...from seed to weed and bud to buzz; cannabis is the crop to love! This blog is all about the cultivation, science, facts, knowledge, and information about the versatile, and endless uses of the cannabis plant.
Put Simply: If Marijuana is Legalized, Big Pharma Loses Profits!
...and (overall) it make more money as an "illegal substance."
Let’s be honest. There is no reason a substance such as marijuana should be illegal. The reason it is illegal is the same reason healthcare is privatized and prescription drug companies make a fortune for disease mongering. The reason marijuana is illegal is because it makes more money being illegal than it does if it was legal. Just think about it, its capitalisms worst nightmare. People have the ability to grow a natural medication in their back yard. Having marijuana illegal not only reduces other, often less effective drug sales but also eliminates whole industries that make large exurbanite profits. If illicit drugs were to become legal that would shrink the courts, amount of police, the criminal justice system, and the prison system. These are huge industries that make billions and employee many workers.
The legality of marijuana is about the ability to grow your own medicine in your backyard without the fear of persecution from corrupt and backward laws. The fact is marijuana, regardless of hemp, which has non psychedelic effects and real world textile and industrial utility, is a medical remedy for many diseases and ailments sick Americans deal with on a daily basis. The problem is now that the system is entrenched. The last thing big pharma and the drug manufactures want is a readily available drug that citizens can grow in their back yard without consuming their product. The drug industry is a trillion dollar market and they lobby accordingly throughout the legislature.
"If people let the government decide what foods they eat and what medicines they take, their bodies will soon be in as sorry a state as the souls of those who live under tyranny." - Thomas Jefferson, 1784
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Marijuana is not a harmful drug, it is non-toxic and does not lead to cancer or brain damage. There has never been one conclusive study that has linked marijuana to cancer. Research has found pre-cancerous cells in the lungs of those who have smoked at least one joint a day and an average of three joints a day for ten years. Those individuals also had an elevated risk of bronchial infection but not as high of a risk as cigarette smokers.
There is no conclusive evidence to suggest that smoke in general causes cancer. Some cite that smoking is a counter-intuitive mod of self-medication. This is not true. These individuals are usually making the comparison of marijuana to tobacco cigarette smoke.
Just because tobacco cigarette smoke causes cancer doesn’t default all smoke to doing the same. The fact is that there are all sorts of added chemicals to manufactured cigarettes including rat poison. Tobacco, the plant itself is toxic. It must be rotated with other crops because it depletes the soil of its nutrients and leaves the ground infertile.
40-60 mg of nicotine will kill any adult human. However, marijuana is non-toxic, has never killed anyone and is physically impossible to over dose on.
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If one wants to understand how criminalization of drugs is working toward the opposite goal of reduced drug use one only has to look at the case with marijuana. The use of marijuana by teenagers is higher in the United States than most countries that have decriminalized the use.
The Dutch, who have decriminalized and started to legalize marijuana have lower use rates than the United States where the drug is illegal. 47.3 percent of young adults in America compared to 45.5 percent in the Netherlands. 3 Older teens, 38.2 percent in U.S. compared to 29.5 percent and 13.5 percent in contrast to 7.2 percent of younger teens in the Netherlands.
Source: Zimmer, Lynn Ph.D., and John P. Morgan M.D. “Marijuana Myths, Marijuana Facts” The Lindesmith Center, 1997. p. 51
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The problem that Rosenfeld correctly addresses is that America is locking up sick patients that need marijuana as a medication. Before Rosenfeld, Laura Barber from Traverse City sat in front of the Michigan board and stated her devastating testimony. She told the board members about how she was the caregiver for her husband with the same disease. He has died but her son, who has the disease as well, lives. She talks about she has lost houses, cars, promotions, and jobs because she continually must buy marijuana illegally so that her son can live.
No natural substance has as many medical benefits as marijuana. Its chemical diversity rivals that of chocolate and wine. Marijuana is not only, literally, a life-saving drug but has also been used for centuries to relieve headaches, nausea, and menstrual pain. To illustrate how important medical marijuana is Irv Rosenfeld from Florida came to Michigan in 2006 to try and educate Michigan law makers on the benefits of medical cannabis. The following is his testimony:
"I appreciate coming to the great state of Michigan. My name is Irv Rosenfeld and I am the longest surviving federal medical marijuana patients in the United States. There are five patients currently in the country and their will only be five because the Bush administration shut the program down in 92. I have a severe bone disorder… [which] causes bone tumors to grow outwardly all throughout my body growing into the muscles and into the veins.
As a teenager I had many operations using all kinds of drugs and I was an advocate against marijuana in the late sixties. Why would a healthy… person use and illegal drug when here I would hold up my baggy with all my prescriptions and say ‘look at me, look at what I have to take, be thankful your healthy.’ I went to college in Miami, in 71 and… because of peer pressure I tried marijuana and it did nothing to me. I didn’t get high. It did nothing. People around me were getting high. I thought they were self-inducing it.
By the tenth time I did it I sat and played chess for thirty minutes and I hate chess. As you can see I have trouble sitting and I sat for thirty minutes which is the first time in five years I did that. Now I had morphine… any needed prescription I had it prescribed. It dawned on me I hadn’t taken a pill for about six hours. Well why could I sit there for the first time in five years? Then they past me the garbage, marijuana, to me that’s all it was, pure garbage. That’s the only thing I did differently was this garbage.
Well I have an analytical mind, my family is in medicine, my great uncle was head of pediatrics at Johns Hopkins [University], my uncle taught pediatrics at Yale, my sister is head of nuclear medicine at Duke; here was the garbage that might have medical value. So we researched it and low and behold guess what, marijuana was used in this country from 1860 to 1937. It was manufactured by Eli Lilly, Merck, [and] all the major pharmaceutical companies. It was used for… muscle relaxing, anti-inflammatory, and pain.
That’s just what its doing for me and I’m not getting high from it. I gotta have this. Well the federal government outlawed it. You mean I have to take on the federal government to get the medicine I need? My doctor can prescribe morphine to me but he can’t give me marijuana? I didn’t like being label a criminal so I took on the federal government. Okay, it took me ten years but in 1982 I won and I am now using this medicine legally under the federal government for now starting my 25th year.
I have used marijuana, 10-12 marijuana cigarettes a day for 35 years. Now I’m married, been married for 33 years, I’m a stock broker; I handle millions of dollars on a daily basis. All my clients know that I use medical cannabis. They applaud the fact that I took time off of work to come here and hopefully educate the people in Michigan. That this (shaking the marijuana cigarette in his hand) is not the hysteria people make it out to be.
Now you ask has the FDA done any studies? Well they’ve given me this marijuana for 25 years almost. Have they done any studies on me? No, because they don’t wanna know how well it works. Myself and 3 of the other federal patients had a complete evaluation done privately in Montana five years ago. They did brain wave testing, IQ testing, repertory, blood work, you name it, we tried to look at everything aspect to see what harm this’ll cause us because again, when you have debilitation disease that you didn’t ask for, we did believe what the governments rhetoric was saying, this could harm us.
So we did this testing assuming we’d find some problems. Well guess what, all four of us were just perfectly fine. So now the federal government says ‘well you’re an anomaly.’ You’re the only four people in the country that marijuana doesn’t harm. That anyone else it would harm. Well you know something, that’s just not the case. They don’t wanna debate us, they don’t wanna study us, they don’t wanna know, and that’s sad because there are people in this country that are sick and didn’t ask for it. They didn’t wake up in the morning and… say ‘you know what if I could just catch AIDS then maybe I can use that marijuana to take away nausea.’ Nobody asked for it. They also don’t ask to be labeled criminal and that’s what happened in this country.
I’m legal okay (holding up his 11 ounce tin of pre-rolled joints) I can go anywhere in the United States in U.S. territories and I am not breaking any law. I’m a federal patient, I’m using marijuana, but that woman (pointing to an old lady in a wheel chair right behind him) she’s a criminal. She is breaking your state law, she is a criminal, okay. She should be locked up and put behind bars. I don’t know about you but I would sure sleep better at night knowing she’s locked up behind bars. (Some chuckles can be heard) Wouldn’t you?
That’s the problem we have here. It’s the hysteria, its people being scared, okay. It’s not a harmful substance. Marijuana is one of the most benign substances known to mankind. We had D.E.A. hearings for two year from 1986 to 1988, Judge Francis Young their own D.E.A. law review judge did these hearings which I thought was bias, their picking their own judge. He took one year to make his decision after the hearings. His decision was that it is one of the most benign substances known to mankind and it should be made schedule two along with Morphine, along with Cocaine, meaning it has medicinal value but it could be potentially harmful. Well what did D.E.A do after two years of hearings from all the people on one side and all the people on the other with this decision? They said ‘we don’t like that decision,’ and they got rid of him and he died in disgrace.
The federal government does not want to know. Their not gonna do anything about this subject… which is unbelievably sad because it’s federal program. I go to a pharmacy and pick up my tin can, 11 ounces of marijuana, I smoke every 25 days. 11 ounces every 25 days with no euphoric effect, no ill effect, my lungs… are 108% above normal. I am in favor of getting medicine to the patients. That’s the most important aspect. Now that’s the only way that… [their gonna] pass laws and the federal government is not going to enact a federal policy so other people can pick up a prescription. Well if their not gonna do that the state are left on their own, the states have gotta do what they can.
Take the crime away from these sick patients. There’s no need prosecuting people who are sick and it is wasting your resources; putting people in jail. I know myself in Florida we have overcrowding, when they arrest a non-violent criminal they may be putting that person in jail with a violent criminal and all because of a weed that has been around for generations and centuries and centuries.
Nobody [has] ever died off of marijuana. No one has ever gotten lung cancer off of it. Doctor Tashkin a government doctor, this is a main doctor in the country for research for bad things with marijuana. He just came out with a study, a ten year study, from California that he could not find one patient that had lung cancer due to marijuana. That he found a lot of lung cases with cigarettes. What he also couldn’t explain was that people who smoked marijuana along with use cigarettes had less cases of cancer, but he wasn’t sure why.
The point being is this. I’m a living subject, I’m the proof. The government can stand up here and say how bad it is. Other people can stand up here and say how good it is. I can stand up here and say I use it. I’ve used it for 35 year. I am a productive member of society. [I’ve been] married for 33 years. I have no children because I could pass down this disease and I wouldn’t do that. I teach disabled people how to sail in Miami. So I am a very productive member of society because I have the right medicine. I don’t’ take morphine, I don’t take anything; I haven’t taken any other drugs now for 19 years. All I use is medical cannabis. So what does this mean to me? If I were still alive, most-likely I would’ve died of hemorrhages or something like that. I would not be a productive member of society. I would probably be hummed down on disability and that’s not what I want to be."
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Smoking pot draws the active ingredient delta nine tetrahydrocannabinol or THC into the lungs and onto the brain. There, it suppresses the neurons causing a distortion of perception in time, a lack of coordination, (maybe) paranoia, and sometimes uncontrollable hilarity. Within 4 seconds of the first drag, muscles relax, eyes redden, pulse rate quickens, and a feeling of euphoria and a heightened sensitivity arise in the user. Many describe the experience as surreal or exciting. Some would argue that the substance "makes you think"--which may explain why people become self-conscious and feel paranoid or act goofy. While others advocate it brightens the user's mood and reduces pain, because marijuana is medicine.
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The history of cannibus in America is one of irony. The founding fathers, specifically Thomas Jefferson and George Washington were plantation owners who cultivated hemp as a cash crop. They understood the versatility of hemp, recommended its growth and use, and grew it themselves for commerce and industry.
The history of America and marijuana is cloaked in lies and propaganda. The laws against it were born out of an entanglement with immigration. And, the hemp crop was successfully made illegal with the help of William Randolph Hearst (who had invested in the timber companies--and whose competition was hemp).
During the 1920’s America wanted the Mexicans (who smoked marijuana)... out of Texas. So to stigmatize this cheap labor force propaganda was spread through headlines and newspapers about how marijuana induced violence in Mexicans; the scare lead to harsh penalties for marijuana possession. The southwest states (Texas, Colorado, California, and Arizona) wanted a federal law against marijuana and they pushed until they got it.
Harry J. Anslinger became the head of the Federal Bureau of Narcotics (now the FBI). Anslinger did not originally want to make marijuana illegal. However, being the bureaucrat he was, he changed his position to the leading warrior against marijuana after receiving such a position. Anslinger started fear-mongering and made massive propaganda campaigns (such as Reefer Madness) to demonize marijuana.
The presidencies of Regan and Bush II further criminalized marijuana. Today, medical marijuana prohibition sees patients as criminals instead of sick. Marijuana is still being classified as a schedule 1 substance, meaning the government endorses the claim that marijuana has no medical value and a high potential for abuse. (Heroin and cocaine are schedual 2 drugs). Yet, American pharmaceutical drug companies (such as Eli Lilly) used marijuana as a medication. Regardless, THC has long been available as a prescription medication.
The real history of marijuana is full of medical benefits and early American cultivation. Production of the plant has been suppressed by the government and mainstream media. There is no justifiable reason for marijuana to be illegal and its illegality is based on discrimination. In any real sense the War on Drugs is Orwellian new speak for 'the wealthy elite's assault on your civil liberties.'
"What was done with the seed saved from the India Hemp last summer? It ought, all of it, to have been sewn again; that not only a stock of seed sufficient for my own purposes might have been raised, but to have disseminated the seed to others; as it is more valuable than the common Hemp." -George Washington, Writings of Washington, Vol. 35, pg. 72
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The legality of marijuana is about the ability to grow your own medicine in your backyard without the fear of persecution from corrupt and backward laws. The fact is marijuana, regardless of hemp, which has non psychedelic effects and real world textile and industrial utility, is a medical remedy for many diseases and ailments sick Americans deal with on a daily basis. 
