NEVER kill yourself over. And yes, the doctor shit is a game for most. Having trouble sleeping, Marijuana, hangnails, not so much. They're the middleman for now, but their day is coming to an end when it's legal. And it is tested. Although pot isn't as strong as it used to be, hopefully when the legal bud comes full 50 states, it will kick ass like it used too.

It's less likely but not impossible.

People who think they are better drivers when stoned are deluding themselves.

I support legalized marijuana, but not driving under the influence.

Now, at the same time, I don't want to see it becoming the next laetrile, an unproven remedy being sold at inflated prices to desperate parents trying to save their kids from seizures.

The barrier to getting efficacy testing done is the legality issue. Once it's made legal, then there can actually be studies done to show which diseases it's most effective at treating.

I hate it when people say it's just a plant. You're not eating some iceberg lettuce. You're ingesting a drug which can have extensive consequence.

Ever seen a goat high off its ass?

I have.

Back in my misspent youth, I lived with some hippies. We had goats. We had gardens. We also had neighbors that were wildcrafting marijuana in the area, and sometimes passed through with a plant or two in tow. One fine day this gentleman brought four full-sized plants, just pulled, and set them on the front porch while he went inside to help himself to some delicious cookies (what did you expect from hippie potheads? We know how to bake!) and some coffee.

If you've never had goats, you may not know this, but it's impossible to fence them in. You can really only fence them *out*. Yet we tried.

This guy comes outside to find his plants gone, and our goats *remarkably* placid.

They were high for about three days. On the third day, to try to make up for the economic losses suffered due to their voracious appetites, we took them to the auction, where they got the highest price of all the dairy goats at the fair that day, due to their remarkable dispositions.

Welcome to botany. You're looking at sessile organisms that have a billion years of evolution behind them to discourage getting eaten via chemical warfare.

Now funny thing, people have been consuming cannabis roughly about as long as we've been consuming lettuce, since you brought it up. It's not exactly some newly-discovered plant out of the Papuan jungle, you know? Weed is not particularly mysterious.

Some of the more potent strains can have intense quasi-psychedelic effects - more so for inexperienced users - but this is generally no more of a worry than moderate alcohol intoxication.

decriminalized pot for anyone that wants it, no hangnails needed. And why not? Pot is cheap and easily available everywhere.

voters voted to legalize up to an ounce in 2012, mmj was legalized in 2000 and it was decriminalized for years before that.

Do some research.

There's not a thing wrong with me, and for $45 I can walk into any pot doc in town and get a prescription tomorrow as soon as they open. I don't know if "hangnails" works, but "menstrual cramps," "headaches," "lower back pain," and "occasional insomnia" are all words that will get you your very own weed card. Nobody wants any documentation that the condition existed before that morning, either.

I'd rather it were just legal, because semi-legal except that you have to pay some shady doctor who talks to you over skype first is bullshit.

Your response sure shows the difference!

I'm from Canada and we have a sane health care system.

I'm also from B.C., home of "BC-bud".

the problem. I think the initial intent was that people with cancer, AIDS and other conditions where weed was useful to combat wasting, or glaucoma where it's beneficial for reducing intereye pressure, etc would be able to get a card and grow/smoke legally. But the law was written in a very open-ended way, and in the absence of any legitimate guidance about what is or isn't a qualifying condition, shady doctors set up little standalone offices where they examine people remotely for less than five minutes and then the attendant on site takes your $45 and gives you your weed card. I have literally never heard of anybody being turned down.

It's a de-facto legalization, at least if you live in a major city and have easy access to a card issuing doctor and a dispensary (which is more expensive than going to street dealers, so it's basically only legal if you're at least middle class.) In the more rural counties it's anybody's guess whether or not they'll even honor a card on any given day. Some of the outlying counties are kind of notorious for going after even totally legit patients with real illnesses.

Personally, I think it's awesome! Better than booze or other drugs any day....

No more need for the medical subterfuge.

In Colorado, the medical marijuana sector remains, geared toward people who are actually using it medicinally.

But it's the SYSTEM that's the problem, not the fucking medicine.

I do however find the rhetoric behind legalization and medical pot efforts somewhat contradictory. Is it harmless or is it medicine? Because it's pretty much impossible to be both, and the current system is so confused precisely because proponents can't seem to decide if they're dealing with a medicine that only treats some conditions, or a mild recreational drug pretty much any adult should be able to use to cure the condition of being insufficiently couchlocked and deficient in processed snack foods.

My condolences.

If you are using it to get high or mellow out or what have you on your own, we can be fairly certain after decades of people from casual users to out and out potheads, that mj isn't likely to be much of an issue.

I've heard people prescribe it.
So what's the problem?

The danger which is presented is that we may stumble upon some aspect of pot or THC which is undesirable, or we may realize it isn't quite as useful as we thought, and then we will have to reconcile our belief in the miracle with the evidence of reality.

A lot of the history behind marijuana is mystical in the sense that it may prove to be pseudoscience. But the only way to know for certain is to subject it to deep scientific rigor.

demonstrates that, as people doing the research have noted, there have been no incidences of serious side effects in 30 years of research.

All the research that has been published via peer review has reinforced what was first published and then suppressed by our govt. in the 1970s - that demonstrated marijuana did not harm healthy cells, but caused apoptosis in cancer cells.

The reason we know the work was suppressed is that Guzman, who recently did the first human trials, spoke, in an interview, about how hard it was for him to get this research through standard channels.

The research is online now - but not through the standard channels - and not because the research is no good, but b/c the research entirely obliterates the claim that there is no potential therapeutic value - which is the reason marijuana is treated as it is, because the drug warriors claim there is no therapeutic value.

So, the mysticism I see comes from drug warriors who act like creationists when presented with evidence the earth the not 6000 years old. They put their fingers in their ears and go "lah, lah, lah, we can't hear you."

It funny for anyone here to think that doctors are wrong about the value of this while drug warriors are the reality-based thinkers. Yes, I know there are some here who will post what I think is unproven, from sites I don't consider worthwhile because they make statements that are not proven.

Even so, their statements are closer to the truth than what you get from the drug warriors.

One side says it's the devil's handiwork and the other says it's a miracle sent down from on high.

My skepticism generally runs in the idea that much of the "miracle cure" nature of pot is as yet undemonstrated and we instead have a dialogue which revolves around the anecdotes of salesman and non-scientists. Much of this very closely mirrors the kind of rhetoric produced by pharmaceutical firms.

Last edited Tue Jun 17, 2014, 01:52 AM - Edit history (1)

But one of the people who has done the most work with cannabis in the U.S. is Prof. of Biology, Robert Melamede. He, to you, would sound like a salesman - because, in all his years of work, he has become more and more impressed by the many, major issues that cannabis as medicine has responded to.

He says the endocannabinoid system (only discovered since the 1990s) controls homeostasis for almost every major bodily system - not the skeleton - but any system with soft tissue organs.

He thinks cannabis is going to be the aspirin of this century, in terms of its therapeutic value. Aspirin is called a "wonder drug" because of its many applications.

Funny how no one ever tries to insinuate that someone who calls aspirin a "wonder drug" is a saleman when they're simply noting its value to humans for a variety of illnesses.

It's sort of a bias among those who want to appear outside of the issue, to say "both sides do it." Like people who don't vote say to avoid looking at the issue.

Claims I've seen made by those advocating pot juicing. Claims to which I am deeply skeptical. Even considering the studies demonstrating cannabidiols ability to fight the growth of cancerous cells, the rhetoric I find grossly overreaches.

Not I'm not accusing you of doing that. I'm just commenting on what I've seen around my own community and the market feeding us. We are early to mid 20s college students and graduates. And many of us are, to put it lightly, overly zealous on the curative properties of the plant and the many drugs contained within.

but those making them are so outside the mainstream of any power structure... they don't matter in comparison. Like you, I don't like all the specious claims and wish they would stop. And I say something here when I see them, even when I know someone may be dealing with cancer.

But if marijuana were regulated, these claims would be regulated as well... as in, you can't sell herbal supplements in the U.S. and make claims about them that have not passed peer-reviewed studies.

But I also think it's important to remember that marijuana has only NOT been used as medicine in the U.S. for the last 70 years. Before that it was - here and around the world.

It has a really good safety record, iow.

But, yes, we need many peer-reviewed studies with lots of patients. In the meantime, if cannabis stops someone's migraines, I don't see why they should be prohibited from using it for this purpose when they have seen it works. People can do studies... migraines are hard to understand - we don't understand the causes of a lot of things, but still have medicines to alleviate the symptoms of those things... and I'm talking about FDA-approved drugs.

There have been many studies, tho, and as Dr. Gupta noted - these studies have been out there the whole time while the DEA was lying about medical benefit. So, when someone asks if we're jumping the gun - I just want to laugh.

We've known about medical uses for years, and, even so, our governmental agencies have worked to deny and suppress this information.

But, certainly, when it is legal, let's talk about these outrageous claims. But when you have a govt. lying outright for so many years, and refusing to fund research - shouldn't a counter narrative be considered a natural consequence of such a situation? I mean, the DEA went after cancer/HIV patients.

When marijuana is above ground and mainstreamed, I think you will see fewer of these claims without substance, because you will hear less from those saying there is no medical value.

from plants if not abused. Those pharmaceuticals kill over 200,000 in the US each year and we are denied a plant that has never been known to kill anyone. Seems so terribly backwards to me.

You've attempted a side-step and I'm pulling everything back in.

Much of the belief surrounding the curative capacity of THC and other compounds in pot is, at this point, mysticism.

He used to take a prescription glaucoma medicine that cost us hundreds of dollars a month. Now, he just uses medical marijuana and doesn't use any prescription glaucoma medicine at all. So, you just go on spreading your mysticism crap all you want. Those of us who know actual medical marijuana patents know better.

I support (and partake in) recreational as well as medical use, but getting it to people who are truly helped by it should be the biggest priority.

They don't exist because marijuana exists.

But Carl Sagan, among others, wondered if cannabis, as one of the earliest cultivated plants, wasn't greatly responsible for much of human culture - religion, agriculture, medicine.

The guy in China that is considered the father of agriculture is also considered the father of medicine. So, 2500 years ago humans were using cannabis for medicine for many of the same reasons it is recommended for use now.

The cannabinoids in marijuana, no doubt, made it one of the plants humans focused on in early agriculture because each part of the plant could be used, and was - whether for textiles, medicine, or religion. But you've got it backwards to say humans have cannabinoids because of marijuana.

Humans have cultivated marijuana because humans have cannabinoids that existed long before proto-humans knew of marijuana.. these same receptors exist in a variety of animals - beyond the primate species.

i'm all for tons of research, but it shouldn't hold us back too much from letting people who need it get it.

The more testing we do the more treatments we are likely to find. Why is that troublesome?

There's more research available on cannabis than many FDA-approved drugs

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/fda-drug-approvals-based-on-varied-data-study-finds/2014/01/21/b12d0712-82be-11e3-8099-9181471f7aaf_story.html

The Food and Drug Administration must bless any new drugs as “safe and effective” before they wind up in pharmacy aisles or prescribed to patients. But the ways in which the agency arrives at those approvals “vary widely in their thoroughness,” according to an analysis by researchers at Yale University’s School of Medicine.

“Not all FDA approvals are created equally,” said Nicholas Downing, lead author of the study, which examined nearly 200 new drug approvals between 2005 and 2012.

Researchers found broad differences in the data it took to get a thumbs up from FDA. For instance, the agency required that many new drugs prove themselves in large, high-quality clinical trials. But about a third won approval on the basis of a single clinical trial, and many other trials involved small groups of patients and shorter durations. Only about 40 percent of approvals included trials in which the new drug was compared with existing drugs on the market.


For cannabis?

20,000 published studies or reviews in the scientific literature referencing the cannabis plant and its cannabinoids, nearly half of which were published within the last five years, according to a keyword search on PubMed Central, the government repository for peer-reviewed scientific research.

Of these, more than 100 are controlled clinical trials assessing the therapeutic efficacy of cannabinoids for a variety of indications.

A 2006 review of 72 of these trials, conducted between the years 1975 and 2004, identifies ten distinct pathologies for which controlled studies on cannabinoids have been published

In fact, a 2008 meta-analysis published in the Journal of the Canadian Medical Association reported that cannabis-based drugs were associated with virtually no elevated incidences of serious adverse side-effects in over 30 years of investigative use.

http://www.suntimes.com/news/otherviews/24615512-452/pot-holds-no-medical-mysteries.html#.U1nRFK1dXQU


At least 10 nations have made cannabis medicine legal for certain conditions (not a synthetic - whole cannabis plant medicine in the form of Sativex). This has been reality since 2010.

Cannabis has been used by humans for religious, health and recreational purposes for more than 5000 years. It was available to humans long before alcohol - it doesn't require processing, such as fermentation, and the history of humans indicates that cannabis spread throughout the world via the migration of humans - not by nature.

I don't live on medical thc state if I did it would be easier for my husband. His doctor knows he uses pot and approves since he is at the maximum doses of meds and weed potentiates his meds without increasing side effects. I don't smoke because they random drug test at my job.

group using medical marijuana. but now that people with less deadly ailments are finding relief for their problems, we're worried? Leave these people alone already.

Here's the thing: Quite a few years ago a friend I was visiting insisted I give it a try. The next morning I found that my asthma had been activated by inhaling the smoke, and that I had a hangover as well. So I don't anticipate smoking the stuff. But as an older person with osteoarthritis, fibromyalgia, and a bunch of other stuff, I could probably benefit by some experimentation with it in other forms.

My son has developed a seizure disorder, probably related to a head injury he suffered in high school. The Rx he takes for it really takes the edge off his smarts, and I think he would be only too happy to try Charlotte's Web from Colorado, the very low THC variety that shows incredible promise in that regard.

My neighbor uses it for his migraines, which are incredibly debilitating. He's been open about it in his Men's Bible Study group, because he wants to inform them that God has put every herb on the planet for our good use and that is one of them. (I credit the Goddess, but have not shared that with him. )

Tobacco is a drug. Alcohol is a drug. Both are regulated and taxed, and illegal to sell to minors. Human beings have coexisted with both (especially alcohol) for millenia. Pot was only made illegal in relatively recent history, with more disastrous results than even Prohibition. Ever since the '60s I've pretty much equated pot use with alcohol use, except as a cautious person I've declined pot due to its illegality (except as noted).

So bring it on for medicine and recreation and put the Mexican Cartels out of business.

I see no reason why people shouldn't be allowed to grow it in their gardens.

...for personal use. There are restrictions on the number of gallons per year, the distance it can be transported, and its sale (selling not allowed), but that's pretty much it, last time I checked. Once pot is legalized fully, I anticipate a similar body of laws regarding personal cultivation and use. And into my herb garden it will go.

Pot has been tested scientifically many, many times and it has been tested by layman even more. It's harmless to adults and although an overdose is theoretically possible, it's practically impossible. Forget prescription, it should be outright legalised in the same way as booze.

according to the father of Chinese Civilization, cannabis has both.

http://medicalmarijuana.procon.org/view.timeline.php?timelineID=000026

2900 BC - Chinese Emperor Fu Hsi References Marijuana as a Popular Medicine

Emperor Fu Hsi

Source: jaars.org (accessed May 25, 2010)

"The Chinese Emperor Fu Hsi (ca. 2900 BC), whom the Chinese credit with bringing civilization to China, seems to have made reference to Ma, the Chinese word for Cannabis, noting that Cannabis was very popular medicine that possessed both yin and yang."

2700 BC - Chinese Emperor Shen Nung Said to Discover Healing Properties of Marijuana

"According to Chinese legend, the emperor Shen Nung (circa 2700 BC; also known as Chen Nung) [considered the Father of Chinese medicine] discovered marijuana's healing properties as well as those of two other mainstays of Chinese herbal medicine, ginseng and ephedra."

(snip)

1213 BC - Egyptians Use Cannabis for Glaucoma, Inflammation, and Enemas

Cannabis pollen is found on the mummy of Ramesses II, who died in 1213 BC. Prescriptions for cannabis in Ancient Egypt include treatment for the eyes (glaucoma), inflammation, and cooling the uterus, as well as administering enemas.

1000 BC - Bhang, a Drink of Cannabis and Milk, Is Used in India as an Anesthetic

Bhang, a cannabis drink generally mixed with milk, is used as an anesthetic and anti-phlegmatic in India. Cannabis begins to be used in India to treat a wide variety of human maladies.

1 AD - Ancient Chinese Text Recommends Marijuana for More Than 100 Ailments


Chinese ideogram for marijuana ("ma&quot

Source: Marijuana as Medicine: Beyond the Controversy, 2000

"In a compendium of drug recipes compiled in 1 AD [Pen Ts'ao Ching], based on traditions from the time of Shen Nung, marijuana is depicted as an ideogram [pictorial symbol] of plants drying in a shed. This ancient text... recommends marijuana for more than 100 ailments, including gout, rheumatism, malaria, and absentmindedness."

It can affect short-term memory, but is usually not long lasting at all. It may be there are strains which do not cause short-term disruption, maybe someone with more research on this would know.

As far as the sometimes paranoid aspect, my theory is that may disappear with legalization.

Either way, if it was possible here in PA, would use it for arthritis (and other illnesses), and just for general well-being. It would help tremendously if easier access was 'allowed'. I believe if I had smoked it my entire life, it would have saved my life.

Last edited Tue Jun 17, 2014, 03:10 AM - Edit history (1)

would reduce paranoia.

If Earnest Borgnine had smoked it, he might have survived his second death.


http://sync.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=5109889

We know it's definitely hazardous to our personal liberty, and right to employment. I can't think of a lot of other problems that have come up, other than the need to control access to minors like any drug.

Because we know how much you hate woo.

Lately. First the Koch Bros, now this.

Archae told me writing about the assassination of JFK was ''beating a dead horse.''

http://upload.democraticunderground.com/?com=view_post&forum=1002&pid=4176421

I don't mind people disagreeing. I do mind people telling me to shut up.

feb 2010; "Unless a well-tolerated formulation of a marijuana-related compound with a much longer duration of action is shown in rigorous clinical testing to reduce damage to the optic nerve and preserve vision, there is no scientific basis of these agents in the treatment of glaucoma"

Translation: too short duration of action (3-4hrs) and too many side effects

The drops used to treat glaucoma these days are much better and much safer than pot. You can take one drop once a day and it lowers your pressure in a consistent manner to protect the optic nerve from damage even while you are sleeping with virtually no side effects. you would have to take up to six doses of THC to accomplish the same effect.

No, we are not jumping the gun.

There's no need to justify it. People want to get high; they want to do it for fun, just like they do with alcohol.

And there ARE medical uses for pot. So legalize it for everyone and then we don't have to worry about whether someone who's sick should or shouldn't be allowed to have it.