Hypocrisy – Cannabis has ‘No Medicinal Value,’ but Big Pharma can Sell It with Approval
The Mexican slang term ‘marijuana’ lulled the American Medical Association’s Washington, DC representative Dr. William Woodward into complacency until passage of the Marijuana Tax Act had occurred in 1937. He had no idea that the proposed legislation using the name marijuana was cannabis or hemp, which had been prescribed by AMA doctors and dispensed from pharmacies until this act was passed.
Dr. Woodward complained too late that the bill was passed covertly without his input. The road to this tax act, which was the beginning of the end for all hemp products, was highlighted by the 1936 movie “Reefer Madness.” This road to suppressing hemp/cannabis was built and occupied by large industrial interests threatened by a burgeoning hemp industry with government insider cooperation.
At the beginning of WWII, the government encouraged farmers to grow industrial hemp for the war effort. After the war, hemp of all kinds was once again forbidden in the USA.
Examples of Medical Marijuana Hypocrisy
Now, we are fortunately seeing a gradual state by state and even Washington DC easing of marijuana restrictions, especially for medical use. This is largely due to the wave of marijuana’s medical merits proven by international researchers and anecdotal miraculous treatments for cancer and other chronic ailments without adverse side effects.
Still, the U.S. Justice Department’s Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) has cannabis in the worst of all possible ratings – Schedule I. This means cannabis is equivalent to heroine and worse than cocaine or methamphetamine (II): Dangerous, addictive, and without medical merit.
The federal government has sponsored negative propaganda about marijuana while allowing booze to be the national drug of choice for decades. A large part of our prison population involves non-violent recreational and medical users, despite new findings with independent research that demonstrated cannabis isa powerful medical tool, even for (especially for) cancer.
In 1974, the DEA decided on a study to prove marijuana kills brain cells as more “proof” for their anti-pot propaganda and cause for incarceration. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) funded the Virginia Medical College to study the effects on brain cells with an animal study. As the study progressed, what was leaked was not what the DEA wanted.
The medical researchers were discovering that the cells being destroyed from marijuana were brain cancer cells. So the DEA had the NIH cancel funding. Even worse, they had the research documents destroyed. Soon after, President Gerald Ford declared that only pharmaceutical companies could research cannabis.
Here are 4 studies proving marijuana treats brain cancer.
Of course, Big Pharma researches natural items for only one reason: to find out how to create synthetic versions, patent them, and market them with FDA approval for big profits whether they are actually effective and safe or not.
Marinol, which is synthetic THC – marijuana’s psychotropic compound of ignorant concern – was approved in 1985 to help people accept chemotherapy without as much pain or discomfort. It was also approved in 1992 for AIDS patients. The FDA reported four deaths from synthetic Marinol, while raw cannabis’s death toll remains at zero.
In 2003, a patent was approved for a class of drugs that are synthetic versions of some of the cannabinoids other than THC. These cannabinoids were selected from cannabis because of their proven ability to handle epilepsy, Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and other neurological disorders that Big Pharma has yet been able to handle.
The DEA still says hemp/cannabis/marijuana has no medical merit as a plant, but Big Pharma creates cannabis compounds synthetically to patent and sell for medicinal purposes with FDA approval. Blatant hypocrisy.
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