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extracted from THE EMPEROR WEARS NO CLOTHES, by Jack Herer. fully revised, updated and re-documented edition, September 1990. Chapter Sixteen:
THE OFFICIAL STORY Debunking "Gutter Science" After 15 days of taking testimony and more than a year's deliberation, DEA Administrative Law Judge Francis L. Young formally urged the DEA to allow doctors to prescribe marijuana in a September, 1988 judgement. He ruled: "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. In strict medical terms, marijuana is far safer than many foods we commonly consume...marijuana in its natural form is one of the safest therapeutically active substances known to man." Yet, DEA Administrator John Lawn December 30, 1989 denied this action and continues to deprive people of medical cannabis, based on famous anti-marijuana studies like these:
WASTING TIME, WASTING LIVES
Over 90 years has passed since the 1894 British Raj study of marijuana smokers in India reported that cannabis use was harmless and even helpful. Numerous studies since have all agreed: The most prominent being Siler, LaGuardia, Nixon's Shafer Commission and the Canadian government's LeDain Commission. When asked in late 1989 about DEA administrator John Lawn's failure to implement his decision, Young responded that Lawn was being given time to comply. More than a year passed after the ruling quoted above when Lawn officially refused to reschedule marijuana, keeping it classed as a Schedule One dangerous drug with no known medical uses. This was a politically motivated action that contradicts the facts and inflicts needless suffering on helpless Americans. The National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws (NORML) and Family Council on Drug Awareness quickly demanded Lawn's resignation. What level of hypocrisy allows public officials to scoff at the facts and deny the truth? How do they rationalize their atrocities?
GOVERNMENT DOUBLESPEAK
Since 1976, our federal government (i.e. NIDA, NIH, DEA* and Action), police sponsored groups (like DARE*) and special interest groups (like PDFA*) have presented to the public, press and parent groups their "absolute evidence" of negative marijuana health studies.
*National Institute on Drug Abuse, National Inst. of Health, Drug Enforcement Agency, Drug Abuse Resistance Education, Partnership for a Drug Free America.
When U.S. government sponsored marijuana research prior to 1976 indicated that pot was harmless or beneficial, the methodology of how the studies were done was always presented in detail in the reports; e.g., read T?h?e? ?T?h?e?r?a?p?e?u?t?i?c? ?P?o?t?e?n?t?i?a?l? ?o?f? ?M?a?r?i?j?u?a?n?a? (1976) and you will see exactly what the methodology of each medical study was.
However, when our government bureaucrats deliberately sponsored negative marijauna research -time and time again Playboy magazine and/or NORML, High Times, etc. had to sue under the new Freedom of Information Act to find out the actual methods employed.
DR. HEATH/TULANE STUDY, 1974 The Hype: Brain Damage in Dead Monkeys
In 1974, California Governor Ronald Reagan was asked about decriminalizing marijuana. After producing the Heath/Tulane University study, the so-called "Great Communicator" told the national press, "The most reliable scientific sources say permanent brain damage is one of the inevitable results of the use of marijuana." (L.A. Times.)
And ever since, dead brain cells found in monkeys who were forced to smoke marijuana has been given maximum scare play in federal booklets and government sponsored propaganda literature against pot.
Reports of these studies have also been distributed by the hierarchy of drug rehabilitation professionals as part of their rationalization for wanting to get kids off pot, based on supposed scientific studies. This literature is generally given to parent groups, church organizations, etc., who react in horror and redistribute it further.
Senator Eastland, of Mississippi, used the same Heath study to terrorize and stop our national legislators from supporting NORML's decriminalization bills in Congress (throughout the mid-1970s), mostly sponsored by Senator Jacob Javitts of New York.
In the report, Heath concluded that Rhesus monkeys, smoking the equivalent of only 30 joints a day, began to atrophy and die after 90 days.
Heath opened the brains of the dead monkeys, counted the dead brain cells, then took control monkeys who hadn't smoked marijuana, killed them, and counted their dead brain cells. The pot smoking monkeys had enormous amounts of dead brain cells as compared to the "straight" monkeys.
Ronald Reagan's pronouncement was probably based on the fact that marijuana smoking was the only difference in the two sets of monkeys. Perhaps Reagan trusted the federal research to be real and correct, therefore reflecting a real health hazard to humans.
Perhaps he had other motives.
Whatever their reasons, this is what the government ballyhooed to press and PTA, who trusted the government completely.
IN 1980, Playboy and NORML finally received for the first time -after six years of requests and suing the government- an accurate accounting of the research procedures used in the famous report:
The Facts: Suffocation of Research Animals
The Heath "Voodoo" Research methodology, as reported in Playboy: Rhesus monkeys were strapped into a chair and then strapped into gas masks and given the equivalent of 63 Columbian strength joints in "five minutes, thru the gas masks" losing no smoke. The monkeys were suffocating!
When NORML/Playboy hired researchers to examine the reported results against the actual methodology, they laughed.
They discovered, almost immediately, that Heath had completely (intentionally? incompetently?) omited, among other things, the carbon monoxide the monkeys inhaled during these intervals of 63 joints in five minutes...
Carbon monoxide is a deadly gas that kills brain cells and is given off by any burning object. All researchers found the marijuana findings in Heath's experiment to be of no value, because carbon monoxide poisoning and other factors involved were totally left out of the report.
Three to five minutes of oxygen deprivation causes brain damage, i.e. "dead brain cells" (Red Cross Lifesaving and Water Safety manual).
The Heath Monkey study was actually a study in animal asphyxiation and carbon monoxide poisoning.
Because of the smoke concentration, the monkeys were, in effect, a bit like a person running the engine of their car in a locked garage five, 10, 15, minutes at a time, every day!
This Heath study and others (like Nahas' early 1970s studies) tried to show THC metabolites in humans, found in the fatty tissue of the brain, reproductive organs and other fatty areas of the body were related, in some way, to the dead brain cells in the pot smoking monkeys.
LINGERING THC METABOLITES The Hype: Stays in Your System for 30 Days
The government also claimed that since "THC metabolites" stay in the body's fatty cells for up to 30 days after ingestion, just one joint was very dangerous; inferring that the long range view of what these THC metabolites eventually could do to the human race could not even be guessed and other pseudo-scientific double-talk (e.g., phrases like: "might be," "could mean," "possibly," "perhaps," etc.)*
* "May, might, could and possibly are not scientific conclusions."
Dr. Fred Oerther, M.D., September 1986. The spurious results of Heath, Nahas and the pregnant mice and monkey studies at Temple University and UC Davis (where they injected mice with synthetic third-cousin analogues of THC) are now out of the body of scientific and medical literature.
They are not used in scientific discourse, yet hundreds of DEA and pharmaceutical company sopnsored literature goes to parent groups, about the long term possible effects of these metabolites on the brain and reproduction.
(Read the 1982 N.I.H.; the National Academy of Science's evaluation on past studies; and the Costa Rican report, 1980.)
The Facts: Government's Own Experts Say That Metabolites Are Non-Toxic, Harmless Residue
We interviewed three doctors of national reputation either currently working (or having worked) for the U.S. government on marijuana research:
-Dr. Thomas Ungerlieder, M.D., UCLA, appointed by Richard Nixon in 1969 to the President's Select Committee on Marijuana, re-appointed by Ford, Carter and Reagan, and currently head of California's "Marijuana Medical Program;"
-Dr. Donald Tashkin, UCLA, M.D., for the last 14 years the U.S. government's and the world's leading marijuana researcher on pulmonary functions; and
-Dr. Tod Mikuriya, M.D., former national head of the U.S. government's marijuana research programs in the late 1960s.
In effect, these doctors said that the active ingredients in THC are used-up in the first or second pass through the liver. The leftover THC metabolites then attach themselves, in a very normal way, to fatty deposits, for the body to dispose of later, and this is perfectly natural.
Many chemicals form foods, herbs and medicines do this all the time in your body. Most are not dangerous and THC metabolites show less toxic* potential than virtually any metabolic leftovrs in your body of any known to man.
*The U.S. government has also known since 1946 that the oral dose of cannabis required to kill a mouse has been found to be about 40,000 times the dose required to produce typical symptoms of intoxication. (Mikuriya, Tod, Marijuana Papers, 1976; Loewe, journal of Pharmacological and Experimental Therapeutics, October, 1946.)
THC metabolites, left in the body, can be compared to the ash of a cigarette. They are the inert ingredient left-over after the active cannabinoids have been metabolized by the body. These inert metabolites are what urinary analysis studies show when taken to discharge military or factory or athletic personnel for using, or being in the presence of cannabis within the last 30 days.
LUNG DAMAGE STUDIES The Hype: More Dangerous Than Tobacco
The Berkeley marijuana carcinogenic studies of the late 1970s concluded that "marijuana is one-and-a-half times more carcinogenic than tobacco."
This is only true if you compare the smoke from the broad leaf of the tobacco to the broad leaf of the marijuana plant, which is how the government does it.
The Facts: Not If You Smoke the Buds
The marijuana flowers have one third or less carcinogenic tars as tobacco leaf, and virtually all the carcinogens can be removed by using a water pipe system. Our government omitted this information and its significance to the results of such studies when speaking to the press.
In fact, it has been U.S. government policy to only compare leaf to leaf, even though it knows that 95% to 99% of marijuana smoked by Americans are the flowering tops (or buds) of the female plant.
Marijuana leaf sells for $20 to $100 per ounce on the street but "buds" from the same plant will often sell for around $200 per ounce. Yet even the most naive marijuana smoker prefers a gram of bud to an ounce of leaf.
Yet this difference in tar comparisons with tobacco leaf carcinogens gives a totally false interpretation in the public mind of marijuana smoking verses tobacco smoking and the carcinogenic properties of each. Also a tobacco smoker will smoke 20 to 60 cigarettes a day, where a heavy marijuana smoker may smoke five to seven joints a day.
The Hype: More Harmful Than Tobacco
Marijuana has n?e?v?e?r? caused a known case of lung cancer as of December, 1989, according to Dr. Donald Taskin of UCLA.
In 1976, Dr. Tashkin sent a written report to Dr. Gabriel Nahas at the Rheims, France, Conference on Potential Cannabis Medical Dangers.
The report Tashkin sent became the most sensationalized story to come out of this negative world conference on cannabis.
This surprised Tashkin, who had sent the report to the Rheims conference as an afterhought.
The Facts: Only in One of the 29 Areas of the Lungs -and Marijuana Even Helps Other Areas
What Tashkin reported to the Rheims conference was that of 29 areas of the human lung (pulmonary) studied, one -the large air passageway- found marijuana 15 times more an irritant than tobacco.
Afterwards, the U.S. government offered more money to fund ongoing marijuana/pulmonary studies (which they had de-funded two years earlier when Tashkin was getting encouraging therapeutic results with marijuana/lung studies), but limited the research to the large air passageway.
However, Tashkin admits that tobacco has little effect on this area (the large air passage way) and marijuana has a positive or neutral effect in most other areas of the lung. (See chapter 7, "Therapeutic Uses of Cannabis.")
He admits the biggest health risk in the lungs would be a person smoking 16 or more "large" spliffs a day of leaf/bud because of the hypoxia of too much smoke and not enough oxygen.
Tashkin feels there is no danger for anyone to worry about potentiating emphysema "in any way" by the use of marijuana -totally the opposite of tobacco.
The Single Most Important Fact: Not One Recorded Case of Lung Cancer Linked to Cannabis
We have inerviewed Dr. Tashkin numerous times. In 1986 I asked him about an article he was preparing for submission to the New England Journal of Medicine, indicating that cannabis smoking caused as many or more pre-cancerous lesions as tobacco in 'equal' amounts.
Most people do not realize, nor are the media told, that a pre-cancerous lesion is any tissue abnormality; abrasion, eruption, or redness. Unlike the radioactive lesions caused by tobacco, the THC-related lesions contain no radioactivity.
We asked Tashkin how many people had gone on to get lung cancer in these studies -or any other studies of long-term smokers like Rastas, Coptics, etc.?
Dr. Tashkin, sitting in his UCLA laboratory, looked at me and said, "Well, that's the strange part. So far no one we've studied has gone on to get lung cancer."
"Was this reported to the press in the article?"
Well, it's in the article," Dr. Tashkin said in passing, "but no one in the press even asked. They just assumed the worst."
This excerpt represents almost four pages of chapter sixteen from THE EMPEROR WEARS NO CLOTHES, which contains 182 pages in all (with the second half of the book being a severe compact of size-reduced appendicies).For the authoritative historical record of the cannabis plant, hemp prohibition, and how marijuana can still save the world...write to:
H.E.M.P.\ 5632 Van Nuys Blvd. #210\ Van Nuys, CA 91401\ 1-818-377-5886