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August 09, 2013
The Significance of Dr Gupta's Defection
As noted earlier, the conversion of CNN's Dr Sanjay Gupta from anti to pro with respect to medical marijuana should be too big an event for the embattled forces of pot prohibition to ignore; not that they won't try. When silent denial doesn't work, they will probably switch to their time-honored smear tactics.That shouldn't work either; Dr Gupta is, to all appearances, a well trained, hands-on neurosurgeon with lots of current medical credibility. One statement of his that particularly caught my eye was that cannabis is effective against neuropathic pain, something revealed by my own study, but almost never mentioned by other medical marijuana supporters (but would be noted by a neurosurgeon).
If Dr Gupta's position has any weakness, it's in the much misunderstood area of juvenile use which is a classic sacred cow and echoes the general misunderstanding of how old "kids" should be when they first try ("initiate") legal drugs.
My study looked at the ages at which Prop 215 applicants (all self-medicating) first did attempt to get "high," which is how novices try any new drug. It turned out to be remarkably similar to the ages at which my peers and I were trying cigarettes and alcohol in 1945: between the ages of 12 and 15.
We pre-boomers knew "Marijuana" existed back then; but its market was simply not available to juveniles, one of the many facets of pot history completely beyond the ken of both today's Drug Warriors and their victims because of their mutual generational blindness- one of the few characteristics they share.
Today's enormous market did not come into existence overnight; it began slowly in the early Sixties, through interest sparked by Beat Generation authors in adolescent baby boomers, who tried it- along with tobacco, alcohol, and an assortment of newly available psychedelic drugs. At that time, America's policy of drug prohibition was in disarray following the retirement of Director Harry Anslinger, from the Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1962. The rest of that history is all here in old blog entries.
Bringing it to the attention of Dr Gupta and CNN is an opportunity that should not to be missed, as NORML did with Jimmy Carter in '78, right about the time Nixon's CSA starting to generate a critical mass of pot arrests. Instead of working with Dr Peter Bourne, Carter's drug czar, they became impatient with him and "outed" him for snorting coke which became a factor in Carter's 1980 defeat Reagan, which was quickly followed by "Just say No" and Star Wars.
BTW, Today's Presidential news conference just ended. Dr Gupta and pot were NOT mentioned, so we'll have to wait for next shoe to drop on Sunday Evening when WEED airs on CNN.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at August 9, 2013 03:43 AM