How did the world survive before banning cannabis?

Fri Sep 27, 2013

Editor: How did humanity, in particular the youth, manage to survive the scourge of openly available marijuana for all of civilization before the US Federal government in 1937, in coalition with US pharmaceutical and industrial companies, declared it illegal to grow and of no medicinal value?{{more}} Accord to the beliefs of some opponents of marijuana, the youths of the world should have decayed into ruin, and civilized work made extinct because of open access to marijuana. A pandemic plague of marijuana excess should have decimated the planets’ youth population by way of schizophrenia and such other claimed marijuana induced disorders during all of the thousands of years that marijuana (cannabis) was freely available before 1937.

There is a wealth of ignorance about the usefulness of cannabis throughout Trinidad and Tobago. So, in working to make changes in this unscientific hearsay society, one is confronted with tremendous resistance. By and large, Trinis have no access to marijuana to do personal research analysis on the pros and cons of marijuana plant material. There are no labs in T&T doing scientific research. Authorities who destroy marijuana fields and products are not programmed to think to save some to do research work to see what hidden potential may lay in the plant material. They have to be excused, since they (police, military, greed driven lawyers and doctors) are merely enforcers of state law, not of the stock of the world’s thinkers, who rather than destroy deadly viruses, know to save a sample, from which they perform research in search of positive potential.

Had it been for the thinkers, the enforcers would know about marijuana’s THC, CBD or CBN components. Thus the world’s thinkers also knew long ago to stock marijuana for the purpose of scientific research. By contrast, the enforcers of domestic law merely rely on external reports, what their superiors tell them to think et cetera, from which they robotically regurgitate as their findings on the topic of marijuana.

From 1938 to now, hundreds of thousands of researchers have been publishing, revealing a host of benefits of marijuana use. These don’t get the light of day in T&T’s media. For example an encyclopedic wealth of extensive research is available from the “420 Magazine.com,” an online website.

T&T psychiatrists say they don’t want marijuana decriminalized because they say the “support” services to deal with people with mental problems is overburdened. If these psychiatrists were any good at what they are supposed to do, would there presently be an overloaded mental support system? What has been the success rate of psychiatric pharmaceutical drugs for persons presenting with mental disturbances treated in T&T? How much is the psychiatric pharmaceutical prescription drug industry of T&T worth? How often do T&T psychiatrists update their knowledge on breakthroughs in their field?

A 2001 study published in the journal Archives of General Psychiatry found that long-term cannabis smokers who abstained from the drug for one week “showed virtually no significant differences from control subjects (those who had smoked marijuana less than 50 times in their lives) on a battery of 10 neuropsychological tests.” Investigators further added: “Former heavy users, who had consumed little or no cannabis in the three months before testing, [also] showed no significant differences from control subjects on any of these tests on any of the testing days.”

If they don’t know this or are ignoring it, is it to be believed that they are putting the interest of their patients above their ego? In the last 12 years, how many patients got cured by the interventions made by T&T psychiatrists, compared to total patient enrollment for that duration? Show us the wealth of human success stories from your methods T&T psychiatrists.

B Joseph