THE TRUTH ABOUT MARIJUANA - PART THREE: THE PSYCHOLOGY OF CREATING A VICTIM

NH soon to become the 19th state to legalize medical marijuana use with Governor Hassan's public statement she now approves of the changes to HB 573.

Let us pause to pray.

I am not one to pray, but I do so for two reasons. 1) there are those in NH who desperately benefit from this new law.  2) The new law, although desperately needed, is a farce.

Still, the governor's decision is leap-years ahead of former governor Lynch's attitude towards cannabis. But that's like saying, "the earth is flat, but it has mountains and valleys, so we the state of NH recognize there are now mountains and valleys and the earth is simply flat.

Omitted from HB 573 is the option for patients to grow there own; legal protection for possession for at least 19 months until the state has established 4 dispensaries, and inclusion of individuals suffering PTSD and other debilitating symptoms that respond well to cannabis therapy/medication use.

Many of the patients in need may not be around 19 months from now, and many of those excluded will not have an opportunity to experience life as a freedom.

However I can't fault governor Hassan completely as I've read the state laws in neighboring New England states and they are at best daunting to understand. The most notable fault with the laws are the exclusion of psychiatrists and psychologists. In the majority of cases, a patient must have been a patient of an MD for a period of a year, of which in general patients see a psychiatrist for far less than a year, and psychologists don't appear to factor into a medical decision.

MD's or Physician's assistants are not well versed on psychological needs of a patient, and that appears to be intentional in most states with regards to medical marijuana laws. MD's also have a general stricter sense of medicine and are more likely to prescribe a pharmaceutical, meaning a pill, rather than a plant, whatever it's called. Granted, rumor has it that in states like CA there are plenty of MD's willing to "prescribe" marijuana to patients for everything from a sprained finger to cancer. However the truth is, most MD's take their job seriously, and if they prescribe cannabis it's from a medical standpoint that it benefits the patient, not that is provides what in street-terms is "a fix".

Expecting my doctor for example to approve medical cannabis for approved use is like expecting him to approve green tea or apple juice to prevent illness. Doctors these days simply don't deal well with alternative medicines or, aside from general terms, nutrition, they deal with diagnostics and pharmaceutical drugs.

Case in point... for PTSD I took Prozac for over a year, but the side effects were worst than the benefits , so I attempted to wean myself off from the Prozac per my doctors recommendations. Unfortunately I had become addicted, and I was unable to wean myself off from the Prozac without disturbing withdrawal symptoms that were quite uncomfortable, similar to sand-paper/head-rushes rubbing against my brain that left me reeling.

I read where a plant called kanna acted naturally as an SSRI, asked my doctor if I could try it and he said sure. He didn't know anything about it, which isn't unexpected, didn't document my use of kanna to relieve the withdrawal symptoms - it was a plant, and doctors don't as a whole concern themselves with plants, they prescribe pills. As a side-note, he had nothing in the way of a pill to alleviate my withdrawal symptoms. If the kanna didn't work, I was basically screwed. But it did work. It proved to be my way out of my addiction to Prozac which he also didn't document.

Essentially, he was powerless from a pharmaceutical point of view to alleviate my dependence on Prozac, and was simply happy to hear when I told him that the kanna worked. Over the next couple of moths I weaned myself off daily use of the kanna.

If kanna had been illegal, or required state approval he would not have approved. Simply because physicians today are not educated in herbal medicines. Had a psychiatrist or or psychologist considered my problem, they would most likely have approved of it, haven't met one yet opposed to cannabis or other medicinal plants.

For the patient it creates a dilemma... one called lying to your doctor.

The vast majority of people I have known would never admit to their doctor they used illegal drugs. They would be more likely to admit it to their therapist. Considering the medical profession, when a patient feels the need to lie a victim is created.

I drink a lot of beer... well, not a lot, but a lot... the amount I admit I drink is different if I'm talking to my MD compared to my therapist. Considering I have PTSD, anxiety, and other past experiences that affect me my therapist feels cannabis would be better for me than alcohol. My MD believes cannabis is out of the question, and that a pill to curb my alcohol dependence is preferable. I feel more comfortable with cannabis, as I know from experience it lacks serious side effects and it was effective for 35 years, when I didn't drink more than a beer or two a day. And pills scare me. Pot doesn't.

While using cannabis daily for 35 years I thrived... I was very social, earned three degrees and my gpa increased. I excelled at whatever job I had. For the past 8 years, cannabis free, it's been all down-hill. During those 8 years I tried Prozac... I tried Stratera, and other drugs prescribed by MD's. All were a disaster.

Cannabis works for me, but it's against the law, and in many of the now 19 states legalizing cannabis for medical use I would not be eligible. The primary reason is my MD would prefer to try me on another pharmaceutical. Against my wishes. But they don't prescribe plants, nor recognize them as medicine.

So as much as I'm happy to see NH become the 19th state to legalize medical "marijuana", I'm extremely disappointed.

What the state of NH and other states fails to recognize is the rights of the individual to use plants as they prefer. I don't mean derivatives or synthetics as in heroin, meth or crack; I mean as in an herbal alternative of which cannabis is a definite example.

No one dies from cannabis use, moderation is easy to somewhat difficult depending on the individual, but compared to alcohol, tobacco, and pharmaceutics it's a slam dunk... cannabis is more like coffee... some drink a cup a day where others drink several, but at the end of the day, the worst one experiences is the jitters.

In my next post... creating a criminal... or should I say "growing one"?

THE TRUTH ABOUT MARIJUANA - PART TWO: WHAT'S IN A NAME?

I don't know if anyone else has noticed but there's been a heck of a lot in the news about marijuana... and I'd say lately, however the truth is, since the early 1970's marijuana has been news a lot, but lately it's been in the news even more. Maybe it's the fact that 18 states have legalized medical use of marijuana, and two have legalized recreational use. Many more have reduced penalties for possession to equal that of a traffic ticket. Still, with all that's in the news, somehow it all seems just as strange as it was hearing about it in the early 1970's.

Maybe it's the word - marijuana?

That word used to conjure up thoughts about demons and I heard once it was a term from Arabic meaning mad assassin. That Muslim warriors would use marijuana prior to battle - to promote a mad and insane thirst for killing. It's not true of course. Maybe it's true to the extent that after a battle troops would use marijuana to mellow out and unwind... supported ironically from the fact that marijuana is used today to treat PTSD (post traumatic stress disorder), reference link from the Mayo Clinic.

The truth is, marijuana is not the sort of substance any military would recommend prior to battle. Too many sources reference it as a euphoric, and source of peace and empathy towards other people. Hardly the thing the military would prescribe prior to sending troops into battle. It is true that during the Viet Nam war marijuana was used extensively. One over-riding reason was it grew there naturally. Another was that the war was a first of it's kind; protested at home in the US, pushed by the federal government, fanned into flames by a national draft, young people fleeing to Canada to avoid the draft, stories straight out of Hades describing hellish battles, eradication of whole villages,  brutal deaths by murder, napalm and bombings of civilians including many women and children. Not to forget the heinous deaths of soldiers by villagers carrying grenades as gifts, land-mines and spiked bamboo traps that sprang out of the jungles, the air saturated with Agent orange that was intended to destroy all vegetation and trees, that as a consequence now accounts for a myriad of health problems for both Vietnam veterans as well as Vietnamese citizens.

Is it any wonder that marijuana was used widely during that war, to calm the soldiers between battles, and in fact provided the slang-term, shot-gunning of the herb, literally from soldiers loading up a shotgun with marijuana and blowing through the receiver end to force out the smoke that a soldier(s) would then inhale.

Watch more on this YouTube video:

 

Today we know that PTSD can result from any number of extreme stress related events. Today it's pretty well accepted that marijuana has beneficial effects for those suffering from the syndrome. What's not made clear is that this is a plant, not a drug that provides the relief for the symptoms of PTSD.

Recent news indicates Big pharma, those infamous for making pills out of discoveries in nature have finally documented scientific proof of the ameliorative benefits of THC, found in marijuana. FOX News Link: THC and PTSD 

Oregon recently added PTSD to it's medical marijuana laws, along with many other states. NH is currently close to passing a medical marijuana law, however the new governor, Maggie Hassan, convinced the Senate she would not sign the bill if it included treatment for PTSD. The bill is back in the House which has rejected many of the Senates exclusions to satisfy Gov. Maggie Hassan who, it should be noted, is in favor of medical marijuana, however, apparently, here in the Live Free or die state she has extreme views on just who should be eligible for use of cannabis as medicine and even if passage of a bill were to happen, she insists that those who would benefit from marijuana will have to wait at least three years until the state opens it's three clinics to patients. 

Recipients would, under the current bill, be required to report to those facilities to use the marijuana plant. Given the fact she stripped out PTSD and depression as valid medical uses, she made it clear only critically ill cancer patients would be eligible, and those patients must drive to a clinic in one of three places, to use the drug - ludicrous, yes!. Further she has refused to allow home growing of the plant, nor provide legal exemption during the 3-4 years it will take the state to establish the three clinics.

For a country that encourages the use of impersonal drones to kill terrorists and civilians alike, this doesn't surprise me. For a country whose federal government still insists that marijuana is lacking of any medicinal uses, and regularly conducts raids on state licensed medical health centers this also doesn't surprise me.What does surprise me is at the heart of the war against marijuana is a President that used marijuana extensively, in Hawaii, and was known as a guru of weed. A President making himself famous brewing his own beer, who has yet to make a statement regarding recreational legality of it's use in WA and CO.

The DEA, it should be noted recently refused a law-suit aimed at reclassifying marijuana from it current Schedule One status. The grounds for this refusal is that there is zero research indicating that marijuana has any health benefits. It cites it's source as the NIH - National institute of Health, tax-payer funded. What it fails to admit is that the federal law prohibits research by a federal entity into the benefits of any drug listed as Schedule One. Only research into negative effects are approved. Of those negative effects somehow the NIH managed to secure patent # 6630507 - a link available HERE.

Quite a conflict of interest given tax-payers pay the federal government to only research the debilitating effects of marijuana. How the hell did they squeak through a patent that attests to medicinal value of marijuana and yet refuse to admit it has medicinal value?

Smoke and Mirrors...

Maybe the reason is all in a name?

Word Origin & History

Marijuana

1918, alt. by influence of Sp. proper name Maria Juana "Mary Jane" from mariguan (1894), from Mex.Sp. marihuana, of uncertain origin."Marijuana ... makes you sensitive. Courtesy has a great deal to do with being sensitive. Unfortunately marijuana makes you the kind of sensitive where you insist on everyone listening to the drum solo in Iron Butterfly's 'In-a-Gadda-Da-Vida' fifty or sixty times." [P.J. O'Rourke, "Modern Manners," 1983]

World English Dictionary
marijuana or marihuana  (ˌmærɪˈhwɑːnə) [Click for IPA pronunciation  guide]
 — n
1.     See also cannabis the dried leaves and flowers of the hemp plant, used for its euphoric effects, esp in the form of cigarettes
2.     another name for hemp [C19: from Mexican Spanish]

Marihuana or marihuana
 — n
 mariguan (1894) or marihuana or marihuana

***

The first truth about cannabis (marijuana) is that the common, modern day use of the term marijuana is that it is actually a politically incorrect term in the US to describe the cannabis plant, quite racially prejudiced. Prior to the 1930's most Americans called it hemp or ganja. The moniker, marijuana, it's actual origin is unknown, however it is best based upon a Mexican-Spanish term of endearment, referring to, Maria Juana, or better known to us as Mary Jane. Other spellings of this term are marihuana (used in legal proceedings since 1937) and mariguan (1894). In medicine until the 1940's physicians referred to it as cannabis, of which the two most common species are sativa and indica.

It was and is the same plant called hemp, a fiber used until the 1940's in sailing ships, fabrics, paper and in fact the original US Constitution is printed on hemp paper. The hemp used in paper generally contains very little of the popular psychotropic chemical called THC (tetrahydrocannabinol) that people smoke or eat to get what's called high, or stoned, or with uses in medicine..Use of the term marijuana or what is used for formal legal purposes, marihuana, and to describe the Americanized use of the term for the cannabis plant can be traced back roughly to the 1930's; though not much further. 

When so-called yellow-journalists used it in the media of the time to sow fear and terror into the minds of White Americans. Fear and terror? Historically the use of the term was first used in the 1930's to bring awareness in the form of journalistic terrorism towards illegal immigrants from Mexico and Black Americans, of the latter, especially Black jazz musicians.

However, of the latter, ever since President Lincoln's Emancipation Proclamation that freed Blacks, there had been a backlash by certain then modernistic White anti-abolitionists to demean Black Americans and sow seeds of mistrust and discrimination. With regards to Mexican immigrants, the country was deep into the Great Depression and jobs were scarce, so any competition from new immigrants, legal or otherwise was a threat, especially in the southern states. The US Congress passed the prohibition of cannabis in 1937 knowing so little about the truth; they morphed the spelling of the act, calling it the Marihuana tax Act.

To this day, legal decrees still use the term marihuana. The history behind this is simple. Prior to the Marihuana Tax Act of 1937, cannabis, which is it's scientific name, was called ganja here in America. But to distract the American public from the docile use of ganja into something far more terrible, ganja became marijuana. The destroyer of youth. And often you'll hear reference that marijuana cannot be legalized for adult use due to the danger inherit in youth. With such logic how can alcohol and tobacco be legal?

It's all in the name.

It appears obvious however that despite the link to yellow journalistic use of the term as harmful to youth and as the racial slur encompassed in the use of the term marijuana, that the term has now been Americanized. As much as I find the word offensive, NORML wouldn't be NORML if they had to change their name to NORCL. And the federal government would sound a lot less powerful if marijuana raids were called cannabis raids.

All in a name.

Yet the truth is... calling cannabis: marijuana, which the US doesn't have an original license for, being as it's of Spanish-Mexican origin, of which we don't accept, it is like enabling passage of the Civil Rights Act of 1960 as long as Black people can still be referred to as Negros.

Considering that more than 75% of casual marijuana arrests involve Black citizens, maybe this is not so far fetched. Especially since Black Americans are equally likely to use cannabis as so called White Americans.

Words are everything in our society. Overtime, maybe I will get used to cannabis being called marijuana, but I rather doubt it. Cannabis is a medicinal herb, like camomile, St. John's wort, Ginseng. Marijuana is, and will always be slang for a dangerous, prejudicial drug originating in the 1930's. As long as we refer to cannabis as marijuana, we will be talking in riddles. 

Time to Stop the Hurt!

Message to Congress and the White House - Legalize it already!!!

You might also find humor and laughter in this recent spinoff link from a YouTube video of Alice's restaurant - bear in mind that my conviction for having a pipe marijuana was smoked in, not necessarily by me, would put me in this same group of "father fuc*ers"!:

Arlo Guthrie 

Or Here for the Original 1967 Song:

 

Then again, you might just find this sobering, "The ballad of Lucy Jordan", by Marianne Faithful... as many of us will never find peace, freedom or a good life, especially in the USA or in a state like NH - Live Free or Die. Speed Kills it's true, Marijuana Doesn't!:

 

The truth about marijuana is... 

EGGS ARE GOOD

And everybody should get stoned... at least once; President's Clinton, Bush and Obama did:

Bob Dylan

George

Where's the catnip???

THE TRUTH ABOUT MARIJUANA - PART ONE: REEFER MADNESS, BOGEYMEN AND COMMIES

Obviously there are readers of my blog here for the first time. So some background about me.

My father was an atheist. My mother devout Protestant. I was raised middle-class, with rules. I was told what to do, and learned to trust in authority. I didn't do well in school and was bullied.

I was born in 1954. Milk was delivered at your door in a milk-box, with the cream on top. There were no micro-wave ovens, answering machine, cell-phones, fuel-injected cars... there weren't color television sets, and even a B&W television was expensive. Radios used vacuum tubes, and it wasn't until I was around 10 that transistors became common, as in transistor radios. Much of the land hadn't yet been turned into suburban sprawl, though the cold war was in full swing, only I wasn't really aware of it. 

I read a lot of science fiction and mystery novels, loved electronics, chemistry and hated sports.

DARE wasn't even a dream yet, but Reefer Madness was alive and well... there were three things I was taught to fear... commies, bogeymen and marijuana.

I kid you not! Oh, and the feds raiding your house if you were having a family poker game; again, I kid you not!

But they were good days in a sense as as a young person i was able to ride my bike wherever and roam the woods and fields wherever. There was no such thing as organized events or sporting events. The only thing close was band and going to church every Sunday, which my father never had to. Which got me wondering...

But I think it was fear of marijuana that was most instilled in my head. Here at my grandparents house, c1956:

...I can remember sitting with my family and being afraid of two things: having the feds raid the house if we were playing poker, and marijuana maniacs. One story involved a second cousin who lived a block away. Johnny was a marijuana user... and we knew that he fell out of the second story window of his house while using LSD, which he obviously used because he was also a marijuana user. He almost died, but survived to become a successful Fuller Brush salesman.

God, did I fear for my cousin Johnny. The Reefer addict.

At 14 I started smoking tobacco. At 15 I almost died drinking too much alcohol. That same year I discovered my sister was using marijuana and almost called the police on her, and I don't know why I didn't. But I didn't. At 16 our family vacationed in Florida and while at a beach party at Sarasota while drinking beer a joint was passed around the campfire... I actually smoked from it. And nothing happened.

I was too young for Woodstock, but old enough to go to Watkin's Glen. What? Never heard about the second coming of the rock concert at Watkin's Glen?

It was really a disaster for me, despite semi-trucks loaded with everything from marijuana, to LSD and magic mushrooms, I was only missing the beer we brought with us that was stolen outside out tent - where we were stupid enough to leave it. Plus we didn't think to bring any money, where a hotdog costs $4.

The "Truth about Marijuana" was I had no ideal about the truth by the time I was 19 years old. But I was soon to find out the truth.

I was in my latter half of my first year at college when I was with two childhood best friends. I remember vividly being in my friends tree-house that was built when we were just kids. My one friend asked us if we wanted to try some Panama Red? "Panama what", I asked?

"Marijuana", my best friend said.

I had to take a step back as by that time I was a lost cause - after many years of being bullied, having had sex once with a woman at a state park and my own girlfriend unwilling to even french-kiss, I had plans to become a serial killer. I hated people, had no interest in wildlife, had no interest in a career.

My first response was to scream "marijuana"... as if I was screaming "murder". But I didn't.

I looked at my other friend who rather looked as pale as I probably looked, and I said "sure, why not"?

Now keep in mind that the first time I went camping with my friends at 16 in the woods behind a Jamesway, to drink beer, I took off all my clothes I got so intoxicated. Stupid and not a pretty picture to be sure. So here we are, now I'm 19, and I just said yes to using the most dreaded drug on the planet. What was I thinking???

I told you what I was thinking... we smoked a joint and...

I walked down from the tree-house and embraced the tree. The world opened to me that day... I visualized myself. We laughed, and I should say, I'd never laughed like I did that day before in my life. They say, "laughter is good medicine", well if that's true then why is cannabis prohibited?

The first truth about marijuana is... Prohibition is a lie! It's without merit and I learned I was raised believing in a farce that has no basis in reality.

So why is marijuana illegal?

Good question!

NEW HAMPSHIRE 2013 - HB 573 - MEDICAL CANNABIS ACT - WHEN GOVENORS RUIN A GOOD THING AND CAUSE HARM TO SOCIETY

Updated May 26, 2013, 10:15 AM

HB 573 in New Hampshire would legalize the use of cannabis for medicinal use.

The New Hampshire House (which represents the people of NH) has, for the past four years, proposed a bill to legalize medicinal cannabis 3 out of the 4 years with an overwhelming majority of votes.

Under our former governor, John Lynch, this was an impossible act to pass through the Senate, let alone through the governor, as John Lynch felt that cannabis, aka marijuana, was nothing other than a dangerous, addictive drug, in much the same way as does the federal government which lists it as a Schedule One drug (narcotic) with zero medicinal value and an extremely high propensity for addiction.

To John Lynch, life in the "Live Free or Die" state meant life living in a family oriented amusement park with nothing that realistically related to the realities of the human condition. The fact that life involves people of all ages with different life situations and conditions meant nothing to him. He looked upon adults as children, life in NH as a child's amusement park and there were no adults present, just the state to mandate laws oriented towards children, with the insight being, adults other than government were not present. The day he left was the day I let out a huge sigh of relief. and voted for Maggie Hassan.

I voted for our new governor Maggie Hassan as I believed she was more open-minded, better educated and had the will of the people of New Hampshire in mind, and that she did not think of adults in our state simply as children. It appears, much as I wish it were not true, that I was deceived and sorely wrong.

The good news is that the NH Senate approved HB 573. The bad news is that it was severly gutted before passage - much of the slashing due to governor Maggie Hassan.

Normally i would post a link to the actual bill, but under the circumstances I am convinced the Senate bill as it has been rewritten is hardly suitable for consideration.  It's like telling a kid you can eat popcorn, but without the corn.

Passage of HB 573 would legalize use of cannabis for those with medical need - and establish state run facilities to grow the cannabis for distribution. This could take 2 - 5 years.

In the meantime, although passage of the bill would legalize medical cannabis, the bill was stripped of protections for those who qualify as per legal exclusion until such time as the facilities are in operation. What this means is if one qualified legally, possession or use of cannabis until such time as the facilities are operational would mean the user is a criminal and subject to prosecution under current state laws prohibiting cannabis use.

Second: NH is a state without much in the way of public transportation. We are a commuter state. Stripped from the bill is the authority of those with a medical need to grow their own. The governor felt it would be a burden to law enforcement should the grow your own option be included, as law enforcement would be forced to make determinations of legality should they find someone growing cannabis.  Since most such encounters involve law enforcement drawing their weapons under the assumption that cannabis users are equivalent to terrorists, murderers and rapists, it was felt that the grow your own option was too much for law enforcement to adapt to.

Third: Written permission needed to be required for a patient using medical cannabis - meaning that cannabis use is so dangerous per se, that a patient would need to provide land-lord or property owner permission of such use before the patient could be approved. Essentially, this equates to if you're gay, you can be gay if your land-lord or property owner approves.

Fourth: PTSD is not a valid condition for use of cannabis. You will want to read the following article first, but suffice to say that cannabis is very effective in treating symptoms of PTSD, for which alternative pharmaceuticals are extremely strong and potentially very addictive. Stripping the bill of the treatment for PTSD is like saying you can simply drink yourself to death or subject yourself to extremely powerful pharmaceuticals instead. CANNABIS AND PTSD

And finally... oddly enough the senate bill is written to require patients to sit in the pharmacy, sorry, cannabis facility, to use the medicine rather than provide for legal use at home.Yes, you heard me correctly. Under Gov. Hassan's guidance she felt it was irresponsible to allow patients the right to use cannabis at home. Even with written permission of the landlord or home-owner. No other medicine requires a patient to use it while at the pharmacy, but Gov. Hassan felt cannabis is the exception. Well, maybe not the only exception as those addicted to heroin often must inject methadone at the methadone clinic.

However, seriously, does she actually believe that cannabis is equivalent to heroin addiction? Where cannabis is medicine for many people, methadone is prescribed exclusively for heroin addiction and withdrawal. There is absolutely no comparison, yet that is how Governor Hassan views a prescription for cannabis. Under her mindset, we should require alcoholics to drink booze at the liquor store.

You can read about the SENATE BILL HERE.

All told, considering the empathy and understanding in all the other New England states, the current NH bill to legalize cannabis for medical use is a farce. I wish really I didn't have to say that, but it's the truth. The Live Free or Die state is encouraging death. And a torturous one at that.

Of course, should one wish to consider the position of the NH Medical Society, which suggests they've advocated for the betterment of medicine since 1791, one would be aghast at the possibility that a natural plant like cannabis be legalized for medicinal use given all they claim are dangerous about it, and how modern pharmaceuticals are far better for use by humans, drugs such as marinol, and other synthetics. I hate to suggest they are playing god, but they are, as natural plants, although subject to pollutants introduced by us humans render much of what we eat today dangerous, nonetheless, I'd suggest, if there is a natural alternative to pharmaceutics, that is far better than a pill. Still, to provide for open, honest discussion about the subject, refer to this document, submitted by the NH Medical Society, as to why a pill is better than the plant God provided us.

For myself, yet another misplaced vote for an elected official who simply just doesn't have what it takes to see reality, NH Medical Society aside as I believe they are wrong, and centuries of safe use of cannabis by humans is my proof. That official and the NH Society are welcome to comment on my blog to put forth their point of view and rebuttals. I doubt they will, but surprise me.Fact is, the natural plant provides a balanced God provided therapy that no pill can equally provide. Consider coffee as a basic example... it provides caffeine, which is available in pill form. But who the hell would give up their coffee for a pill???

Live Free if you can, but sadly, most of us must die first... and love NH, if you can believe in a lie, which I do not.

Stop The Hurt!