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December 08, 2013
New Revelations from Old Data
I'd like to remind readers that this blog is based on anonymous data from pot users; it comments on a study that would have been impossible before California's Proposition 215 was passed in 1996. An added benefit is the ability to compare federal claims with reality, and thus see how much the DEA and NIDA must either deny or distort their inevitable failures in order to claim an occasional (bogus) "success."Unfortunately, Reform has its own problems: a divided leadership, lack of cohesion and interminable wrangling over strategy; mostly within states with "medical marijuana" laws. Coordinating separate State Organizations dedicated to reaching that goal is a project for the future. Nor do such organizations have much appeal for me; my recollection to the collegial atmosphere exhibited in most hospital morbidity and mortality conferences- contrasts with hat it's almost nonexistent among the "pot docs" who have become so essential to state "legalization" efforts; probably because anything related to an illegal drug is considered too dodgy to discuss openly.
Illegality has another seldom acknowledged downside: I've met more than a few people whose symptoms might have responded well to cannabis, but absolutely refuse to consider it because of the attendant stigma.
Which brings up another sore subject: I strongly suspect- without having absolute proof- that Big Pharma prefers that cannabis remain illegal because there's more money to be made by producing its less effective- and much less safe- substitutes than by improving the real thing. Not only can "natural" cannabis not be patented, its availability in legal, more convenient dosages and modes of ingestion (both of which should be easily produced by an ethical Pharmaceutical Industry) would almost certainly reduce demand for the legal, but less effective and more toxic cannabis substitutes now advertised so aggressively (and expensively) on TV.
The "surprise" mentioned above began a few weeks ago when, in the course of scanning older paper records for digital storage, I discovered a large subset of applicants who'd clearly been self-medicating for a wide variety of conditions that have been recently been either recognized or reclassified as autoimmune.
I soon understood how that might have happened: "autoimmunity" was not an item in the database created for this study in 2005. That entire category is still quite new and being debated within Medicine. As such, it has yet to attract much attention from the Law.
All of which tends to confirm that the drug policy created by two lawyers in 1970 has always been bogus Public Health. That it's still responsible for blocking effective treatments for both anxiety and autoimmune disorders should be intolerable in a nation that considers itself a bastion of tolerance and "Justice." I will have a lot more to say about autoimmune disorders as soon as I can develop a reasonable list; (they are now estimated to number somewhere between 80 and 120). I'll also have more to say about the risks Big Pharma is forced to warn consumers about, whenever they choose to be treated with the legal alternatives to cannabis their physicians are allowed to prescribe under "Doctor" Nixon's 1970 law.
Doctor Tom NB: This entry has been extensively edited since it was posted last evening.
All of which tends to confirm that the drug policy created by two lawyers in 1970 has always been bogus Public Health. That it's still responsible for blocking effective treatments for both anxiety and autoimmune disorders should be intolerable in a nation that considers itself a bastion of tolerance and "Justice." I will have a lot more to say about autoimmune disorders as soon as I can develop a reasonable list; (they are now estimated to number somewhere between 80 and 120). I'll also have more to say about the risks Big Pharma is forced to warn consumers about, whenever they choose to be treated with the legal alternatives to cannabis their physicians are allowed to prescribe under "Doctor" Nixon's 1970 law.
Doctor Tom NB: This entry has been extensively edited since it was posted last evening.
Posted by tjeffo at December 8, 2013 11:05 PM