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Out authority he re is the ‘Body of Literature,’ starting with ancient materia medicas: Chinese and Hindu pharmacopoeias and Near Eastern cuneiform tablets, and continuing all the way into this century, including the 1966-76 U.S. renaissance of cannabis studies& #151;some 10,000 separate studies on medicines and effects from the hemp plant.
Comprehensive compendia of these works are designated as the prime sources for this medical chapter, as well as ongoing interviews with many researchers.< /p>
For more than 3,500 years, cannabis/hemp/marijuana has been, depending on the culture or nation, either the most used or one of t he most widely used plants for medicines. This includes: China, India, the Middle and Near East, Africa, and pre-Roman Catholic Europe (prior to 400 C.E.).
Dr. Raphael Mechoulam, NORML, High Times, and Omni magazine (September 1982) a ll indicate that, if marijuana were legal it would immediately replace 10% to 20% of all pharmaceutical prescription medicines (based on research through 1976). And probably, Mechoulam estimates, 40% to 50% of all medicines, including patent medicines, co uld contain some extract from the cannabis plant when fully researched.
(Read the U.S. government sponsored research as outlined by Cohen & Stillman, Therapeutic Potential of Marijuana, 1976; Roffman, Roger, Marijuana as Medicine, 1980; Mikuriya, Tod, M.D., Marijuana Medical Papers, 1972; Also, the work of Dr. Normal Zinberg; Dr. Andrew Weill; Dr. Lester Grinspoon; and the U.S. Government’s Presidential Commission reports [Shafer Commission] from 1969 through 1972; Dr. Raph ael Mechoulam, Tel Aviv/Jerusalem Univ., 1964-84; W.B. O’Shaugnessy monograph, 1839; and the long-term Jamaican studies I & II, 1968-74; Costa Rican studies through 1982; U.S. Coptic studies, 1981; Ungerlieder; U.S. military studies since the 195 0s and 60s.)
Marijuana was America’s number one analgesic for 60 years before the re-discovery of aspirin around 1900. From 1842 to 1900 c annabis made up half of all medicine sold, with virtually no fear of its high.
The 1839 report on the uses of cannabis by Dr. W.B. O’Shaugnessy, one of the most respected members of the Royal Academy of Science, was just as impor tant to mid-19th century Western medicine as the discoveries of antibiotics (like penicillin and Terramycin) were to mid-20th century medicine.
From 1850 to 1937, cannabis was prescribed as the prime medicine for more than 100 separat e illnesses or diseases in American U.S. pharmacopia.
The Committee on Cannabis Indica for the Ohio State Medical Society concluded that “High Biblical commentators [scholars]” believe “the gall and vinegar, or myrrhed wine, offered to our Saviour immediately before his crucifixion was, in all probability, a preparation of Indian hemp.”
(Transcripts, Ohio State Medical Society 15th annual meeting, June 12-14, 1860, pg. 75-100.)
During all this time (pre-1000 B.C.E. to 1940s C.E.), researchers, doctors, and drug manufacturers (Lilly, Parke-Davis, Squibb, etc.) had no idea what the active ingredients were in cannabis until Dr. R. Mechoulam discovered THC in 1964.
As outlined in the previous chapters, the American Medical Association (AMA) and drug companies testified against the 1937 Marijuana Tax Act because cannabis was k nown to have so much medical potential and had never caused any observable addictions or death by overdose.
They argued the possibility existed that, once the active ingredients in cannabis (such as THC Delta-9) were isolated and corr ect dosages established, cannabis could become a miracle drug.
Research revealed positive indications when using cannabis for asthma, glaucoma, nausea from chemotherapy, anorexia, and tumors, as well as a general use antibiotic; epile psy, Parkinson’s disease, anorexia, multiple sclerosis, dystrophy, and tumors—all these merited further clinical studies.
Twenty-nine years, however, would pass before American scientists could begin to even look into cannab is medicine again.
THC Delta-9 was isolated by Dr. Raphael Mechoulam at the University of Tel Aviv in 1964. His work confirmed that of Professor Taylor of Princeton, who had lead the research and identification of natural THC Delta-9 precursors in the 1930s. Kahn, Adams, and Loewe also worked with the structure of cannabis’ active ingredients in 1944.
Since 1964, more than 400 separate compounds have been isolated in cannabis from over a thousand suspected co mpounds. At least 60 of the isolated compounds are therapeutic. The United States, however, forbade this type of research through the bureaucratic authority of Harry Anslinger until 1961, when he was forced to retire. (Omni magazine, Sept., 1982.)
By 1966, millions of young Americans had begun using marijuana. Concerned parents and government, wanting to know the dangers their children were risking, sta rted funding dozens and later hundreds of marijuana health studies.
Entrenched in the older generation’s minds were 30 years of Anslinger/Hearst scare stories: Murder, atrocity, rape, and even zombie pacifism.
Federally sponsored research results began to ease Americans’ fears of cannabis causing violence or zombie pacifism, and hundreds of new studies suggested that hidden inside the hemp plants’ chemistry lay a medicinal array of incredible therap eutic potential. The government funded more and more studies.
Soon, legions of American researchers had positive indications using cannabis with asthma, glaucoma, nausea from chemotherapy, anorexia, tumors, and epilepsy, as well as a general use antibiotic. Cumulative results showed evidence or favorable anomalies occurring, for Parkinson’s disease, anorexia, multiple sclerosis, and muscular dystrophy; plus thousands of anecdotal stories all merited further clinical study.
< p ALIGN=LEFT> Prior to 1976, reports of positive effects and new therapeutic indications for cannabis were almost a weekly occurrence in medical journals and the national press.In November 1975, virtually all of America’s leading researchers on marijuana met at Asilomar Conference Center, Pacific Grove, California. Seminars were sponsored by the National In stitute of Drug Abuse (NIDA) to address a compendium of studies from their earliest to most recent findings.
When the seminars were over, practically all the participants (scientists) concluded that the federal government, with the ha rd evidence collected so far on the therapeutic potential of marijuana, should be rushing to invest tax money into more research.
They felt the taxpayers should be informed that there was every legitimate reason for the field of publi c health to continue large scale research on cannabis medicine and therapies. All the participants, it seems, believed this. Many of them (such as Mechoulam) believed that cannabis would be one of the world’s major medicines by the mid-1980s.
However, in 1976, just as multi-disciplined marijuana research should have been going into its second- third- and fourth-generation studies (see Thera peutic Potential of Marijuana and NORML federal files), a “surprise” United States government policy again forbade all promising federal research into marijuana’s therapeutic effects.
This time, the research ban was acc omplished when American pharmaceutical companies successfully petitioned the federal government to be allowed to finance and judge 100% of the research.
The previous 10 years of research had indicated a tremendous promise for the ther apeutic uses of natural cannabis, and this potential was quietly turned over to corporate hands—not for the benefit of the public, but to suppress the information.
This plan, the drug manufacturers petitioned, would allow our pri vate drug companies time to come up with patentable synthetics of the cannabis molecules at no cost to the federal government, and a promise of “no highs.”
In 1976, the Ford Administration, NIDA, and the DEA said, in effect, no American independent (read: university) research or federal health program would be allowed to again investigate natural cannabis derivatives for medicine. This agreement was made without any safeguards guaranteeing integrity on the part of the pharma ceutical companies; they were allowed to regulate themselves.
Private pharmaceutical corporations were allowed to do some “no high” research, but it would be only Delta-9 THC research, not any of the 400 other potentially th erapeutic isomers in cannabis.
Why did the drug companies conspire to take over marijuana research? Because recent US government research (1966-1976) had indicated or confirmed through hundreds of studies that even “natural” crude cannabis was the “best and safest medicine of choice” for many serious health problems.
The DEA’s own conservative administrative law judge, Francis Young, after taking medical testimony for 15 days and reviewing hundreds of DEA/NIDA documents posed against the evidence introduced by marijuana reform activists concluded in September, 1988 that “ marijuana is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man.”
But despite this preponderance of evidence, DEA Director John Lawn ordered on December 30, 1989 that cannabis remain listed as a Schedule One narcoti c—having no known medical use. His successor, Robert Bonner, who was appointed by Bush and kept in office by Clinton, was even more draconian in his approach to hemp/marijuana as medicine.
NORML, High Times, and Omni (September, 1982) indicate that Eli Lilly Co.; Abbott Labs; Pfizer; Smith, Kline & French; and others would lose hundreds of millions to billions of dollars annually, and lose even more billions in Third World countries, if marijuana were legal in the U.S.*
* Remember, these drug companies, at their own insistence, specifically by lobbying, got the Federal Government to prevent all positive research into medical marijuana in 1976, the last year of the Ford Administration.
The drug companies took over all research and financing into analogs of synthetic THC, CBD, CBN, etc., promising “no high” before allowing the products on the market. E li Lilly came out with Nabilone and later Marinaol, synthetic second cousins of THC Delta 9 and promised the government great results.
Omni magazine, in 1982, stated that after nine years, Nabilone was still considered virtually usele ss when compared with real, homegrown THC-rich cannabis buds, and Marinol works in only 13% of patients.
Marijuana users agree, they do not like the effects of Lilly’s Nabilone or Marinol. Why? You have to get three or four times as high on Marinol to get the same benefits as smoking good cannabis bud.
Omni 1982 also states (and it’s still true in 1993) that after tens of millions of dollars and nine years of research on medical marijuana synthetics, 47;these drug companies are totally unsuccessful,” even though raw, organic cannabis is a “superior medicine” which works so well naturally, on so many different illnesses.
Omni also suggested that drug companies petiti on the government to allow “crude drug extracts” on the market in the real interest of public health. The government and the drug companies, to date, have not responded. Or rather, they have responded by ignoring it. However, the Reagan/Bush/Q uayle Administration absolutely refused to allow resumption of real (university) cannabis research, except under synthetic pharmaceutical studies.
Omni suggests, and NORML and High Times concur, the reason the drug companies and Reaga n/Bush/Quayle wanted only synthetic THC legal is that simple extractions of the hundreds of ingredients from the cannabis crude drug would be enjoyed without pharmaceutical company patents which generate windfall monopolized profits.
Eli Lilly, Pfizer, and others stand to lose a third of their entire, highly profitable, patent monopoly on drugs including Darvon; to take losses in their Tuinal and Seconal lines (as well as other patent lines ranging from muscle ointments to burn ointments, to thousands of other uses already known in 1966-1976) from a plant anyone can grow; cannabis hemp.
Isn’t it curious that American drug companies and pharmacist groups* supply almost half the funding for the 4000 “Families Against Marijuana” type organizations in America? The other half is supplied by Action (a federal VISTA agency) and by tobacco com panies, and liquor and beer makers like Anhauser Busch, Coors, Philip Morris, etc., or as a ‘public service’ by the ad agencies who represent them.
* Pharmacists Against Drug Abuse, etc. See appendices in the paper version o f this book.
Some 500,000 persons are poisoned each year in Third World countries by drugs, pesticides, etc. that are sold to them by American co mpanies, but which are banned from sale in the U.S.
Colombia’s largest newspaper, Periodical el Tiempo (Bogota) reported in 1983—and was not disputed by the U.S. government or American pharmaceutical companies —that the se same anti-marijuana crusading American pharmaceutical companies are guilty of a practice known as “product dumping,” wherein they “sell on the over-the-counter markets of Colombia, Mexico, Panama, Chile, El Salvador, Honduras, and Nicara gua, over 150 different illegal, dangerous drugs.”
Some of these drugs have been forbidden by the FDA for sale or use in the U.S. or its counterparts in Europe because they are known to cause malnutrition, deformities, and cancer . Yet they are sold over the counter to unsuspecting illiterates!
The World Health Organization backs up this story with a conservative estimate: they say that some 500,000 persons are poisoned each year in Third World countries by it ems (drugs, pesticides, etc.) sold by American companies but which are banned for sale in the U.S.
Mother Jones magazine, 1979, “Unbroken Circle” June, 1989; The Progressive, April, 1991; et al.
Some 10,000 studies were done on cannabis, 4,000 in the U.S., and only about a dozen have shown any negative results and these have never been replicated. The Reagan/Bush Administration put a soft “feeler” out in September of 1983, for all American universities and researchers to destroy all 1966-76 cannabis research work, including compendiums in libraries.
Scientists and doctors so ridicul ed this unparalleled censorship move that the plans were droppedfor the moment.
However, we know that large amounts of information have since disappeared, including the original copy of the USDA’s own pro-marijuana film Hemp for Victory. Worse yet, even the merest mention of the film was removed from the official record back to 1958, and has had to be painstakingly re-established as part of our national archives. Many archival and resource copies of USDA Bulletin 404 have disappe ared.
How much more irreplaceable knowledge has already been lost?
After 20 years of study, the California Research Advisory Panel (RAP) in 1989 broke with the state Attorney General’s office (A.G.), under which it works, and called for the re-legalization of cannabis.
“There is no point to continuing unmodified, much less intensified, the policies and laws that have so obviously failed to control the individual and societal damages associated with drug use,” summarized Vice Chairman Frederick Meyers, M.D., in a letter released with the group’s recommendations after the attorney general had s uppressed the report and panel members elected to publish it at their own expense.
This was a complete turnaround from RAP’s long history of suppressing medical usage. The long term impact of this shift remains to be seen.
Chairman Edward P. O’Brien, Jr., appointed by the A.G., who dissented from the panel’s conclusions, had for years dominated this group, rigidly controlling what research could be performed — and limiting those applications to control of nausea and vomiting that is secondary to cancer chemotherapy.
Under O’Brien, the panel systematically welshed on its mandate to provide compassionate medicinal access to cannabis. Any applications for using cannabis i ncluding the control of pain, spastic neurological disorders, etc., have been rejected. Cannabis used to be the treatment of choice for vascular or migraine headache. (Osler, 1916; O’Shaugnessey, 1839)
Cannabis has the unique cha racteristic of affecting the vascular circulation of the covering of the brain — the meniges. The reddened eyes of the marijuana user are a reflection of this action.
Unlike other drugs, however, cannabis has no apparent affect o n the vascular system in general, except for a slight speeding up of the heart during the onset of the effects of the drug.
RAP has discouraged the use of smoking cannabis in favor of synthetic Delta-9 THC capsules, despite crude cann abis’ favorable comparative results reported to the Food and Drug Administration.
This has been frankly misrepresented in their reports to the legislature and testimony in the NORML vs. DEA case. Additionally, these memoranda fav orably comparing smoked marijuana to oral THC have been buried in appendices to their reports — available in only four locations in the entire state of California!
On September 30, 1989, the medical marijuana program quietly expi red, based on the staff’s assessment that not enough persons had been treated to justify its extension.
—Tod Mikuriya, M.D., Berkeley, CA, 1990
From a medieval herbal manuscript
Hemp seed taken largely in meat, wakes up the natural seed. The juice of green hemp is good against the ache of the ear, if it be poured in. Simeon Sethy writes, “Hemp se ed, if it be taken out of measure, takes men’s wits from them.” As Coriader does, “The powder of dried leaves of hemp makes men drunken.” Pliny writes that the juice of hemp put into ones ears kills worms and all beasts that are in the ear, but it makes the head ache. Hemp is of such a nature that it can congeal the water and make it go together, and therefore it is good for beasts stomachs, drunken in water. The root soaked in water makes soft the joints and are drunken together for g out and like diseases. He says it is also good to be laid upon burned places, but it must be often changed that it dry not. Kioscoudes makes mention of another kind of wild hemp which some reckon to be eupatium bulgar, but it cannot be, for it has never seeds like unto Marrilh mallowe, neither may a man make ropes of the bark of it, which things belong unto wild hemp, wherefore it cannot be wild hemp.
This CD-ROM created on Macintosh computers by Milo and Stephen.
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