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Science Friday October 12, 2012

Donald Abrams, Chief of Oncology at San Francisco General Hospital and Professor of Medicine at University of California and Bertha Madras, Professor of Psychobiology at Harvard Medical School debate the government ban on therapeutic use of medical marijuana. They discuss the benefits of marijuana including stimulating appetite, reduce pain, improve sleep, suppress nausea, and possibly fight cancer cells.  Americans for Safe Access will present the scientific case for marijuana’s therapeutic effects to a federal appeals court, in hopes of relaxing federal restrictions.

Click here to listen to the debate.

Thanks 420 Magazine for posting the entire Huffington Post article by Steph Sheer,If NBC Can See the Need for Medical Marijuana, Why Can’t Obama?

What a beautifully written article!  It is wonderful to see the arts expanding from portraying “pot culture” to helping educate people about what is medical marijuana (cannabis) and its efficacy as a medicine.  I am so grateful that the tide is turning and that science is becoming more of a part of the conversation about cannabis.  The portrayal of the cannabis experience in Parenthood is not unlike my family’s experience when my mom utilized cannabis to help her die more comfortably with lung cancer.

Here is a snippet from the article:

In the episode “One More Weekend with You,” aired November 20, Kristina Braverman’s character, played by Monica Potter, tries to stay strong for her family, but becomes violently ill after receiving chemotherapy. Her husband Adam, played by Peter Krause, finds her on the bathroom floor and panics. He cleans her up and then packs all the kids into the car to visit his musician-producer brother, the first person he could think of who might have marijuana. His brother produces some from his sock drawer and warns that it was not the same pot from when they were kids, it was “genetically engineered” (a common misunderstanding of the decades of modern breeding of the plant for human consumption).

In the next scene Kristina Braverman’s character is laying in bed smoking a joint. She is visibly better. She says it is strong and puts it out, saying “Save that f

or later.” Her husband asked if it helped, and he is visibly relieved to see her smile. She acknowledges the relief she’s found from marijuana, and says her husband will need to get “a lot more.” She settles back into her pillow and finally sleeps.

This episode reflects a situation that thousands of cancer patients and their caregivers are experiencing, but not always with the same ending. As a medical cannabis advocate I see this story play out in many ways. Many caregivers don’t have a pot-smoking brother and instead find themselves asking for marijuana from friends, family members or even their children. Over the past decades I have heard heartbreaking stories of people having no idea where to look and who to ask for this medicine.

But even for those patients who can find a supply of marijuana for their needs, many questions still arise. What if their source runs out? What if their source gets into a legal entanglement? What if there is mold or mildew on the medicine? What should they do if they live in public housing?

These experiences and these questions are what voters and legislators are trying to answer by passing laws in 18 states and the District of Columbia. These laws don’t make marijuana medicine — cannabis is a plant that has been used medicinally for thousands of years. The laws are an attempt

to reconcile the legal system with the reality of sick patients seeking effective medicine. For patients and government officials in medical cannabis states, it is now federal law that is creating the most significant hurdle.

Read Full Article

 

PLEASE WATCH!!!!

Harvard Law School Lecturer, Rebecca Richman Cohen deserves HUGE applause for the following video and her bold film Code of the West.

In the attached clip Rebecca tells the story of an industrial medical marijuana grower Chris Williams who was growing cannabis in accordance with Montana state law.  He is currently in jail and faces a minimum penalty of 80 years. Does that seem right to you?

This story is so disturbing that I struggle not to cry for this man, his son and his community.  Our national drug policy has failed America miserably.  The human consequences have been devastating. What is it going to take to change federal marijuana laws?  Obviously state medical marijuana laws provide no security to people who are abiding by their state laws when those laws are in conflict with the federal government.  The only solution here is a change in our national drug policy.

The science of cannabis clearly debunks the argument that marijuana has no known medical use.

Please take a moment to write your legislators today not only to urge their support for an immediate change in the federal laws governing marijuana but also to help educate them about the efficacy of marijuana as a safe and versatile medicine.

Click here to contact your U.S. Representative .  Click here to contact your U.S. Senator

Help promote Rebecca’s project by sharing it with your network on Facebook or Twitter.

June 5, 2009

Does regular marijuana smoking cause COPD, Emphysema and/or Lung Cancer?

In part 1, Donald Tashkin, MD examines risk of Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease.

Donald P. Tashkin, MD – Medical Director of the Pulmonary Function Laboratory, Professor of Medicine, University of California, Los Angeles.

Presented to Fifth Clinical Conference on Cannabis Therapeutics held in Pacific Grove, CA, April, 2008. Conference hosted by Patients Out of Time.

http://MedicalCannabis.com

Listen to the Fresh Air Interview about the future of the marijuana industry. http://www.npr.org/2012/11/13/164981433/legalizing-and-regulating-pot-a-growth-industry

November 13, 2012

When reporter Tony Dokoupil was a teenager, he found out that his father had sold marijuana, but he just thought his parents “were hippies.” A few years ago, while working on a story about his father’s drug dealer past, he discovered that actually, in the 1970s and ’80s, his father, Anthony Dokoupil, had been a big-time marijuana smuggler.

“He was arrested in the early ’90s on a job selling 17 tons of marijuana,” Dokoupil tellsFresh Air’s Terry Gross, “which was enough at the time to roll a joint for every college kid in the U.S.”

Dokoupil is now writing a book about the controversial plant, and is the author of the recentNewsweek cover story “The New Pot Barons,” about the group of entrepreneurs who are growing medical marijuana in Colorado and hoping to cash in on the plant’s recent legalization there for recreational use. On Election Day, Colorado and Washington became the first states to greenlight marijuana for recreational use, which is big news for the expanding marijuana industry.

If legalization is here to stay, Dokoupil says Colorado’s tightly regulated for-profit medical marijuana market will likely be the basis for the legalized recreational markets in other states as well. In Colorado, more than 1 million square feet of warehouse space outside of Denver are dedicated to growing marijuana, and hundreds of dispensaries sell it. To manage this growing business, the state has 200-plus pages of regulation to explain what is legal and isn’t. Marijuana grown in the state, says Dokoupil, is tracked from “the time it blooms to final sale — every single ounce is accounted for.”

Read more info and listen to the story on npr: http://www.npr.org/2012/11/13/164981433/legalizing-and-regulating-pot-a-growth-industry