I know of two people directly who developed very serious neurological damage from taking doctor-prescribed drugs. The result was serious impairment, affecting their ability to think and move with ease. These two people followed doctor’s orders — and in one case, the drug manufacturer would be sued for inappropriately targeting a population for treatment. The actual list of those affected by the serious, debilitating side effects of legal drugs in this way would be much, much longer.
Years of experience have convinced me: I believe in natural medicines, and that is also Biblically supported. Marijuana, or Cannabis, is actually a natural medicine, but not any sort of panacea, and in fact, some people are actually allergic to it. Marijuana had been widely prescribed by doctors as Cannabis Extract before it was erroneously labeled a narcotic and made illegal, and that was most likely in an attempt to diminish lumber’s greatest competition in the late 1930’s: hemp. When the flowering tops (marijuana) were made illegal, the entire plant was, also, including the hemp fibers in the stalk, securing the lumber industry’s future monopoly on trees for paper. Many doctors were jailed in the early 40’s for continuing to prescribe Cannabis Extract, not realizing that in its smoked leaf form it was considered a “dangerous drug” by the newly-created Federal Bureau of Narcotics. But that’s a long, interesting history in itself, which can nevertheless be thoroughly researched, thanks to the exhaustive efforts of Jack Herer, who wrote about it all in his book, “The Emperor Wears No Clothes”.
I can’t include marijuana in the same category as synthetic “recreational drugs” — even though many people use it that way — and I don’t think that taking “massive quantities of marijuana” would ever be considered a proper medicinal dose.
When I weigh the effects of responsible use of natural plant medicines (which could include Cannabis – as it is a vaso-dilator, and so could be prescribed for migraines, glaucoma, asthma, rheumatism, etc.) against the effects of responsible use of “doctor-prescribed drugs,” the scale tips strongly in favor of the natural in my view. I consider natural medicines to be further proof of God’s creative and benevolent genius.
Thanks, Ruth, for a bit of history I never knew. It has become quite obvious to me that if we take care of our bodies with the natural herbs and plants God gave us, we would be much healthier human beings. I learned the hard way that neurological medicines are a miserable way to try and live. Since God showed my that my addiction to diet drinks and artificial sweeteners most likely caused the tumor in my brain and epilepsy to get worse, I cleaned my body of using them. It was about this time last year I dedicated myself to cleaning out my body and I have seen my health improve in amazing ways. I have also cut down on medicine tremendously too. I am leaving the rest of my getting off of them completely up to my Heavenly Father. My family is now enjoying all the benefits of eating natural foods and cutting out junk food. We are feeling healthier every day. God’s natural medicines have amazing benefits and I think its sad how much they have cut people off from using his natural medicine to help people with their health issues.
I think the following should be illegal.
Marijuana, scanty clothing, texting while driving, pornography, abortion, and homosexuality.
I wonder if there is research information on marijuana use that would show that daily marijuana users score lower on exams than students who do not use it.
I always thought that most scholastic achievers were not habitual marijuana users.
There are some drive up coffee businesses that have baristas wearing little more than a scarf and weekly specials on a board that are not coffee. Such things promote corruption that comes through lust.
I don’t know much about trans fat, but if it’s the kind that tends to harm people’s circulatory system and there are other kinds of fat that is less harmful and could be used just as well and those who prepare or sell the food products do not use them, maybe we are in need of a law about that too.
The illegal things will still be around just as alchohol was during the prohibition, or as illegal drugs are now, but I see no reason to promote things which are harmful as if they were not.
Everything has to be weighed and people need to decide.
I would like to live in a United States of America where sexual imorality is illegal as well as drug use when it is used for a “high”, where people don’t misuse alcohol, where every life is protected by the constitution, and where what’s good is considered good by the vast majority and evil is considered evil by the same.
Honey is an amazing substance that is also microbial. But if you took in too much honey, what is good would then become bad for you. People abusing a substance does not necessarily mean the substance itself is bad — just the behavior is. Simply overeating is also not good — even if the food itself is of the best quality.
As far as your statement, Ray: “I always thought that most scholastic achievers were not habitual marijuana users.” – I’m not disputing your experience; but I personally know of one who graduated magna cum laude…so it apparently affects different people in different ways. Certainly if it doesn’t affect someone well, they should stay completely away from it, as common sense would indicate.
The B vitamins are really important for the brain’s neurological functions as well as energy metabolism. A recent study at the University at Irvine, CA (of a doctor’s earlier research into B-3) proved that B-3 does repair nerve cells and tissue. The rats (who were bred to develop early-onset Alzheimer’s) actually fully recovered their memories due to high doses of vitamin B-3.
That should be honey is “anti-microbial”
I read that hemp seed is also a cheap staple food – a complete protein source that grows like a weed (and doesn’t even alter your mental state). It is so stupid – it can be sold here, but not grown. I drank hemp milk too, not bad.
Yes, before illegalization (which began in the United States) hemp and hemp seed was in use world-wide. The seed was pressed into oil, as well as ground and eaten, especially as a very nourishing gruel. Hemp fibers (we get our word for canvas from cannabis) were in great demand for their durability as sail cloth. The salt winds were too hard on other fabrics — only hempcloth would do.
Herer’s book supplies the definitive history of this plant. Even though great pains were taken to suppress this history after the late 30’s, Herer and friends unearthed it, even digging through the Library of Congress to locate the almost-lost “Hemp for Victory” film which was a tutorial for farmers on how to grow hemp (again!) temporarily in the late 1940’s, to help with the war effort.
The only way hemp could be smashed as a competitor a decade earlier was to go after marijuana, which Randolph Hearst, the father of tabloid, or “yellow journalism,” did in his propagandistic, yet popular newspaper. Filled with lies and misinformation, it raved about marijuana causing homicides and other crimes. Meanwhile, doctors were prescribing it, completely unaware that “marijuana,” which Hearst labeled that “killer drug from Mexico” was actually their familiar medicine, Cannabis Extract. But the public had been roused against it by story after story smearing it. Some of the same misinformation still continues to the present day.
I ask myself — if our brains have THC receptors built-in — what does that presuppose? That humans have a long and productive history of the use of this entire plant, including the medicinal flowering tops, and it’s time it was returned to its status as a potent medicine.
Likewise, hemp and hempseed — and let’s not forget the cellulose, also from the stalk, which is useful for plastics — should all be fully exploited today in America as the significant resource which they are (and once were, before the 30’s smear campaign).
I am sitting here trying to collect my thoughts, still reeling from some of the posts above. I have been a nurse for close to 39 years. I am an OB nurse and unfortunatley drug use is quite rampant. Almost every day we have to call in social services or CPS because of illegal drug use. Watching babies going through withdrawl from these drugs is painful. wondering how this harm to thier brain cells might follow them throughout their lives is painful as well. Thinking that the Marijuana of the 60’s or 70’s is the same substance being used now is just not having the right information. The sticky stuff used now is 7% to 10% stronger and is habit forming. Look up the research…it’s all there. and it is habit forming as well. If we are talking the use by diagnosed illnesses that can not be cured and or death is emminant, then that is one thing. Kids, 18 years or older are able to get it here in our area by having $75 and a 10 min exam (there is a list of Drs who will prescribe at all the head shops)…presto and they are a member of the card carrying canibus club. Legal and everything. How do I know that? because my 20 year old who was a straight A student before he began to smoke it, has been a card carrier since he was 18. Needless to say he barely got through his senior year of hight school and cannot seem to hold down a job nor continue his education becuase of lack of ambition. All he wants to do is to “chill out” with his other pot smoking friends. It has torn our family apart and we had to ask him to leave our home at the age of 18. We have been robbed by some of his drug using friends who thought his card might be here in our house. I see not one drop of goodness from the legalization of this drug, nor of it’s major use, which is not from people who really need it medically. I also was a drug and alcohol counselor for 7 years and MJ is well known in this community as the gateway drug to almost all the rest of the illegal drugs on the list. Why in the world would we want it legalized so that more people can suffer the pain of watching their children ruin their lives. Heroin is a great drug for pain as well, lets legalize it’s use….it’s natural. If medically needed then get the script, but all too often those using are those who’s major pain is not physical, but emotional and spiritual in nature.
Logically, it will take some time to sort through where it can be used beneficially and where it is not. But the DEA’s position of blanketly keeping it illegal based on old disinformation has only forced the argument to the level it is now.
The way that marijuana is lumped with other “drugs” — drugs which are undeniably harmful, and that is beyond argument — is part of the problem. The way that it is considered a “gateway” drug obscures the fact that when people are seeking an unusual experience through drugs, they will, of course, try everything that’s available, including ‘grass’. If their objective remains to change their consciousness dramatically, they will continue to experiment, and that is not the responsibility of marijuana. It does not give one “an appetite” for experimentation. Such an appetite precedes the usage and goes well beyond it. Of course, there will always be cases of people starting with marijuana and trying something “harder,” but also many cases where that never happens. (It’s also worth considering that humans have been changing their consciousness through various plant substances for ages – that’s not new, and it’s not likely to disappear.)
But back to cannabis…Determining the correct dosages for marijuana medically are also still problematic. This is in part because, since it is still largely on the black market, it’s hard for the average buyer to purchase a standard product, outside of a legal dispensary. Product quality varies greatly otherwise. In addition to this, people often benefit from much smaller doses, but this isn’t always understood. Typically, the less they ingest, the more effective it is. Vaporization is the safest and most effective method of ingestion, not pill form. Another point to consider in formulating a therapeutic dose is body mass and a person’s threshold-level of tolerance to drugs or other substances. Saturation of THC can certainly have an adverse effect — the “lack of ambition” you described, and unfortunately, all too many kids are saturating themselves with it as if there were no caveats. But again, this is because it has not been treated as the respected medicine (which it had been for centuries prior to the late 1930’s) since before Heart’s smear campaign, but was purposely degraded in the public’s perception as a dangerous and “recreational” narcotic. Making it illegal forced it into the shadows, literally and figuratively. People will abuse it, then disavow it completely. Again, that’s not the fault of this medicinal herb. That’s the fault of making it illegal in the first place through miscategorizing it (which was a consciously deceptive move – see earlier posts) and leaving it open to misuse. Illegality also introduces the element of the “forbidden” to latent thrill-seeking behavior. Another dangerous aspect is contact with the black market which itself can be a risky experience. If a person benefits from it, they should be able to receive it from a medical dispensary, not from some random, unknown source.
Marijuana is a vaso-dilator; that is, it increases circulation, dilating, or opening, veins. The very opposite of nicotine, which is a vaso-constrictor. Migraines, for example, are often caused by constriction of blood vessels in the meninges; vaso-dilation reverses that and relieves pain. The individual experiences an increase in heartrate because of this vaso-dilation; the whole body is receiving more blood flow. Increased blood flow provides more oxygen and facilitates healing. Naturally, this also immediately produces subtle, yet heightened sensations, and even feelings of well-being (outside of the fear that is solely brought on by the awareness of its illegality and the element of risk involved). But with a medical prescription, the individual is not bothered quite so much with such fears. I say not “quite so much” because it is still illegal on a federal level, and so the element of harm remains. That really needs to change; I don’t see how it can be delayed forever.
Dispensaries are a beginning point of standardizing medicinal quality and improving our understanding of how individuals respond to it as treatment.
I don’t think marijuana will easily be stuffed back into the suitcase Hearst, et.al. hoped to keep it in. There’s been too much real information and progress in understanding it for that. What we can hope for is to stop the abuse of this medicine by bringing it into the light, examining its history and role on the world’s stage, and extricating it from the broad-brush taint of truly harmful drugs.
Heroin, because it is synthesized from morphine, which is synthesized from opium, which is found in a certain type of poppy flower — at each stage of synthesis, in becoming stronger and much more addictive — became much more dangerous. In their original form, opiates have a place in medicine. By the way, heroin addiction has been successfully treated with a natural root called Iboga; which is in use in clinics around the world (except the U.S., interestingly) as Ibogaine.
– that should be “Hearst’s smear campaign” – not Heart’s
I know of two people directly who developed very serious neurological damage from taking doctor-prescribed drugs. The result was serious impairment, affecting their ability to think and move with ease. These two people followed doctor’s orders — and in one case, the drug manufacturer would be sued for inappropriately targeting a population for treatment. The actual list of those affected by the serious, debilitating side effects of legal drugs in this way would be much, much longer.
Years of experience have convinced me: I believe in natural medicines, and that is also Biblically supported. Marijuana, or Cannabis, is actually a natural medicine, but not any sort of panacea, and in fact, some people are actually allergic to it. Marijuana had been widely prescribed by doctors as Cannabis Extract before it was erroneously labeled a narcotic and made illegal, and that was most likely in an attempt to diminish lumber’s greatest competition in the late 1930’s: hemp. When the flowering tops (marijuana) were made illegal, the entire plant was, also, including the hemp fibers in the stalk, securing the lumber industry’s future monopoly on trees for paper. Many doctors were jailed in the early 40’s for continuing to prescribe Cannabis Extract, not realizing that in its smoked leaf form it was considered a “dangerous drug” by the newly-created Federal Bureau of Narcotics. But that’s a long, interesting history in itself, which can nevertheless be thoroughly researched, thanks to the exhaustive efforts of Jack Herer, who wrote about it all in his book, “The Emperor Wears No Clothes”.
I can’t include marijuana in the same category as synthetic “recreational drugs” — even though many people use it that way — and I don’t think that taking “massive quantities of marijuana” would ever be considered a proper medicinal dose.
When I weigh the effects of responsible use of natural plant medicines (which could include Cannabis – as it is a vaso-dilator, and so could be prescribed for migraines, glaucoma, asthma, rheumatism, etc.) against the effects of responsible use of “doctor-prescribed drugs,” the scale tips strongly in favor of the natural in my view. I consider natural medicines to be further proof of God’s creative and benevolent genius.
Thanks, Ruth, for a bit of history I never knew. It has become quite obvious to me that if we take care of our bodies with the natural herbs and plants God gave us, we would be much healthier human beings. I learned the hard way that neurological medicines are a miserable way to try and live. Since God showed my that my addiction to diet drinks and artificial sweeteners most likely caused the tumor in my brain and epilepsy to get worse, I cleaned my body of using them. It was about this time last year I dedicated myself to cleaning out my body and I have seen my health improve in amazing ways. I have also cut down on medicine tremendously too. I am leaving the rest of my getting off of them completely up to my Heavenly Father.
My family is now enjoying all the benefits of eating natural foods and cutting out junk food. We are feeling healthier every day. God’s natural medicines have amazing benefits and I think its sad how much they have cut people off from using his natural medicine to help people with their health issues.
I think the following should be illegal.
Marijuana, scanty clothing, texting while driving, pornography, abortion, and homosexuality.
I wonder if there is research information on marijuana use that would show that daily marijuana users score lower on exams than students who do not use it.
I always thought that most scholastic achievers
were not habitual marijuana users.
There are some drive up coffee businesses that have baristas wearing little more than a scarf
and weekly specials on a board that are not coffee. Such things promote corruption that comes through lust.
I don’t know much about trans fat, but if it’s the kind that tends to harm people’s circulatory system and there are other kinds of fat that is less harmful and could be used just as well and those who prepare or sell the food products do not use them, maybe we are in need of a law about that too.
The illegal things will still be around just as alchohol was during the prohibition, or as illegal drugs are now, but I see no reason to promote things which are harmful as if they were not.
Everything has to be weighed and people need to decide.
I would like to live in a United States of America where sexual imorality is illegal as well as drug use when it is used for a “high”, where people don’t misuse alcohol, where every life is protected by the constitution, and where what’s good is considered good by the vast majority and evil is considered evil by the same.
Honey is an amazing substance that is also microbial. But if you took in too much honey, what is good would then become bad for you. People abusing a substance does not necessarily mean the substance itself is bad — just the behavior is. Simply overeating is also not good — even if the food itself is of the best quality.
As far as your statement, Ray: “I always thought that most scholastic achievers were not habitual marijuana users.” – I’m not disputing your experience; but I personally know of one who graduated magna cum laude…so it apparently affects different people in different ways. Certainly if it doesn’t affect someone well, they should stay completely away from it, as common sense would indicate.
The B vitamins are really important for the brain’s neurological functions as well as energy metabolism. A recent study at the University at Irvine, CA (of a doctor’s earlier research into B-3) proved that B-3 does repair nerve cells and tissue. The rats (who were bred to develop early-onset Alzheimer’s) actually fully recovered their memories due to high doses of vitamin B-3.
That should be honey is “anti-microbial”
I read that hemp seed is also a cheap staple food – a complete protein source that grows like a weed (and doesn’t even alter your mental state). It is so stupid – it can be sold here, but not grown. I drank hemp milk too, not bad.
Yes, before illegalization (which began in the United States) hemp and hemp seed was in use world-wide. The seed was pressed into oil, as well as ground and eaten, especially as a very nourishing gruel. Hemp fibers (we get our word for canvas from cannabis) were in great demand for their durability as sail cloth. The salt winds were too hard on other fabrics — only hempcloth would do.
Herer’s book supplies the definitive history of this plant. Even though great pains were taken to suppress this history after the late 30’s, Herer and friends unearthed it, even digging through the Library of Congress to locate the almost-lost “Hemp for Victory” film which was a tutorial for farmers on how to grow hemp (again!) temporarily in the late 1940’s, to help with the war effort.
The only way hemp could be smashed as a competitor a decade earlier was to go after marijuana, which Randolph Hearst, the father of tabloid, or “yellow journalism,” did in his propagandistic, yet popular newspaper. Filled with lies and misinformation, it raved about marijuana causing homicides and other crimes. Meanwhile, doctors were prescribing it, completely unaware that “marijuana,” which Hearst labeled that “killer drug from Mexico” was actually their familiar medicine, Cannabis Extract. But the public had been roused against it by story after story smearing it. Some of the same misinformation still continues to the present day.
I ask myself — if our brains have THC receptors built-in — what does that presuppose? That humans have a long and productive history of the use of this entire plant, including the medicinal flowering tops, and it’s time it was returned to its status as a potent medicine.
Likewise, hemp and hempseed — and let’s not forget the cellulose, also from the stalk, which is useful for plastics — should all be fully exploited today in America as the significant resource which they are (and once were, before the 30’s smear campaign).
I am sitting here trying to collect my thoughts, still reeling from some of the posts above.
I have been a nurse for close to 39 years. I am an OB nurse and unfortunatley drug use is quite rampant. Almost every day we have to call in social services or CPS because of illegal drug use. Watching babies going through withdrawl from these drugs is painful. wondering how this harm to thier brain cells might follow them throughout their lives is painful as well.
Thinking that the Marijuana of the 60’s or 70’s is the same substance being used now is just not having the right information. The sticky stuff used now is 7% to 10% stronger and is habit forming. Look up the research…it’s all there. and it is habit forming as well.
If we are talking the use by diagnosed illnesses that can not be cured and or death is emminant, then that is one thing.
Kids, 18 years or older are able to get it here in our area by having $75 and a 10 min exam (there is a list of Drs who will prescribe at all the head shops)…presto and they are a member of the card carrying canibus club. Legal and everything.
How do I know that? because my 20 year old who was a straight A student before he began to smoke it, has been a card carrier since he was 18. Needless to say he barely got through his senior year of hight school and cannot seem to hold down a job nor continue his education becuase of lack of ambition. All he wants to do is to “chill out” with his other pot smoking friends.
It has torn our family apart and we had to ask him to leave our home at the age of 18. We have been robbed by some of his drug using friends who thought his card might be here in our house.
I see not one drop of goodness from the legalization of this drug, nor of it’s major use, which is not from people who really need it medically.
I also was a drug and alcohol counselor for 7 years and MJ is well known in this community as the gateway drug to almost all the rest of the illegal drugs on the list.
Why in the world would we want it legalized so that more people can suffer the pain of watching their children ruin their lives.
Heroin is a great drug for pain as well, lets legalize it’s use….it’s natural.
If medically needed then get the script, but all too often those using are those who’s major pain is not physical, but emotional and spiritual in nature.
Logically, it will take some time to sort through where it can be used beneficially and where it is not. But the DEA’s position of blanketly keeping it illegal based on old disinformation has only forced the argument to the level it is now.
The way that marijuana is lumped with other “drugs” — drugs which are undeniably harmful, and that is beyond argument — is part of the problem. The way that it is considered a “gateway” drug obscures the fact that when people are seeking an unusual experience through drugs, they will, of course, try everything that’s available, including ‘grass’. If their objective remains to change their consciousness dramatically, they will continue to experiment, and that is not the responsibility of marijuana. It does not give one “an appetite” for experimentation. Such an appetite precedes the usage and goes well beyond it. Of course, there will always be cases of people starting with marijuana and trying something “harder,” but also many cases where that never happens. (It’s also worth considering that humans have been changing their consciousness through various plant substances for ages – that’s not new, and it’s not likely to disappear.)
But back to cannabis…Determining the correct dosages for marijuana medically are also still problematic. This is in part because, since it is still largely on the black market, it’s hard for the average buyer to purchase a standard product, outside of a legal dispensary. Product quality varies greatly otherwise. In addition to this, people often benefit from much smaller doses, but this isn’t always understood. Typically, the less they ingest, the more effective it is. Vaporization is the safest and most effective method of ingestion, not pill form. Another point to consider in formulating a therapeutic dose is body mass and a person’s threshold-level of tolerance to drugs or other substances. Saturation of THC can certainly have an adverse effect — the “lack of ambition” you described, and unfortunately, all too many kids are saturating themselves with it as if there were no caveats. But again, this is because it has not been treated as the respected medicine (which it had been for centuries prior to the late 1930’s) since before Heart’s smear campaign, but was purposely degraded in the public’s perception as a dangerous and “recreational” narcotic. Making it illegal forced it into the shadows, literally and figuratively. People will abuse it, then disavow it completely. Again, that’s not the fault of this medicinal herb. That’s the fault of making it illegal in the first place through miscategorizing it (which was a consciously deceptive move – see earlier posts) and leaving it open to misuse. Illegality also introduces the element of the “forbidden” to latent thrill-seeking behavior. Another dangerous aspect is contact with the black market which itself can be a risky experience. If a person benefits from it, they should be able to receive it from a medical dispensary, not from some random, unknown source.
Marijuana is a vaso-dilator; that is, it increases circulation, dilating, or opening, veins. The very opposite of nicotine, which is a vaso-constrictor. Migraines, for example, are often caused by constriction of blood vessels in the meninges; vaso-dilation reverses that and relieves pain. The individual experiences an increase in heartrate because of this vaso-dilation; the whole body is receiving more blood flow. Increased blood flow provides more oxygen and facilitates healing. Naturally, this also immediately produces subtle, yet heightened sensations, and even feelings of well-being (outside of the fear that is solely brought on by the awareness of its illegality and the element of risk involved). But with a medical prescription, the individual is not bothered quite so much with such fears. I say not “quite so much” because it is still illegal on a federal level, and so the element of harm remains. That really needs to change; I don’t see how it can be delayed forever.
Dispensaries are a beginning point of standardizing medicinal quality and improving our understanding of how individuals respond to it as treatment.
I don’t think marijuana will easily be stuffed back into the suitcase Hearst, et.al. hoped to keep it in. There’s been too much real information and progress in understanding it for that. What we can hope for is to stop the abuse of this medicine by bringing it into the light, examining its history and role on the world’s stage, and extricating it from the broad-brush taint of truly harmful drugs.
Heroin, because it is synthesized from morphine, which is synthesized from opium, which is found in a certain type of poppy flower — at each stage of synthesis, in becoming stronger and much more addictive — became much more dangerous. In their original form, opiates have a place in medicine. By the way, heroin addiction has been successfully treated with a natural root called Iboga; which is in use in clinics around the world (except the U.S., interestingly) as Ibogaine.
– that should be “Hearst’s smear campaign” – not Heart’s