Lost Decades

 

CNN has a story about a mother who wishes to treat her son's leukemia with medical marijuana. She believes the cancer went into remission by the treatment using a combination of chemo and marijuana, and she wants to continue maintenance now with only the pot.

The medical establishment is aghast, and threatens some sort of official action.

3-year-old is focus of medical marijuana battle
By Saundra Young, CNN
updated 9:49 AM EST, Wed January 15, 2014

(CNN) -- He's only 3 years old, but Landon Riddle is already the focus of a medical marijuana fight in Colorado.

Landon has acute lymphocytic leukemia, or ALL, a cancer of the blood and bone marrow. It's the most common cancer in children.

His mother says his condition has improved so much following treatment with medical marijuana that chemotherapy isn't needed. But the Children's Hospital of Colorado, she says, disagreed.

[...]

...their research led them to the Stanley brothers in Colorado. The six brothers are one of that state's biggest cannabis growers and dispensary owners...

...But the Stanleys were also growing something quite revolutionary: a plant cross-bred to reduce the THC and increase another compound found in cannabis called cannabidiol, or CBD. Many researchers believe CBD is one of the compounds in marijuana that has medicinal benefits. According to the National Cancer Institute, it's thought to have significant analgesic, anti-inflammatory and anti-tumor activity without the psychoactive effect.

[...]

Six months later, encouraged by Landon's progress, she stopped his chemotherapy treatments completely.

"Once I took the chemo out, I see these amazing results. And no more need for blood transfusion and platelet transfusions," Riddle says. "I think that the chemo in combination with the cannabis did put him into remission and now the cannabis will keep him there."

I underlined what I thought was most important, the fact that a plant has medicinal properties - just like birch bark was the source of aspirin - and modern day medicine is not comfortable with it. But how could they be comfortable with it? For had not 99% of any possible research been obstructed by the wall erected by the United States Controlled Substances Act?

I repeat, the human body manufactures its own cannabinoids, chemicals related to the chemicals of Marijuana. If you want to research these alongside the THC of Cannabis, get ready for a nightmare of DEA bureaucratic paperwork and questioning.

We mentioned a little while ago another case:
Pot For Tots
http://fatherdaughtertalk.blogspot.com/2013/07/pot-for-tots.html

...While New Jersey is one of at least 18 states to authorize medical marijuana use, its rules make it almost impossible for Vivian's mother, Meghan Wilson, 34, of Scotch Plains, to get the type of cannabis medicine that may help her daughter's epilepsy.

"It's beyond frustrating," Wilson, a consultant who runs clinical trials for drugmakers, said by telephone. Vivian gets seizures from a form of epilepsy called Dravet syndrome, she said. In Colorado and California, where it's easier to treat youngsters with pot, afflicted children have improved after receiving cannabis, and some are almost symptom-free, she said...

We have lost a half century of research because we put up incredible obstacles to legitimate research when we  placed Marijuana on Schedule I as a Hallucinogenic or Psychedelic Substance with the Administrative Controlled Substances Code Number of  7360.

The idiocy is manifest. There was no meaningful research done to justify the placement on Schedule I. Everything was based on scraps of science, imagination, stereotypes, fears, and propaganda.

Was this an evil thing to do? Was this another view into the Banality of Evil? The accounting for and classifying all the drugs, putting everything into a nice, neat order in order to run our wasteful and ill-considered war on drugs?

From the viewpoint of the sick who could have been helped by such research, it was an unmitigated catastrophe.

A society which patterns its Morality after the dictates of Propaganda is doomed to see all its idols smashed in an awful twilight.

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