Since then, scientists have challenged the FDA stance. John Rennie of Scientific American asks, "what are the feds smoking?"
Medical marijuana is caught in a classic Catch-22 situation: It is banned because the federal government dismisses the evidence of therapeutic benefit as insufficient. But because marijuana is banned, scientists can't easily gather more evidence to make the case. And new drugs based on marijuana are casualties of the same policies. Meanwhile, patients continue to suffer despite strong evidence that work in this area could lead to better medicines.And Yale-affiliated pediatrician Sydney Spiesel suspects that the FDA position is--gasp!--grounded in politics, not science: "Marijuana as a medicine--whatever its risk and benefits are eventually determined to be--may turn out to be much less important than the question of whether we can count on agencies like the FDA to be honest in their dealings."
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Are any of the U.S. government agencies honest in their dealings with the public? Certainly, where medical marijuana is concerned, politics have governed their classifications and pronouncements, rather than science.
The Controlled Substances Act of 1970 classified marijuana as a Schedule One drub, alongside heroin. Is this because cannabis is just as dangerous? No, it’s simply because Richard Nixon, who happened to be President at the time, was a bitter and paranoid man. He saw the millions of youth smoking pot as a threat to his war-mongering ways.
This deception has stayed with us to this very day. The FDA, in its recent politically-charged statement, is echoing the Nixon paranoia all over again. We can’t possibly admit that marijuana might be helpful to those that are ill. Hell, our shares in the mega-pharmaceuticals might lose their value.
If marijuana becomes universally recognized and legalized as a healing agent, what is going to diminish in value? Chemical painkillers, that’s what. Who makes billions of dollars manufacturing chemical painkillers? Big Pharma, that’s who.
As a medpot patient living in Canada, I am grateful to my government for being enlightened enough to allow me to grow and use my own medicine. I suffer from frequent epileptic seizures. Conventional medicine helped for a while, but the seizures became more and more violent and the pain that preceded the attacks was more and more unbearable.
Since my doctor prescribed therapeutic cannabis, not only has the number of my seizures been reduced, but also the pain that accompanied them became more and more manageable.
I don’t live near a major city, where compassion clubs sell marijuana openly, so I had to learn to grow my own. I was fortunate in finding a website that specializes in helping medpot patients like myself to grow their own medicine.
I learned that one can choose to nourish plants organically or synthetically. Since I eat an organic diet, I thought my plants would also prefer the same. I use 100% organic Iguana Juice, Grow and Bloom, to fertilize my pot plants, which I grow next to shed in the back yard.
My patch of pot plants is surrounded by some thick bushes, which is preferable to advertising—hey, look what I’m growing! I know that it’s legal, but it’s no use telling everyone about it, since pot thieves exist in every country.
The folks at Advanced Nutrients Medical also provided me with step by step information about processing my pot plants after harvest. They advised me to use Colossal Bud Blast to increase the size of my buds at the flowering stage. Whew, did it ever work! My buds are humongous each year.
Since the buds contain all the major cannabinoids that give marijuana its medicinal properties, it helps to have huge buds to work with. I grow only six plants a year, but I have medicine year round. I am good at rationing myself, so I don’t overindulge. After all, it’s good medicine!
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