THE MIRACLE DRUG

Source: The Scene
Pubdate: October 2007
Website: http://scenenewspaper.com/
Contact: jlundstrom@new.rr.com
Author: Jim Lundstrom

THE MIRACLE DRUG

After some research into the effects of marijuana, you might just begin to be convinced it is a miracle medicine, perhaps even Ponce de Leon’s fountain of youth.

The beneficial effects among patients with everything from AIDS to Alzheimer’s have been documented by doctors and scientists around the world. It was a legal medicine from mid 19th century and well into the 20th century. Tincture of cannabis – marijuana in alcohol – was available in pharmacies and recommended for a variety of circumstances – as an analgesic, muscle relaxant, anticonvulsant, for asthma and rheumatism, to ease labor pains, migraines and menstruation problems, to name a few of the most popular medical uses.

An influx of Mexican agricultural laborers bringing their marijuana culture into the United States in the 1920s, along with flappers and jazzbos getting in on the action, focused government eyes on recreational marijuana, which led to creation of the country’s first anti-drug agency and designation of the nation’s first drug czar, Harry Anslinger, a former railroad policeman with a hard-on for marijuana.

Anslinger worked his way up the federal bureaucracy through the Bureau of Prohibition, the federal law enforcement agency created to enforce the 1919 ban of alcohol in the United States (we all know what havoc that law wreaked). Because of his apparent incorruptibility during that very corruptible time, Anslinger was named commissioner of the Treasury Department’s newly created Federal Bureau of Narcotics in 1930.

Technically, marijuana, not being a narcotic, was not under his jurisdiction. But Anslinger set his sights on pot and propagated horror stories about the evils of marijuana that the DEA continues to parrot to this day, despite scientific evidence to the contrary, such as marijuana being a gateway drug, that it robs people of their senses and souls, turning them into cheats, liars, skulkers, thieves, whores, insane wrecks and other assorted amoral, anti-social decadents.

Anslinger’s outrageous claims against marijuana have been debunked and discredited, yet the tone he helped set beginning in the 1930s and for the next 30 years continue to dominate how your government conducts its business against you.

Overlooking states rights in the 12 states where medical marijuana bills have passed, the DEA continues to conduct raids on medical marijuana users and continues to claim medical marijuana is bogus.

“Prior to the illegalization of marijuana in general in the ’30s and allocating the most severe drug penalties for its usage, medical marijuana was around for a hundred years,” said. Rep. Frank Boyle, co-sponsor of the Assembly’s Jacki Rickert Medical Marijuana Act. “There was documented evidence in journals that you use marijuana for migraine headaches, certain menstrual problems, neurological relief for things such as glaucoma. It was documented for 150 years, going back to colonial times.

“Everyone knows someone who has suffered the aftereffects of chemotherapy,” he continued. “There are enough very legitimate stories out there from people whose symptoms have been relieved and alleviated by the use of illegal marijuana. They regulate all kinds of pain killers – opiates, morphine, hard narcotics to relieve pain – and they deny marijuana?”

Updated Wednesday, October 10, 2007