 separate illnesses and diseases. By the time the 12th edition of the Pharmacopeia was published, cannabis had been officially removed and its use in medical research had been halted.
In the 1930s, the U.S. federal government backed the campaign of Harry Anslinger and his newly formed Bureau of Narcotics. Anslinger was a corrupt, racist bigot who in order to build up his new organization sought to generate fear of cannabis use through propaganda and lies. Anslinger created nationwide concern over a problem that did not exist by demonizing marijuana through spurious tales of crime, violence and insanity. The Bureau of Narcotics promoted what they called the “Gore Files”; wild “reefer madness” tales of murder, violence, loose morals and the effects cannabis had on the “degenerate races,” which cynically exploited the endemic racism that was prevalent at the time. By associating marijuana use with ethnic minorities he ensured that the majority of white Americans would be sympathetic to any planned prohibition.
Plant in early stage of flowering.
The Following Quotes Are From Anslinger’s “Gore Files”:
“There are 100,000 total marijuana smokers in the U.S., and most are Negroes, Hispanics, Filipinos, and entertainers. Their Satanic music, jazz, and swing, result from marijuana use. This marijuana causes white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers, and any others.”10
“…the primary reason to outlaw marijuana is its effect on the degenerate races.”11
“Marijuana is an addictive drug which produces in its users insanity, criminality, and death.”12
“Reefer makes darkies think they’re as good as white men.”13
“You smoke a joint and you’re likely to kill your brother.”14
“Marijuana is the most violence-causing drug in the history of mankind.”15
The Bureau of Narcotics had a powerful and willing ally in the media mogul William Randolph Hearst, who had invested heavily in the timber industry to support his chain of national newspapers. To Hearst, hemp paper was unwanted competition and he readily published lurid anti-cannabis propaganda from the Bureau’s “Gore Files”, printing headlines such as:
“Marihuana makes fiends of boys in thirty days - Hashish goads users to bloodlust.”16
“Marihuana influenced negroes to look at white people in the eye, step on white men’s shadows, and look at a white woman twice.”
Anti-cannabis propaganda from 1936.
“Marihuana is responsible for the raping of white women by crazed negroes.”
“Three fourths of the crimes of violence in this country today are committed by dope slaves, that is a matter of cold record.”17
Freshly ground cannabis.
Hearst and Anslinger were joined in the conspiracy by the Dupont chemical corporation, and in 1937 Anslinger presented to Congress his Marijuana Tax Act.18 Apart from some opposition from William C. Woodward of the American Medical Association, the bill was passed after very little discussion, and cannabis was effectively prohibited. Most people did not realize that the “evil marijuana drug” that was referred to in the tax act was in fact the cannabis plant that had been essential to the early settlers and was a useful and well-known medicine.
Due to the racist corruption surrounding the use of the name “marijuana,” from here onward we will call this plant by its correct name: cannabis.
Today, there is renewed interest in the medical use of cannabis, with numerous respected doctors and scientists researching its many and varied indicators. A study sponsored by the State of California, conducted by the University of California Center for Medicinal Cannabis Research, and published in The Open Neurology Journal (September 2012), concluded that cannabis provides much-needed relief to chronic pain sufferers and that more clinical trials are desperately needed:
“The classification of marijuana as a Schedule I drug as well as the continuing controversy as to whether or not cannabis is of medical value are obstacles to medical progress in this area…”19
“Based on evidence currently available the Schedule I classification is not tenable; it is not accurate that cannabis has no medical value, or that information on safety is lacking. It is true cannabis has some abuse potential, but its profile more closely resembles drugs in Schedule III. The continuing conflict between scientific evidence and political ideology will hopefully be reconciled in a judicious manner.”
Multinational pharmaceutical companies are now growing tons of cannabis plants at secret, heavily guarded locations, in order to extract just two of the plant’s cannabinoids, mix them with alcohol, glycerin and a small amount of peppermint for flavor, and market the end product as a “mucosal” spray (which means you basically squirt it under your tongue) called Sativex.
This cannabis-based product was developed by GW Pharmaceuticals in the United Kingdom at heavily guarded farms where they grow over 20 tons of cannabis annually. This is then processed and the cannabinoids THC and CBD are extracted to be made into an alcohol-based tincture. They charge patients around $190.00 (approximately) per 10-milliliter vial, which is only enough to last the average multiple sclerosis (MS) patient 10 days.20 There are estimated to be 80,000 MS sufferers in the U.K. alone; you do the math. If patients were allowed to grow their own cannabis they could produce a generic copy of Sativex for $8 per 10 milliliters. The authors have actually proved this and demonstrated the product at cannabis conventions in both Barcelona and Valencia in 2013. There is a video taken at Spannabis in Barcelona on their website (cannabiscure.info) that verifies this.
Regardless of the enormous profits being made at the expense of sick people, cannabis buds and oil are far superior to Sativex as you benefit from the full and complex profile of cannabinoids, not just THC and CBD. In addition, patients don’t experience any ulcers, burning sensations in the mouth or the unpleasant aftertaste of alcohol that many who use Sativex complain of.
In U.S. states such as California and Colorado, cannabis can be purchased at state-sanctioned dispensaries, but according to the Controlled Substances Act, cannabis is a Schedule I drug, listed alongside dangerous narcotics. The American Chronic Pain Society says in ACPA Medications & Chronic Pain, Supplement 2007:
“Some states allow the legal use of marijuana for health purposes including pain, while the federal government continues to threaten physicians with prosecution for prescribing it.”21
There have been two rulings since 2001, United States v. Oakland Cannabis Buyers Cooperative and Gonzales v. Raich, which have confirmed the federal government’s commitment to prosecuting buyers and sellers even in states where cannabis has been approved for medical use.22, 23 The FDA’s official stance on cannabis states:
“Marijuana has a high potential for abuse, has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and has a lack of accepted safety for use under medical supervision.”24
Despite this fallacious statement, Sativex is licensed to Otsuka Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd. in the United States as a treatment for spasticity resulting from multiple sclerosis (MS), and as a possible treatment for the side effects from conventional cancer therapies.25 Furthermore, synthetic cannabinoids such as Nabilone and Cesamet are available as prescription drugs in many countries.26, 27 These synthetic copies of cannabinoids are expensive and compare poorly to cannabis plant extracts.
In April 2011, GW Pharmaceuticals entered into an exclusive license agreement for Novartis Pharma AG to commercialize Sativex in Australia, New Zealand, Asia and Africa.28 Under the agreement, GW Pharmaceuticals received an upfront payment of $5 million and is eligible for additional payments totaling $28.75 million upon the achievement of set commercial sales targets. In addition, GW Pharmaceuticals will receive royalties on all net sales.29 In 2009, the global pharmaceutical industry market was valued at $837 billion and estimated to reach $1 trillion by 2014.30
The profits for pharmaceutical companies targeting the cancer market expanded to $24 billion in 2004, with the highest growth rates occurring in the antineoplastic (cancer inhibiting) class of drugs.31 The market for these drugs was valued at around $43 billion in 2005 and $69 billion in 2010.32 Why would these multinational corporations be interested in researching and promoting a cancer treatment that can be grown for free and is difficult to effectively patent unless kept illegal?
Cannabis oil.
The following multiple-medicinal-use patent on a natural compound, which is illegal under patent statutes, was recently granted to the U.S. government by its own Patent Office:
Excerpt from U.S. Patent #6630507:33
“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 a wide variety of oxidation associated diseases, such as ischemic, age-related, inflammatory and autoimmune diseases. The cannabinoids are found to have particular application as neuro-protectants, 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. Non-psychoactive cannabinoids, such as cannabidiol, 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. A particular disclosed class of cannabinoids useful as neuro-protective antioxidants is formula (I) wherein the R group is independently selected from the group consisting of H, CH3, and COCH3.”
This is a complete contradiction to the U.S. government’s officially stated policy with regard to medical cannabis use and clearly demonstrates that cannabis prohibition is not about protecting health–it’s about protecting corporate wealth.
Apart from the nutritional and health benefits gained from non-psychoactive hemp seed and oils now legally available, there is overwhelming evidence that cannabis oil made from the illegal plant varieties can send many cancers into remission, particularly with regard to breast cancer. The antitumor effects of herbal cannabis and cannabis oil extracts have been well known since at least the 1970s, when the Medical College of Virginia reported on August 18, 1974, that marijuana’s psychoactive component, THC, slowed the growth of lung cancers, breast cancers and a virus-induced leukemia in laboratory mice, and prolonged their lives by as much as 36%.34 Funded by the National Institutes of Health and tasked with finding evidence that cannabis damages the immune system, the study instead found that THC slowed the growth of these three types of cancer: The Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) quickly shut down the Virginia study and all further research was halted.
In 1998, a research team at Madrid’s Complutense University discovered that THC could selectively induce programmed death in brain tumor cells without negatively impacting surrounding healthy cells.35 Further studies reported in the August 15, 2004 issue of Cancer Research, the journal of the American Association for Cancer Research, that cannabis constituents inhibited the spread of brain cancer in human tumor biopsies.36
Led by Dr. Manuel Guzman, the Spanish team announced they had destroyed incurable brain cancer tumors in rats by injecting them with THC. This work still continues and the authors recently supplied the team with a quantity of their laboratory tested 1:1 (THC:CBD) oil containing 40% CBD with total active cannabinoids at 80%. This oil was made using the techniques described in this book, in later chapters, and research has shown that CBD (cannabidiol)–a nontoxic, non-psychoactive chemical compound found in the cannabis plant–acts as a more potent inhibitor of cancer cell growth than other cannabinoids, including THC. The compound is particularly efficacious in halting the spread of breast cancer cells by triggering apoptosis (programmed cell death).
Scientists at California Pacific Medical Center in San Francisco have also shown that CBD, can stop metastasis in many kinds of aggressive cancers, stating:37
“We started by researching breast cancer, but now we’ve found that cannabidiol works with many kinds of aggressive cancers; brain, prostate and any kind in which these high levels of ID-1 are present.”
Even if only anecdotal evidence exists regarding the efficacy of cannabis oil treatment on cancerous tumors in patients, then surely every cancer sufferer has the right to be informed about this and given the opportunity to try it. This is not a personal freedom argument but a discussion regarding the fundamental human right to life. Access to a potentially life-saving medication should not be subject to any laws whatsoever. People denied cannabis oil treatment have died of cancers that all of the available evidence suggests may have been entirely treatable. In the following chapters we’ll look at the basic history and makeup of the cannabis plant, how its beneficial contents can best be extracted and administered and we’ll also detail the nutritional benefits that can be derived from non-psychoactive varieties available such as hemp seeds and cold pressed hemp oils. The aim is to help people make their own informed decisions regarding cannabis use, regardless of the government’s refusal to supply this information or allow cannabis use.
