...was a speaker at a forum that was directed at people in the educational community on the Pine Ridge Reservation. My invitation came by way of a guy who is on the board of directors of some organization with some funding whose purpose is to help the front lines (schoolteachers) to deal with mental illness--in this case, principally, bi-polarity. The main speakers were a pair of psychologists who had opened a clinic, apparently with government funding, on the rez.
I was asked, in what turned out to be weird, to talk about clinical possibilities for cannabis in mental illness. I explained to the guy who called me that I could speak to the fact that cannabis is widely self-administered for what are often recognized as symptoms of various "mental illnesses," but that I was hardly an authority on the subject. That seemed to be good enough.
There were eight schoolteachers in attendance. Six were Caucasian. Four had to leave by the time the moderator got around to introducing me. Everyone was polite. I got $50 for coming.
Most appeared to think that removing barriers to medical studies on cannabis's efficacy in medica applications would send the wrong message to the kids they work with.
2 comments:
The message to the kids is that scientific studies are undesirable? Or am I so tired that I'm missing something?
Bob unfortunately there are a lot of people that don’t want to know the truth about not only marijuana but also industrial hemp. Both of these plants have many uses and both are badmouthed by those that don’t understand them.
We know now that the active cannabinoids in these plants tend to work against each other in the ways that they work in your body. Marijuana and hemp both have THC and CBDs. The THC in pot is what makes people high. From research they know that CBD is the one thing that will prevent the THC from doing what it does. To much CBD in the pot stops the THC from making you high. Growers are breeding strains of pot that now have less and less CBDs because of this. These CBDs represent less then on tenth of one percent of the active ingredients of pot while THC represents much more.
On the flip side is hemp. It is just the opposite of pot, it has less then one tenth of one percent of THC and the active ingredient is almost all CBDs. That is why you cant get high smoking hemp but you can get high smoking pot.
The CBDs do have some interesting uses. They are being studied at this time and the research looks very promising in what they can do. They are treating anxiety, bipolar conditions, and learning problems in children. One of these conditions in kids is know as RBS or racing brain syndrome. While it dent have the high aspect that THC has it does have the ability to help some very hard to treat conditions without “any” bad side effects.
Something that is of interest to me is that there are studies going on right now that are using both THC and CBDs to treat autism with good results being gained from both cannabinoids.
Just imagine what big pharma would do to keep both of these plants from becoming legal and taking a huge chunk of their money away from them. Look how far the US is behind the rest of the world in research of these two plants and what they can do for humanity. The war on drugs has cost us much more then money, it has cost some the normal use of their brains and bodies because our government refuses to accept what many know as the truth.
Neither marijuana or hemp can kill a person, never has and never will, but for either to be excepted as medicinal remedies for otherwise hard to treat conditions will take a war with big pharma. That my friends will be one costly war.
The Blindman
Post a Comment