Medical Marijuana

Cannabis: The Undiscovered Miracles - Weedist, Source: http://racetoamillion.co.uk/blog/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/research-icon1.jpg

A friend of mine and I were talking about why rescheduling cannabis was important. Specifically, he wondered about the necessity of allowing it to be opened for scientific exploration. His attitude was basically: If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it.

I asked him to explain deeper:
“I guess my thought is that I enjoy cannabis for all of its effects. And it’s all the more convenient that almost all of my daily medicines are found within the same plant! I just think that if smoking/eating your buds makes you feel better and helps your quality of life, does it really matter which receptor in your brain is doing what? It’s interesting, but not crucial to my life. You could simply tell me that cannabis is magic and I’d be just as happy about it.”

I can understand his point. Now, there are clearly cases where it does make a difference. Without the process of nearly eliminating THC from the Charlotte’s Web strain, who knows where little Charlotte Figi would be today. I am in no way opposed to scientific exploration of marijuana. I am 100% for it. I just mean, on a private level, smoking buds works for me. I can make a somewhat educated guess at which element of the cannabis is helping me with what ailment, but in the end, I don’t really care. It helps me and doesn’t hurt me. That’s a win/win in my book.

There does, however, need to be those curious minds who go beyond the natural stop point for most of us and keep asking questions. Most of us (myself included) are content to know that cannabis is safe and does work, that’s my terminus. I’m always interested in new information and I can’t wait for the feds to let scientific capitalism loose on cannabis. With no limits on the nature of the research imagine what might unfold. We understand, at best, a crumb of the intricacies of this plant. It may be possible that, collectively, humans know more about the cosmos than we do about cannabis.

So that’s my take on it. I don’t need the science to catch up with what I already believe, that cannabis is a veritable skeleton key to the doors of much disease and mental anguish. I am perfectly content smoking and feeling better. At the same time, I am excited by what science may uncover. What new and fascinating avenues this plant could take us down, given the green light to explore.

Outside of my own solipsistic perceptions, however, I think that scientific inquiry into cannabis has the potential to bring this wonderful, safe, effective medicine to those whose own culturally-installed stigmas refuse to let them consider it. It’s a two-fold path. On one hand, cannabis needs to be legalized so that people are not so scared by the DEA boogeymen that they would rather suffer than seek help. On the other hand, many people who aren’t necessarily anti-cannabis but don’t like the idea of using a psychoactive drug or smoking might more readily accept a form of (or compound from) the plant that comes in the visage of more traditional medications.

Tutle: Cannabis: The Undiscovered Miracles, Source: http://i0.wp.com/listverse.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/cannabis-pipe-made-from-carrots-and-pineapple-called-a-bong-being-smoked-anon.jpg

Real cannabis scientists can do better than this, I think.

This plant is quite literally amazing. What holds us back are our own fears and beliefs, guided in no small part by a decades-long smear campaign. If we let our apprehensions and close-minded fears dismantle our curiosity and thirst for novelty, are we any better than the inquisitors who locked Giordano Bruno in a cell for years for the audacity of challenging the geocentric view favored by the church and claiming that the universe was boundless, that Earth was not the center, but just another planet circling the sun?

We stand on the horizon of cannabis exploration. It is crucial that we let the findings guide the science and not shape the science to fit our world views. Open, honest, collaborative science is what we need. We must take the good results with the bad and recalculate our beliefs. I am curious to see what we find. Why does this specific plant interact so harmoniously, right out of nature, with our bodies? Perhaps that’s like wondering in what container the universe exists, in what medium the atom-that-became-the-Big-Bang was/is suspended. That may be dipping into waters too spiritual for pure science, but at some point the lines between fact and faith begin to blur. I have faith that cannabis is wonderful and a panacea for health. Let’s let science generate some hard facts for the skeptics.