(An advisor to Parents Opposed to Pot, Dr. Libby Stuyt, an addictions psychiatrist in Colorado, spoke at the Oregon Mental Health and the Law Conference in Portland. The Mental Health Association of Portland published a blog about it on August 13.) Here it is:
There was so much misinformation about marijuana that I was willing to doubt anything negative, even if it was backed by hard science. Then I got a brain scan.
I’d always been told that marijuana addiction was impossible, that it was a harmless herb with only medicinal properties.
Marijuana Lobby Depends on Selling a Lie to Pull off a Scam
If you tell a lie long enough, people start believing it’s the truth. We found a “medical” marijuana box in the middle of the soaps and toiletries of a gift shop in a state where lobbyists have been trying to commercialize “medical” marijuana through the state legislature. Marked “For Daily Use Only,” it gives the appearance of necessity, much like a pill box. The marijuana industry is finding good ways to trick the public into believing marijuana is “medicinal,” just as the tobacco industry claimed cigarettes were healthy. However, there are 450,000 marijuana-related hospitalizations in the US each year.*
This summer the head of the DEA (Drug Enforcement Administration) said he would be making a decision about rescheduling marijuana which would mean a change from Schedule 1 to Schedule 2. However, this past week a federal magistrate judge in New York rebuffed a challenge to federal laws which place marijuana among the most dangerous drugs.
It should be no surprise, as Judge Kimberly Mueller made a similar ruling against rescheduling in April, 2015. Her decision followed a Court ruling of January 2013, which followed many years of studying the issue, by the DEA, with input from the Food and Drug Administration and the Department of Health and Human Services.
The Ruling of July 12 in New York
In his ruling, U.S. Magistrate Judge Jonathan Feldman said, “There can be no dispute that public opinion on whether marijuana has legitimate medical uses is changing in this country.” But Feldman ruled that Charles and Alexander Green, two brothers accused of marijuana trafficking, had a to prove that current federal laws are “so arbitrary and irrational as to be unconstitutional.”
The Greens, who are from California, are accused of major roles in a marijuana trafficking operation that brought the drug into western New York. They have challenged how federal law classifies marijuana, in the same category as heroin. The category known as “Schedule 1” drugs suggests Congress and federal authorities consider it among the nation’s most dangerous illicit substances.
Marijuana, as a plant or a weed, is not medicinal. Derivatives may have medical application, but those are derivatives of the plant not marijuana. National Families in Action put a good explanation of the difference between marijuana and marijuana-based medicines.
It is possible that the DEA may reschedule cannabidiol, one of the cannabinoids in marijuana, which gives relief to some children with seizures. Today’s high-THC marijuana has lower proportions of CBD than the marijuana of the 60s, 70s and 80s, which makes marijuana far more dangerous, on par with heroin. (Any medicine derived from a plant does not go by the plant name, but the marijuana lobby tries to mislead the public into confusing the extract from the plant.)
Quotes by leaders of NORML reveal that medical marijuana was planned as a scam from the start. On February 6, 1979, at Emory University, Keith Stroup said: “We are trying to get marijuana reclassified medically. If we do that, we’ll be using the issue as a red herring to give marijuana a good name.” Richard Cowan and Ed Rosenthal followed up with statements saying that getting people to buy into the idea of medical marijuana and getting hundreds of thousands to do it will be the key to getting full legalization.
Watch the video.
*Information comes from checking the long DEA report that was available online until recently showed a growing number of hospital treatments for marijuana up until 2010. Obviously, it is more now. Here is the summary available online.
Is the Marijuana Lobby Trying to Buy Your Legislature and Your Votes?
If marijuana has a medical application that can be proven, Merck and Pfizer will probably see the benefit of getting into the 4.2 billion dollar business. Marijuana companies, like pharmaceutical companies, contribute heavily to politicians and lobbying efforts. Unlike the pharmaceutical industry, they don’t go through a rigorous testing and approval process. The marijuana industry uses pesticides, even banned pesticides, but it promotes itself as organic and natural.
Medical marijuana “caregivers” have no accountability and liability, and their lobbyists know it. We think it is wrong when the marijuana industry lobbyists give parents with very sick children false hope.
Marijuana lobbyists should not be seen as having pure and “compassionate” motives, as they pretend.* The public has a right to know that CBD for epilepsy does not always work.
A few of the children treated with an artisanal CBD (cannabidiol, the derivative of marijuana used for epilepsy) have died, and some of the children treated with cannabis oil for cancer also died.
In Montana a few years ago, Cashy Hyde’s father was featured on TV, saying his son had been cured of cancer using cannabis oil. Sadly, the boy eventually died, sometime after the startling announcement that he had been cured. The constant nurture and love from his parents probably helped to extend his life.
A man in Iowa who advocated for marijuana also died of cancer. In Australia, a little girl whose father had been treating her neuroblastoma with cannabis oil died in May. Receiving constant love, attention and kind wishes from others sent good vibes into the world, but no medical professional thought it had an effect on the cancer.
When reading about the remarkable claims advocates of medical marijuana propose, please remember the placebo effect. We don’t know why placebos cure some people and not others. It could be the power of belief, or the result of a person’s own immune system having the ability to fight the disease.
Parents Opposed to Pot objects to the tactics of marijuana lobbyists because:
They give partial truths, attempt to sway public opinion while hiding essential facts.
They engage in unfair defamation of character and advertising. Two years ago Rep. Debbie Wasserman Schultz and Rep. Andy Harris were targeted with cruel and slanderous attacks because of their votes regarding medical marijuana. Rep. Wasserman Schultz recently voted to allow veterans to be allowed marijuana — although it makes PTSD worse.
They outpsend the opposition to marijuana legalization and target youth with their advocacy, while pretending to be grass roots. Smart Approaches to Marijuana was founded after the vote to legalize in Washington and Colorado.
*The 1996 ballot in legalizing marijuana in California was called the Compassionate Use Act and people were led to believe it was only for terminally ill people with cancer and AIDS. In reality, only 3-5% of the marijuana has been used for these conditions.