Hemp as medicine

Cannabis is medicine

See also:

Fibre, food, fuel, Marijuana, Religion, Law

Medical marijuana links

"Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base"

"New Observer" article about medical marijuana in Japan

Medical uses of Marijuana

Cannabis hemp (marijuana) has been used a medicine for thousands of years. Various medical uses were described 4000 years ago by the Chinese emperor Shen-nung in his medical book Pen-ts'ao Ching. Cannabis was mentioned as a medicine in the susruta of India before the 8th century A.D. It's main uses nowadays include treatment of pain, nausea, lack of appetite, sleeping disorders, auto-immune diseases (MS) and glaucoma.
Hemp as medicine

Up until the 1930s and 1940s extracts of Indian hemp were used medically to treat a wide variety of diseases. In the USA it was a legal medicine until 1969 and in Britain it was legal until 1971. At the only hearing for the 1937 "Marihuana Tax Act" the representative of the American Medical Association opposed the new law, worrying it would prevent medical use.

FLUID EXTRACTS AND TINCTURES

CANNABIS, U.S.P. (American Cannabis):

Fluid Extract No. 598 .......................(Alcohol 80%).. 5.00

Cannabis-Tinktur Fluid Extract Cannabis, in common with other of our products that cannot be accurately assayed by chemical means, is tested physiologically and made to conform to a standard that has been found to be, in practice, reliable. Every package is stamped with the date of manufacture. Physiologic standardization was introduced by Parke, Davis & Co.
This fluid extract is prepared from Cannabis sativa grown in America. Extensive pharmacological and clinical tests have shown that its medicinal action cannot be distinguished from that of the fluid made from imported East Indian cannabis. Introduced to the medical profession by us.

Average dose, 1 1.2 mins. (0.1 cc). Narcotic, analgesic, sedative.

For quarter-pint bottles add 80c. per pint to the price given for pints

From the Parke, Davis & Company 1929-1930 physicians' catalog.

In Japan hemp used to have numerous medical applications. Until after WW2 Japanese doctors prescribed cannabis for asthma and other respiratory diseases. Marijuana seeds were used as a mild laxative.

After hearing extensive evidence Francis L. Young, Administrative Law Judge of the US drug police DEA ruled on September 6, 1988:

"The evidence in this record clearly shows that marijuana has been accepted as capable of relieving the distress of great numbers of very ill people, and doing so with safety under medical supervision. It would be unreasonable, arbitrary and capricious for DEA to continue to stand between those sufferers and the benefits of this substance in light of the evidence in this record."
"The administrative law judge recommends that the Administrator conclude that the marijuana plant considered as a whole has a currently accepted medical use in treatment in the United States, that there is no lack of accepted safety for use of it under medical supervision and that it may lawfully be transferred from Schedule I to Schedule II. The judge recommends that the Administrator transfer marijuana from Schedule I to Schedule II."

See Carl. E. Olsen's Marijuana Archive
for complete text of Judge Young's ruling

There are 8 patients in the USA whom the Federal government supplies with 300 marijuana cigarettes every month. On of these patients is Robert Randall who would have gone blind from glaucoma 25 years ago had he not had access to marijuana to treat his condition. Every other year the University of Mississippi grows some 7000 square metres of marijuana plants for the U.S. government. There are 67 million blind people worldwide who lost their eyesight because of glaucoma, many of them in poor countries in the Caribbean and Africa. Marijuana is the most affordable drug that could have saved their eyesight.

Medical marijuana in Tokyo: A Multiple Sclerosis patient will be seeking a taima research license to grow his own medical marijuana. The ancient weed is still being cultivated by the city of Tokyo at the Tokyo Metropolitan Medicinal Plant Garden.

In November 1996 overwhelming majorities of voters in the U.S. states of California and Arizona voted 56% vs. 44% (CA) and 65% vs. 35% (AZ) to legalise possession and cultivation of marijuana for medical use when recommended by a doctor.
In November 1998 voters in Alaska, Washington, Oregon, Nevada and Arizona (for the second time) voted the same way. Voters in Colorado and Washington, D.C. also approved of medical marijuana but their votes were ignored. When the Washington D.C. vote was finally counted in 1999 medical marijuana legalisation had passed 69% vs. 29%. In November 1999 voters in Maine voted 61% vs. 39% to legalise marijuana as a medicine. In June 2000 medicinal marijuana became legal in Hawaii.

In reponse to the 1996 election victories for medical marijuana, the head of the Office of National Drug Control Policy of the US, commonly known as the "drug czar", in 1997 commissioned a $900,000, 18 month study to settle once and for all if marijuana is medicine. Released on March 17, 1999 the study, "Marijuana and Medicine: Assessing the Science Base", confirmed what we've known all along: Marijuana does indeed have medical uses for a number of serious medical conditions. The study suggested that uses of marijuana that do not involve smoking should be investigated but that until then smoked marijuana may be the only thing that works for some patients. Maybe just as important, it also discredited the claims that marijuana is highly addictive, that it acts as a gateway to hard drugs and that its medical use would lead to increased non-medical use. If the government were to acknowledge that marijuana is neither highly addictive nor a gateway to other addictive drugs then what reason is there left to keep arresting its users, especially those patients who have no better medicine to treat various illnesses?

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