cannabisnews.com: Marijuana Experts? There Really Is No Such Thing
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Marijuana Experts? There Really Is No Such Thing
Posted by CN Staff on June 12, 2019 at 04:52:35 PT
By Mike Adams, Contributor
Source: Forbes
USA -- It was just last week that some coroner from Louisiana made national news by claiming that a woman died as a result of a marijuana overdose. Considering that there have never been any reports of someone croaking from cannabis, the story sparked a significant amount of outrage in the advocacy community. These folks can be an especially sensitive breed, presumably because the past several decades have been spent on a mostly fruitless crusade to get weed recognized for its medicinal benefits and made legal at the national level just like alcohol and tobacco.
But suggesting that someone actually died by smoking a little pot, well, them’s fighting words, as they might say in the South. So it was no surprise really that nearly every news organization ran a version of the THC overdose story, suggesting that marijuana experts were protesting the claim. I, for one, found this rather humorous, since there really is no such thing as a cannabis expert.Although the cannabis plant seems relatively safe (I’ve conducted decades of personal research to come to this conclusion) the world still knows very little about its efficacy as a medicine, its overall safety and whether or not there are certain circumstances in which it could lead to death.Now, I’m not trying to say that I buy into the coroner’s dead stoner claim. I certainly do not. As a man who once consumed his weight in high-powered, homemade edibles – which led to a three-day stoner excursion into the darkest parts of my brain, parts that I never wish to revisit, not ever! -- I can almost guarantee there is no possible way for a person to get high enough to die – not on weed. But then again, I am no expert on every facet of this plant. Nobody is. Sure, we know a few things about it – like, it feels great, food tastes amazing when we’re stoned, and it makes all of the Pink Floyd albums sound even better -- but to suggest that our knowledge of marijuana science is so vast and complete that we can simply discount the potential ills it may hold is ridiculous.Even medical professionals, you know those people who are supposed to have a grip on all of the latest treatments and medicine, are no experts when it comes to marijuana.In fact, a recent study published in the Journal of American Medical Association (JAMA) finds that most doctors do not know anything about cannabis – and that includes all of that CBD you’ve been scarfing down.Researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine found that 85 percent of so-called medical professionals have absolutely no education or training when it comes to cannabis. This means that when discussing medical marijuana with your family doctor, chances are everything he or she tells you, good or bad, is just an opinion and not rooted in any sort of science. To that end, the study also found that close to 80 percent of physicians don’t even realize that marijuana is a Schedule I substance. And check this out: Around 40 percent think that weed is a drug that has already received FDA approval. It is not. This is about as far from being an “expert” as it gets.“Part of the reason physicians may feel poorly trained is that many of marijuana’s health effects are not known,” wrote Nathaniel Morris, lead researcher and resident physician at Stanford.This is true.Because the federal government continues to hinder cannabis research, not even the scientific community knows enough about marijuana to call themselves experts. Sure, you might hear wild tales about how cannabis cures cancer– everyone seems to know somebody that is now cancer free because they smoked a little weed, right? But really, the best evidence we have on the subject of medical marijuana – an installment from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine -- indicates that weed might be beneficial in the treatment of chronic pain, nausea and spasms. That’s about all of the credible science we have. It’s a far cry from being a salvation’s wing to all of the Earthly health problems that so many so-called experts have asserted. What makes the situation even more disheartening is a lot of the critical studies published about the benefits of marijuana eventually turn out to be disproved. For example, back in 2014, the University of Pennsylvania came out and said that opioid overdose deaths were on the decline in states where medical marijuana was legal. It was evidence that the cannabis advocacy community has been using to convince lawmakers that legal weed might be the trapdoor they’re looking for out of a drug problem that is claiming the lives of tens of thousands every year.Well, that research turned out to be a load of bull.A new study from Stanford University – one based on the exact scientific methods as the one from the University of Pennsylvania – finds that opioid overdose deaths are actually increasing in states with legal weed. Now, here’s the thing: researchers don’t believe that marijuana is contributing to this newfound uprising in opioid-related incidents or anything – that’s good, at least -- but they damn sure aren’t convinced that legal cannabis can save America from the dope scourge.“What we found was that association between enacting a medical cannabis law and the rate of deaths from opioid overdose actually reversed over time,” lead researcher Chelsea Shover told NBC News. “When we did the study in 2017, the association was that states that enacted a medical cannabis law actually had higher opioid overdose deaths after the laws took effect.” Those states, they found, had about a 23 percent higher opioid overdose death rate than states in which medical marijuana remained illegal.”So, just like that – marijuana went from being a potential solution to the opioid problem to ammunition that anti-pot warriors will most certainly use now to prevent the end of prohibition in more parts of the country. It’s the kind of situation where if you live by the sword, you die by the sword. Anyone who buys into the plethora of marijuana studies that surface on an almost daily basis and uses them as fodder to further the legalization movement is just waiting to get butchered by the opposition. It’s too bad that we don’t have any actual experts on the subject to level the playing field.Sadly, it is probably best, from this point forward, to take all of the studies published on marijuana – the good, bad and the ugly -- with a grain of salt. Until the federal government gets serious about exploring this plant in detail and chiseling away at the many claims, the truth is there aren’t going to be any experts to provide us, the nation, with definitive insights into the many allegations – THC overdose deaths or otherwise. When we live in a country where not even the scientific and medical community understands the true reach of this plant, how much stock can we really put in these sources?Source: Forbes Magazine (US)Author: Mike Adams, ContributorPublished: June 11, 2019Copyright: 2019 Forbes Media LLCContact: readers forbes.comWebsite: http://www.forbes.com/URL: http://drugsense.org/url/cH4hcWajCannabisNews -- Cannabis Archiveshttp://cannabisnews.com/news/list/cannabis.shtml
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Comment #4 posted by Sam Adams on June 14, 2019 at 19:38:50 PT
this guy
this article is really frustrating - this man from southern Indiana is very ignorant on cannabis, and likes to pretend he isn't. Most of his op-eds are the same - he claims to be a lifelong pot-smoker, as if that gives him some kind of credibility.Then he re-gurgitates propaganda. THis article is absurd - it's crazy to suggest there are no cannabis experts. It's crazy to say we don't know anything about cannabis. It's possibly the most-studies substance of any kind on Earth! This lie is Orwellian-sized.Just in the last couple decades there have been 20,000 published studies on cannabis and the ECS - far more studies have been done on cannabis than on opiates or other prescriptions meds and drugs. And no experts? what do call Ethan Russo? Todd Mikiyura? And many, many others. This is a silly article by an uninformed, willfully ignorant author
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Comment #3 posted by afterburner on June 13, 2019 at 01:22:15 PT
I Spent Many Hours Searching for this Missing Link
MEDICAL CANNABIS: PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE.
By David Bearman, MD for ABC-CLIO
https://420415.blogspot.com/?m=0This important historical period in the creation of punitive anti-cannabis laws accompanied by the explanation of the conflict between two alternative medical views must not get lost in the shuffle of Cannabis Legalization trivia. The fact that search engines did not readily find this link is curious at best and alarming at worst. Is this medical conflict being deliberately deemphasized by search engine algorithms or did I just select a search term that was not quite on target. The fact that I was using links accessed through two different browsers was probably another factor in the difficulty of locating the relevant link. Either way this important historical information was difficult to find when I wanted to add it to my former post. After I took a long nap this link suddenly popped up, and I am very pleased that it revealed itself. It confirms that the use of cannabis medicine in the early years of the previous century was legal and wide-spread as well as explaining how cannabis medicine was suddenly removed from medical practice in 1941 as the result of new punitive laws passed by mistaken fears and lack of scientific evidence. I thought it was 1941, but because of my earlier difficulty in finding the period represented by the above link, I had to say "in the early 1940's" in order to send the previous post in a timely manner.
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Comment #2 posted by afterburner on June 12, 2019 at 14:41:29 PT
Medical Cannabis Experts
I have yet to meet a true expert on any science-based activity. The science is never settled; that is the nature of science. That includes any medicine or treatment for anything from the common cold to cancer. So-called experts in the medical fields are merely practiced in the latest treatment methodologies. The science is never settled. At one time the Schute brothers were "medical doctors and researchers who gained international notoriety by successfully treating heart disease with vitamin E instead of pharmaceutical drugs."
https://www.seleneriverpress.com/archivetags/vitamin-e-and-the-shute-brothers/Based on years of clinical practice in London, Ontario, Canada, the Doctor brothers attempted to convince the medical associations, like the CMA & the AMA, that vitamin E could be used to treat patients with heart and circulatory ailments. The national Medical Associations would not accept that vitamin E had any medical utility until double blind testing had been done. Now, vitamin E is sold in pharmacies and is recognized to have healing utility.To hold cannabis researchers and practicioners to a higher standard of evidence is disingenuous at best and anti-scientific at worst. After the Marihauna Tax Act was passed in 1937, Cannabis was removed from the Materia Medica by Government fiat over the objections of the AMA in the early 1940's. Cannabis was bought back temporarily in 1942 as Hemp for Victory to aid the WWII war effort by allowing hemp to be grown for the making of canvas sails.The medical history of cannabis was thus buried until it was gradually restored by the people and their representatives in a piecemeal fashion as required by the healing needs of ill individuals who had exhausted pharmaceutical remedies and had to fight for their lives and those of family and friends against a legal blockade imposed by ignorant and racist political interference in the medical field. Because of neglect of science, deliberate lies and obstruction by government officials, and subversion of the medical schools and Medical Associations, many medical professionals are misinformed about the effects of cannabis on various illnesses and treatment protocols. To conclude that there are no experts is preposterous. Cannabis treatments are having growing pains after several generations of neglect and deliberate government interference. I submit that Dr. Andrew Weil, who pioneered Integrative Medicine, has studied and practiced both pharmaceutical and herbal healing, and who wrote a book about the effects of cannabis and THC years ago is a Medical Cannabis Expert.Likewise, Ralph Mechoulam, who is the discoverer of both THC & CBD and who continues to do clinical research and practice approved by the Government of Israel and who coined the term The Entourage Effect to explain how various components within the cannabis plant interact with one another to provide many healing outcomes, is a Medical Cannabis Expert.Look beyond the U. S. quagmire of conflicting Medical Cannabis Laws and Prohibitions. The world is slowly discovering what this amazing plant is all about and how to use it. Growing pains continue, doctors & patients & scientists are learning. The science is never totally settled.Additionally, many Federal and State training programs are being established to train workers in production, sales, budtenders and management, compliant with government regulations and good business practices in their area. So, don't judge today's cannabis businesses by questionable or shady practices followed by workers in unregulated pre-legalization activities.
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Comment #1 posted by Vincent on June 12, 2019 at 08:19:30 PT:
Opinions?
Funny thing but this guy is quoting other people's, ahem, "opinions" on whether or not Pot is beneficial to mankind, or not. He cites that so-called "study" from the University of Pennsylvania "sa(ying) that opioid overdose deaths were on the decline in states where medical marijuana was legal" and then coming out with "that research turned out to be a load of bull". Strange, but I NEVER heard that it was "bull", I've heard just the opposite!He refers to other people's observations as "opinons", but then, what comes out of his mouth is an opinion, too! And, as they say, opinions are like asses...they all stink!
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