Less Cancer In Colorado Now ?

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As the residents of both Colorado and Washington woke Wednesday anxiously seeking the results of the previous evening's elections, many were surprised to find both states voted to decriminalize the limited adult possession and private usage of marijuana.

In Colorado, Amendment 64 passed by a 53.3% to 46.7% margin, after 1,863,535 people cast their votes to weigh in on the measure. It will also allow adults to grow up to six plants at their homes for private use. In Washington state, ballot initiative 502 also passed, by almost a 10 point margin. Washington's residents, however, did not agree to allow individuals the opportunity to grow their own plants at their private residences. Nonetheless, individuals in both states who own valid state identification cards and are over the age of 21 will now have the opportunity to visit regulated and taxed places of business and purchase “pot” off the shelf like purchasing an alcohol or tobacco product from any participating outlet.

In Massachusetts, more than 60% voted in favor of a measure eliminating state criminal and civil penalties for marijuana use by medical patients who have been diagnosed with a "debilitating medical condition.” Similar provisions in three Michigan cities, Detroit, Flint and Grand Rapids, voted to either remove the penalty for possession of up to one ounce of cannabis or reduce the crime to a minor civil offense.

To the advocates of marijuana decriminalization, adults age 21 and older now being free to possess and use marijuana as they so choose, much like alcohol has been since the 1930s, couldn't be a more gratifying and relieving reality. To its opponents, however, marijuana now being legal in many locations around the country represents a horrifying reality that, also since the 1930s, has been sold to the public as an evil, mind altering substance seen as being only used by freaks and losers and is destined to eventually wreak havoc on society.... Despite all the evidence pointing to cannabis being far less harmful than alcohol and cigarettes.

What is it then that has users and naysayers at such odds about marijuana? Why have governments around the world classified marijuana as a dangerous and harmful substance and why have many in the public, for so long, been such strong opponents of marijuana, until fairly recently?

Up until marijuana Prohibition in 1937, cannabis had been used in various forms by, not only the general population, almost every Western medical doctor in the country and abroad. Since as far back as the mid-1800s British medical journals published hundreds of articles on the therapeutic use and the medicinal properties of the marijuana plant, at the time called “cannabis Indica” or “Indian hemp.” Cannabis was often prescribed by doctors and was part of every medical bag, right through the turn of the 20th century. It was a popular treatment for labor pains, asthma, rheumatism, nervous disorders and more. It was even an effective treatment for babies suffering with colic, helping to alleviate chronic crying and allowing infants easier sleep.

In recent years, the medicinal properties of cannabis have proven to be anti-inflammatory, antispasmodic and has antiseptic properties. It has been shown to treat depression, PTSD, chronic pain, glaucoma, migraines, multiple sclerosis, Tourette syndrome, nausea, and much more. Most of all, these ailments have proven to be temporarily and, in many cases, permanently cured by the hemp plant, without the harmful side effects associated with typical pharmaceutical medications.

Interestingly, many researchers believe historical evidence shows that the "holy anointing oil" used by Old Testament Hebrews contained cannabis extract. The early Christians were believed by many to have used cannabis oils as part of their baptismal practices. Historians will attest to the fact that Queen Victoria was also known to have been a common marijuana user and found that marijuana use was the only remedy that would help curtail the discomfort from painful menstrual cramps.

Unfortunately, shortly after the turn of the 20th century, marijuana's glory days began to end with the advent of chemically created drugs and the emergence of a profit-driven, assembly-line style medical system. Even though cannabis, for centuries, had been preferred by the vast majority of doctors and their patients, the New World Order didn't want competition and set out to push their new “miracle drugs,” mainly consisting of toxic, chemical substances. They were, however, substances that could be highly regulated and patented by corporations who then had monopolies over their distribution and use.

After lobbying by the pharmaceutical industry and fear mongering misinformation by their donation dependent allies in Congress, a federal law was passed in 1937 that prohibited doctors from prescribing pot, under any circumstances and under threat of prosecution, even though the new law was strongly opposed at the time by the American Medical Association. As a result, all cannabis related products were removed from the pharmacopeia and the national formulary by 1942.

Ironically, soon thereafter alcohol was re-legalized and, rather than go out of business, the massive bureaucracy of prohibition turned its resources toward marijuana eradication. In order to continue forcing marijuana eradication on the public, the elites turn to Harry J. Anslinger, a known racist who was in every president's government from Roosevelt to Kennedy, who initially propagandized the country against marijuana by saying that most marijuana usage was done by blacks, Hispanics, Filipinos and entertainers. Also saying that their “Satanic music,” like jazz and swing, existed as a result of marijuana. He also stated that marijuana usage “caused white women to seek sexual relations with Negroes, entertainers and any others.”

Soon thereafter,

,

like the cult classic, “Reefer Madness,” and many other forms of anti-marijuana advertisement emerged, much like the television of today, and an unwitting and helpless public was eventually, totally inundated in a negative marijuana information campaign that made it much easier for the powers-that-be to subvert its use and chastise its advocates. As to be expected, the public of the time, completely dependent on movie newsreels, newspapers and radio broadcasts, were fully immersed in the belief that anything associated with marijuana was to be regarded as evil and labeled as a strict taboo.

Marijuana was eventually, falsely added to the Controlled Substances Act of 1970, mislabeling cannabis as a schedule 1 narcotic which made it a felony in the United States to manufacture, import, possess, use or distribute any form of marijuana or its cannabinoid derivatives. Schedule 1 controlled substances, according to US federal law, is any “drug or other substance that has a high potential for abuse, is a substance that has no currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, and has a lack of accepted safety for use of the drug or other substance under medical supervision.” None of which can be seen as reasonably applying to marijuana, its active ingredients or its users and today's commons usages.

Despite decades of positive and medicinal usage by doctors and the public from the mid-1800s until the mid-1930s, with no signs of any potential hazards as ever having been documented because of its use, lobbyists for powerful individuals were somehow able to coerce politicians into adding cannabis to the Controlled Substances Act. Obvious backlash ensued and opponents have been fighting its addition to the act since its inception but have, thus far, been unsuccessful, despite obvious flaws with the law and despite its widespread use after its resurgence in the 1960s. No evidence has ever supported cannabis as having been either dangerous or abusable and there had never been one single reported instance of an overdose as a result of its use.

Nonetheless, it wasn't long thereafter when Congress ironically enacted the war on drugs in 1973 with the creation of the Drug Enforcement Administration. Being as marijuana had made a full recovery from being labeled as an evil drug back in the 1930s, the new laws made it easy for drug enforcement officials to round up massive amounts of marijuana users around the country and give them heavy prison sentences because it was now seen by the justice system as a felonious criminal offense, punishable by many years in prison, even for first-time “offenders.” What ensued was an explosion in the growth of the private prison industry and by the mid-1980s prisons were bursting at the seams with nonviolent individuals. To this day prisons are packed with these so-called "criminals" whose only crime may have been getting caught possessing small amounts of marijuana, smoking a joint with their friends, even down to simply having a few seeds from the buds in their car's ashtray.

This 40-year, phony war on cannabis has lasted until just recently, as certain states around the country have voted to allow the usage of medical marijuana to resurface as an alternative to the toxic pharmacology pushed by the Western medical establishment. Even though in some states you can still go to prison for many years for simply possessing marijuana “contraband,” California was the first state to pass a medical marijuana law in 1996 and Colorado and Washington voters set a historical precedent Tuesday and voted to allow the open and legal use of cannabis by adults 21 and over, without the fear of being arrested for doing so.

Now that the usage of marijuana has started to become more and more prevalent and has begun to threaten overturning decades-old, tyrannical prohibition laws, Western scientists have been feverishly seeking ways to prove marijuana usage has negative effects on the lungs and body. Fortunately for freedom of choice and for the future development of many hemp-based products and medicines, countless studies have failed to find a link between cannabis smoke and cancer and have, in fact, shown that heavy marijuana smokers have fewer cancers than the general population and, surprisingly, even less than those who smoke nothing at all.

Over the past decade scores of medical marijuana shops have opened in California and other states across the country that also voted to allow medical marijuana to be sold. Everything from smokables, to edibles, to oils and creams are now available for sale to individuals that hold a medical marijuana license issued by a licensed physician. High-dose edible versions, however, have now made it easier for people to over medicate with more than the required dosage of THC, but even then they are never toxic or lethal and the symptoms always disappear within a few hours.

Many times individuals have taken far more than what they need to medicate from the effects of THC and never has anyone overdosed to the point of death. Studies show one person would have to smoke as much as 1500 pounds within a 15 minute period in order to overdose, an utter impossibility. People simply fall asleep, due to the effects of certain “cannabinoids” in hemp that cause a sedative effect, long before any possible overdose could occur.

In 2006, Dr. Donald Tashkin, a pulmonologist and medical professor who, at the time, had been studying marijuana research for over 30 years, conducted the largest marijuana study of its kind, testing over 1200 different people and determined that heavy marijuana smokers actually enjoyed fewer cancers than people who had never smoked anything in their lives.

Over the last 10 years, hordes of new studies have emerged showing the effects of using marijuana's various forms are actually proving to be far more positive than what people were once led to believe. These major studies are indicating that the chemicals in cannabis, in the lab and in animals, have a significant affect in fighting almost all major cancers. All tests are proving brain, breast, prostate, lung, thyroid, colon, skin, pituitary, melanoma, lymphoma and leukemia cancers, thus far, have all been shown to be either significantly reduced or halted and cured altogether thanks to either smoking, ingesting or from being treated with various compounds extracted from cannabis. This is happening because marijuana seems to be promoting the death of cells that have forgotten how to die, as well as forcing a crucial reduction in their blood supply, while amazingly leaving healthy cells untouched.

The reason this is possible is because of the fact that humans and other animals already possess some the very same compounds in their bodies that marijuana does. Endocannabinoids are present in what is known as the "Endocannabinoid System" (ECS). This system within our bodies influences multiple physiological processes. This intricate system modulates energy intake as well as nutrient transport, metabolism and storage. Endocannabinoids are a completely natural collection of compounds that are basically our body's own form of marijuana and are involved in most of our cells and structures. They control a variety of functions in the nervous system, the circulatory, reproductive and immune systems. Endocannabinoid messengers also help the cells communicate with one another. They also help protect the good cells, while killing the bad ones, like cancer cells.

In almost every animal, the nervous system is basically made of the same components, which includes large numbers of nerve cells carrying electrical signals. Wherever the cells meet these signals are passed to a receptor in the next cell by a chemical messenger called a “neurotransmitter.” Inside the brain there are different types of neurotransmitters, including commonly known forms such as dopamine and serotonin. All animals, from rodents, to fish, to elephants, to humans, have all inherited this basic structure. Because of the stark similarity between the chemical compounds in neurotransmitters and in marijuana, scientists decided to call them “Cannabinoids.” It just so happens that the active chemical compound in marijuana, THC, happens to be almost identical to the neurotransmitters in the body.

Scientists have since discovered that if you artificially block the endocannabinoids in animals they tend to grow tumors and also show signs of depression.

A few years ago some brilliant entrepreneurs came up with the idea of blocking the endocannabinoids in the human body to create a new diet drug. The theory being, if cannabis gives people the munchies, blocking the endocannabinoids would likely make people lose their appetites. The drug they developed, “Rimonabant,” did actually create appetite suppression by blocking the endocannabinoid receptors. Data from clinical trials, however, showed that Rimonabant users suffered depression, anxiety, insomnia and aggressive impulses at twice the rate of subjects given a placebo. In one study there were five suicides among Rimonabant users. Because, as they discovered, endocannabinoids are also mood regulators with the capacity to make us feel euphoric or, when blocked, depressed. Thankfully, Rimonabant was mercifully pulled from the market in 2008.

Additionally, researchers at the MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas reported that mice on Rimonabant developed potentially cancerous polyps at a far higher rate than controls. Confirming that endocannabinoids were, not only mood regulators but, tumor regulators as well. In 1998 Dr. Vincenzo Di Marzo said that endocannabinoids help us “relax, eat, sleep, forget and protect” (

). Making sure to point out that forgetting can often times be just as important as recalling memories.

Especially fascinating is that while significant numbers of endocannabinoids are not normally found in breast and prostate cells, the homes for the two leading forms of cancer, it appears that large quantities show up only after normal cells begin to progress toward a state of uncontrolled growth, when they forget how to die, in a desperate attempt to restrain the progress of the tumorous invaders.

The endocannabinoids already in our bodies did an efficient job for hundreds of thousands of years, working as tumor regulators, free radical scavengers and anti-inflammatory agents. But once we entered the industrial age, with all its pollutions and the chemical indoctrination of so many foods, endocannabinoids became overwhelmed and were no longer able to efficiently keep us healthy and free of toxins. Better public health has helped us live longer but, unfortunately, human beings became inundated with the free radicals our bodies produced naturally by simply being alive, along with an unprecedented avalanche of carcinogens and contaminants, including pharmaceutical drugs and all of the fake and toxic food products with so many harmful additives and preservatives that are being sold on almost every corner in the country.

Now, because of a lack of understanding and the ability to efficiently clean many of those toxins in the environment from our bodies and the masses amounts of pharmaceuticals that humans release as waste in urine and feces, extraordinary amounts of chemicals from shampoos, to cleaning chemicals, to pharmaceutical medications and many other extremely harmful chemicals are going down the drain and being flushed down America's toilets every day, much of which make it all the way back to water treatment facilities. Because of this, the fact that these chemicals are not yet able to be efficiently cleaned at water treatment facilities, many people are also getting chemical compounds they didn't even realize they were getting by simply drinking from typical tap water supplies. Do to the heavy overabundance of so many ADD and ADHD type medications that have flooded the market over the past few decades, these drugs are also showing up in higher and higher concentrations in America's water supplies.

Enter cannabis. When marijuana is consumed and broken down into a collection of cannabinoid molecules they seek out and bind with the endocannabinoid receptors already inside us. Together they give the body more ammunition against almost all of the diseases of modern times.

Despite all the difficulties, including government subversion and mainstream media propaganda, there is a group of doctors in the US and abroad who have been advancing the research on the medical use of cannabis with highly impressive and, sometimes, revolutionary discoveries. For instance, Dr. Jeffrey Hergenrather, MD, an addiction medicine specialist, stated that, “In a scholarly cancer review article, published in 2009, there were over 421 chemical compounds identified in the cannabis plant. Within this group of natural substances, there are more than 60 of those chemicals that have significant anti-tumor properties… At low enough doses to where they would be effective cancer treatments.”

Here, in this YouTube video, Dr. Jeffrey Hergenrather explains how cannabinoids, once broken down inside the body, effectively starves and kills cancer cells.

Seth Research Laboratories in California has also recently demonstrated that, in many tumors, cancer cells are killed by marijuana, while the other healthy cells are left untouched. The ability of cannabinoids to kill cancer cells while protecting healthy ones is particularly important, however, when talking about brain cancer, because of the so-called “blood-brain barrier.” This barrier allows the brain to be protected from outside influences that may hitch a ride on the bloodstream and cause havoc. What is exciting and unique about cannabinoids is that they can pass through the blood-brain barrier because of their slippery, fatty nature. Cannabinoids get right into the brain's cancer cells by moving easily through the cell's membranes, which are also composed of lipids, or fats. The evidence is piling up in mice infested laboratories that the endocannabinoid system, when stimulated by cannabinoids, has an anti-tumor effect and can instruct cancer cells to commit suicide when they are supposed to, naturally. Basically, as Dr. Jeffrey Hergenrather puts it, by introducing cannabinoids into the system, “all we're doing is stimulating a natural system that's already there.”

So, why then, if cannabis has found to be so effective as a medicine to prevent, treat, or even cure many cancers, has there not been more research done and why is it not being used by today's physicians as a common treatment for all the diseases it has shown to be effective in managing? On the contrary, however, almost every government around the world severely limits or restricts its use and in many countries cannabis suppliers and even users can still be put in jail for life and, in some countries, even executed.

Despite marijuana's proven health related benefits, the corporate media continues to push its usage as being associated with gangs and drug dealers and society's losers, rather than the growing numbers of educated researchers, scientists, doctors and physicians who have been discovering its benefits for decades. People who use marijuana routinely say that it's an effective stress reliever, pain reliever, an important societal tool for friendly camaraderie and can even change your way of thinking and can make people question why they should continue doing things that aren't making them happy.

Perhaps it is that the usage of marijuana can make you feel that the past and the future are not as important as the present and has the potential to alter the very nature of consciousness, opening up the mind to unpredictable possibilities. Perhaps this doesn't sit well with those who insist on remaining in control of society.

Recently, marijuana prohibition advocate Stephen Baldwin sat down to debate popular decriminalization advocate and Congressman, Dr. Ron Paul on Larry King live, where Paul talked about the more recent understanding and science behind decriminalization and the positive uses of marijuana's medicinal value. Mr. Baldwin, on the other hand, simply regurgitated all of the old, debunked prohibition-style propaganda and continued pushing negative marijuana falsehoods, not long after it came out that celebrated swimmer Michael Phelps admitted to having smoked marijuana just after gold-medal performances in the 2008 Summer Olympic games. Like Mr. Baldwin, despite the vast wealth of research that has been done since the mid-1800s and especially more recently, many prohibition advocates surprisingly still attempt to push the falsehood that marijuana is not a medicine or a safe social substance.

But could it be the real reason the powers-that-be do not want marijuana legalized is because it is a natural substance, like popular tea tree oils that have also been found to have many medicinal properties and cannot be patented for the purposes of corporate profit? Anyone with a green thumb can grow marijuana and therefore its production would be likely in the hands of the people and not the corporations that run a $200 billion a year cancer business.

In fact, it may not be a coincidence at all that pharmaceutical companies have been silently preparing for what could easily become a total revolution in the medicinal habits of the world's population.

One perfect example, GW pharmaceuticals, a company that specializes in the study and commercialization of cannabinoids, has already established a full cycle facility, in an undisclosed location in the South of England, where they oversee the cultivation of the plant, write down to the finished medical product. They are said to be growing up to 60,000 plants per year and once the marijuana is ready for processing, it undergoes the same exact treatment for extraction and refinement that is forbidden to most of the world's regular citizens. But for some reason, just because they call themselves a pharmaceutical company they get to do exactly what anyone else would be able to do if they were allowed to grow and process it for their own personal or public use, without punishment.

Amazingly, this six-greenhouse, six-strain facility, was originally approved in Canada for a cannabis-based Multiple Sclerosis medicine, Nabiximols, that is applied via an under the tongue spray, for the purposes of temporarily relieving spasms and pain associated with Multiple Sclerosis and cancer. It has since been approved for use in Spain, the Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Sweden and Austria.

It may also be surprising to some that here in the US, despite all the negative mainstream press regarding the medicinal use of marijuana and cannabinoids, there have been reports, such as

out of San Francisco, that talked about pharmaceutical research, companies already aware of the effective use of marijuana in treating aggressive cancers such as testicular and breast cancer, are doing to possibly prepare for their own pharmaceutical-based cannabis medicine production and sales.

The four major compounds that doctors and researchers are most interested in, with regard to cannabis, are THC or Tetrahydrocannabinol, CBD or Cannabidiol, THCV or Tetrahydrocannabivarin, and CBC or Cannabichromene. Interestingly, CBD, a non-psychoactive component in cannabis, gives the sedative effect of the “high” experienced with marijuana. Amongst its numerous functions, CBD has been shown to have anti-inflammatory properties and analgesic effects. It helps fight diabetes, bacterial infections, malignant tumors, acts as a nerve protectant and has well documented anti-psychotic and anxiety reducing effects. (Ironically, even as certain individuals within the government who are closely related with drug enforcement and policing agencies and individuals within mainstream media continue to act as if the exact opposite is the case.) THCV is found more prevalent in certain South African and Thai strains of marijuana and may eventually prove to be useful for type II diabetes and has been shown to have a protective, preventative effect against malignant tumors. CBC, although thus far the least researched compound, scientists believe may have a significant antidepressant effect, as well as the ability to reduce inflammation. CBC has also been shown to strongly prohibit tumor growth in leukemia and breast cancer.

Now that so many every day people, including physicians and researchers, are starting to catch on to the positive benefits of the use of marijuana and now that pharmaceutical corporations are starting to be forced to assume a lead role in the production and implementation of society's use of the “drug,” if they are to remain in control of its prohibition and eventual widespread use as a medicine, the DEA has been trying to modify its official position to allow pharmaceutical companies to market THC without appearing to contradict all the negative information on marijuana they've been propagating for the past 80 years. Even though government officials will embarrassingly continue to stand up in front of the public and pretend as if marijuana is still a dangerous substance that needs to be kept out of the hands of the general public, the DEA now recognizes the medical qualities of THC, but are now stunningly trying to shift the blame of the prohibition of marijuana to the possible damage caused by the smoke, even as they continue to allow tobacco-based cigarette companies to sell their cigarettes in every corner store in America.

So why is it that marijuana has remained illegal for personal use all this time? Countless politicians and law enforcement officials have routinely stated that decriminalization would take marijuana out of the hands of black market criminals and would basically render the common plant worthless, except for the end-user. Why is it that the United States Justice Department continues to threaten growers and users of such a beneficial plant with prosecution if they are caught with even the smallest amounts of the substance? Tons of black market and potentially unsafe marijuana product pours across the border of Mexico into the United States every year, endangering the lives of thousands of people when simple and safe decriminalization would solve a large portion of a border war and would aid in the reduction of a massively burdened United States justice and prison system.

Most decriminalization advocates will say that the next hurdle that needs to be overcome is to have Congress remove cannabis from the Controlled Substances Act because of how absurd it is that it was ever mentioned alongside actual narcotics, considering marijuana contains enormous medicinal value, isn't addictive, it doesn't have any significant withdrawal symptoms associated with it and it's never actually presented itself to be a menace to society, other than what officials and their propagandists have successfully sold the public on via falsehoods and lies that are becoming more and more difficult to continue believing, as more and more research and evidence continues to emerge.

The holy Grail for the pharmaceutical industry and the federal government, according to Dr. Hergenrather, is to “find the next billion-dollar drug… And the pharmaceutical industry knows that these drugs are going to be based on cannabinoids. They also already know that the medicinal qualities are there to cure all kinds of medical problems. I can also tell you, however, that the whole plant is uniquely effective and I have yet to find a person in my practice that prefers the pure prescription THC over the natural plant.”

It seems as though the anti-cancer qualities of marijuana appear to have been known by the US government, however, for almost 40 years. In a 1974 through 1975 medical College of Virginia study, led by Dr. Albert Munson, it was discovered that THC slowed the growth of three kinds of cancer… Lung, breast and virus-induced leukemia. But the Virginia study was quickly shut down and all cannabis-tumor research was subsequently abandoned. According to Dr. Donald Abrams, M.D., “all of the available cancer research that is been done over the past 40 years on marijuana safety and effectiveness has been reviewed by countless government appointed bodies, that are always presented with the same conclusions that marijuana is safe, effective and useful, but that information somehow always gets ignored.”

Even if it were as simple as prohibition somehow continuing to remain was merely a result of Congress not wanting to be viewed or labeled soft on drugs, although it's seemingly far more likely what is at play is something much more sinister, as more and more states continue to legalize the use of medical marijuana, especially now that multiple states have passed out-right legalization, there is likely to some day soon be a tipping point where the nation will finally be ready to completely change the law and allow people their God-given right to use cannabis openly and freely, as they so desire.

And if, in fact, the residents of Colorado and Washington do ultimately get to actually enjoy the free and legal use of the marijuana plant and its many wonderful medicinal properties, now that the voters have spoken, it may be the drastic rates in cancer reduction, likely to occur in those states, that ends up pushing widespread national legalization over the edge in the coming years.

It's really starting to seem like the real problem with that is, however, as it continues to become evident to more and more people who start to realize what the federal government, powerful lobbyists for medical-based companies and the pharmaceutical industry, and all the top corporate executives for all the cancer-based 501©(3)'s that rake in billions of dollars every year, may have known for quite some time is, “there's no money in the cure!”

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And all of that is part of the strange ebb and flow of history on marijuana use. A story so strange you couldn't make it up.

 

We are back on the upswing of the arc now, never to return to the dark days.

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hope you enjoyed it !