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May 27, 2014
Aspberger's and PTSD in the News
Asperger syndrome and PTSD are both are emotional disorders which have been effectively self-medicated by many of the patients I've interviewed pursuant to their use of (federally illegal) "medical marijuana" during the past 10 years. I've now taken histories from over 7000 applicants seeking to use pot medically in California. Despite an increasing voter demand for liberalizing our rigid federal "marijuana" laws, there is no significant movement to remove it from the list of Schedule One (totally forbidden) drugs and the US federal bureaucracy has remained adamant that it will not be "rescheduled," a position that's becoming increasingly difficult for them to defend in light of current news.For example, 2 of the leading stories on this Memorial Day Weekend dealt with conditions cannabis treats very effectively. One involved a typically troubled youth who had been diagnosed and treated within the "system" for Asperger's for at least three years. He uploaded both his bitter feelings and his proposed solution on You Tube before setting out to make good on his threats. In a more rational setting, an honest Pharmaceutical Industry could easily have made a nebulized cannabis preparation available. Sadly, sixteen years after "medical use" was approved for California, both an honest federal bureaucracy and and an honest pharmaceutical industry are still distant pipe dreams.
Even more maddening to me is that our President is a living, breathing example of someone who successfully treated his own ADD with illegal cannabis while a prep school student in Hawaii and doesn't even know it. My study, first presented to the pathetically uninformed "Medical Marijuana" lobby 1995 (and ignored by them ever since) pointed out the consistent relationship between absence of the biologic father from a child's life and how the symptoms of ADD are mitigated by (illegal) adolescent use: a correlation first noted among the "baby boomers" now aging into Medicare and still continuing among their grandchildren.
The other Memorial Day story was a criticism of inadequate VA care of the "Wounded Warriors" Ironically, both the Controlled Substances Act and the All Volunteer Army, both of which were conceived of by Richard Nixon, are continuing to wreak havoc long after the Trickster died in1994. There are now an average of 22 suicides /day being among returnees from Iraq and Afghanistan and the VA, which is responsible for their medical care, is forbidden to use the one drug my study shows mitigates PTSD better than any of the synthetic pot imitators being pushed by Big Pharma.
Abilify anyone?
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at 01:41 AM | Comments (0)
May 21, 2014
An American Hitler's Deadly Prescription for "improving" the Species
It would be considered a stretch by most to compare any American President with Adolph Hitler, perhaps the most infamous tyrant in human history to date. However, there are several cogent reasons for comparing him to Richard Nixon.Both men were ambitious national leaders who were very resentful after being traumatized during childhood by unsatisfactory relationships with their biological fathers; a circumstance identified as surprisingly common in my opportunistic study of over 7000 American cannabis users seeking my approval tP use as marijuana "medically" between 2001 and 2013.
Nixon was guilty of perjury and bribery in the Watergate scandal, also the disruptive secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia, yet the disrespect in which his truncated presidency is held by most historians has little to do with what I consider his worst crime: the Controlled Substances Act of 1970 which was approved by Congress with minimal discussion midway through his first term and has since been loyally supported by state and federal police ever since. That the CSA has has remained global drug policy despite its disruptive influence on the lives of so many humans since 1970 is not encouraging.
At least Hitler's crimes ended with his death. Nixon's victims are still being born and then being victimized by the predatory illegal markets encouraged by a law being enforced by police in he mistaken notion that they are "protecting" society.
In truth, the CSA is classic fascism. It has "succeeded" by masquerading as (virtuous) Public Health for over forty years, but at terrible human and social cost which is compounded every year.
Why that is so has a lot to do with human culture, which– in turn– has a lot to do with our (relatively) recent appearance among mammalian species; about a quarter of a million years ago, most of it before we could think clearly or write,
Before pooh-poohing that line of reasoning too vigorously, nay-sayers should realize that a) this is not a bible-friendly site and b) the best scientific information on our origins is that Evolution happened; also that H. sapiens is a relative newcomer on a planet that's been in our galaxy for over 4 billion years– and home to life for about 500 million. There's obviously a lot we have yet to learn.
Since we don't know much about the process of speciation, we can on;y surmise that it did happen without worrying how. It's also very human to want coherent answers for our most existential questions and then argue about which are true and what they all mean.
However, given our terrible record of failure at correcting human behavior by repressive laws, it might be better to worry about how we can get help each other succeed than how best to punish those we disagree with. Neither Genocide nor mass incarceration for spurious reasons has worked and both have had extensive trials throughout human history.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at 09:07 PM | Comments (0)
May 18, 2014
Why Nixon's Drug War remains such a deadly Hoax
1) The Controlled Substances Act, which became both American and UN drug policy in 1970 claims to be about Public Health, but is really about punishment; its major support comes from police, lawyers and Judges, all of whom are mandated by the same law to combat "drug crime" and empowered by it to create new drug crime by deciding which substances can be added to– or removed from– "Schedule One."Thus the CSA gave the DEA, a law enforcement agency, total power over the creation of illegal drug markets.
2) The CSA also dictated the official algorithm for punishing use or possession of designated "drugs of abuse." It's very revealing that the first such drugs ("substances") placed on Schedule One in 1970 were "marijuana" (cannabis), psilocybin, and LSD. That’s almost certainly because his most pressing need in 1969 was to enhance the power of federal law over the vocal young people who were then demanding that he abandon the war in Vietnam he had been attempting to win by his secret bombing of Laos and Cambodia. His Controlled Substances Act was– and still is– based on pure rhetoric. There had never been any proper clinical studies of cannabis since those done by Dr.Wm. O'Shaughnessy on oral “gunjah” in India during the 1830s. We also don’t know of any studies of smoked cannabis done by O'Shaughnessy. The first such use was reported by French troops who learned to smoke cannabis in Egypt.
3) Whether he realized it or not, Nixon had pulled a Hitler by using the power of the state to assert a law without any basis in fact. In Hitler's case, it was his insistence (via the Numemberg laws) that Jewry is an enemy of every state and must be destroyed. In Nixon's law, the false premise is that the effects of certain "substances" are so evil, they cannot be tolerated by any society.
To accomplish his goals, Hitler created a special police force, the SS.
Nixon did the same when he created the DEA a special drug police force, to enforce his CSA.
The comparison is not facetious. Whenever a false belief becomes a ruling paradigm by law, a new opportunity for authoritarian abuse under cover of “justice” is created. Nixon's CSA was brilliant; it asserted the "right" of police agencies to create one new illegal market after another. All that was needed was a new product with enough appeal to command a premium from a vulnerable population. Crack is a perfect example: the growing underground appeal of inhaled cocaine had been established by Richard Pryor's famous "hair on fire" moment. The problem was that ether extraction of cocaine produces a product that is simply too expensive and dangerous for mass consumption. Those problems were solved by the discovery that heating bicarbonate of soda with powdered cocaine in a microwave produces a drug that can be smoked safely and will reach the brain just as quickly as the more expensive and more dangerous product requiring ether extraction. An added bonus was that the enhanced potency produced by smoking allowed the sale of smaller aliquots (doses) thus enhancing profits; it was like selling Chateaubriande by the forkful: the whole steak becomes even more profitable.
The threat that "marijuana" currently represents to Nixon's police hegemony is that cannabis really is medicine . In fact it's so safe and effective that it's almost too good to be true, a characteristic that has allowed the DEA and NIDA– its sister agency – to obfuscate the truth, at least temporarily. In that endeavor, they have been ably assisted by Psychiatry and Psychology. the medical handmaidens of Nixon's police. Not to mention "pot docs" with more avarice than intellectual curiosity.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at 12:59 AM | Comments (0)
May 16, 2014
The VA, cannabis, and PTSD
No sooner did I complain about the fact that the drug war adds up to bad medicine than a news item reflecting that reality turns up on national news. I just witnessed a somewhat impassioned debate on CNN's Crossfire on the question of alleged VA delays in care for "wounded Warriors" and a recent spate of 40 deaths allegedly related to those delays.Putting together what I remember from my Army days when I cared for wounded GIs from Vietnam at a US Army hospital in Japan, and then later at Letterman General Hospital in San Francisco, I was reminded of the differences between then and now: the Vietnam war was fought mostly by young draftees, many of whom were just out of High School and definitely not career soldiers. They have since been replaced by a smaller "all volunteer" Army intended to reduce reliance on a draft, but which has also been severely stressed by deployments to the Middle East and other hot spots.
I have no data on retention stats, but suspect they are down and that there must be increased reliance on reserve units to meet troop commitments.
Since I also know that PTSD has been a common problem, I suspect that the feds' hard-nosed policy on cannabis may be about to catch up with them big time.
Doctor Tom
Posted by tjeffo at 12:31 AM | Comments (0)