A study was done in rural Jamaica, to identify neurobehavioral effects on unborn babies, exposed to Cannabis in the womb. This study was supported by The March of Dimes and later received funding from The National Institute on Drug Abuse, to further study the effects on the children, up to the age of 5.
Melanie Dreher, PhD, RN, FAAN and team conducted the study. Initially there were two groups of participants: 24 Cannabis consuming expectant moms, and twenty expectant moms who did not consume Cannabis, and their babies. The expectant moms from both groups, were matched for having the same quality of prenatal care, as well as nutrition.
The new born babies from both groups were compared using the Brazelton Neonatal Assessment Scale , which included supplementary items to capture subtle effects. The new born babies were observed three times during their first month.
Day one assessments were omitted from the study due to unreliable data. At 3 days, there were no measurable differences between the babies from the two groups. At one month, the babies who were exposed to Cannabis in the womb showed better physiological stability.
The newborns of Cannabis using mothers had better scores on autonomic stability, quality of alertness, irritability, and self-regulation. They were judged to be more rewarding for caregivers.
The McCarthy Scales of Children’s Abilities was used to test the children at the age of 4 and again at 5. Data was collected about each child’s temperament and home environment. The results showed no significant differences in developmental testing outcomes between children of Cannabis-using and non-using expectant mothers, except at 30 days.
The team who conducted these studies wanted to further their research on identifying neurobehavioral effects on the children who were exposed to Cannabis before birth. Melanie Dreher, PhD, RN, FAAN sought out additional funding from The US Federal Government, to further study the same children from age 5 through 10 years.
The request for funding a proposed extension of the study, was denied by the NIDA, based upon the results not being as expected, nor the results that Congress wanted. Melanie Dreher, PhD, RN, FAAN is often referred to as The Reefer Researcher. She has conducted many Cannabis studies in Jamaica objectively.
Despite her impeccable credentials and a wealth of information on Cannabis use, after Dreher released reports showing that children of Cannabis consuming mothers showed better physiological stability than children born to mothers who did not consume Cannabis, she encountered professional and political problems.
Some have accused the government and anti-Cannabis groups of working to suppress her objective, science based findings. Dreher continues to speak openly about her research and political obstacles that were put in place in regards to her Cannabis research.
Written by Kerry Cannon exclusively for CannabisActivismNow.com
Founded in 1936 by the nationalizing of a 13 company strong industry, British Sugar now a private PLC annually produces over 1.4 million tons of ingredient sugar in the UK. They are also the sole processor of the UK’s entire beet sugar crop giving them an arguably unfair monopoly over the British sugar industry as a whole. Today the company is part of AB Sugar – one of the largest international sugar corporate conglomerates, which is itself wholly owned by international food, ingredients and retail group, Associated British Foods plc (ABF).
In this article, we will explore the links between British Sugar – a registered private company in the UK – and the current ruling British conservative government.
Over the last few decades, British Sugar has diversified from just producing and processing sugar beet, into creatively utilizing it’s excess and waste energy byproducts to produce a variety of horticultural crops.
In a statement from 2016, Managing Director of British Sugar Paul Kenward said; “Sixteen years ago we realised we could use some of the heat and waste carbon dioxide generated in our Wissington sugar factory to develop a horticultural business. During this time, we have invested in our world‐class facilities and developed our expertise to deliver consistent, high-quality crops season after season” adding that “The decision to switch from tomatoes to marijuana was in part to help treat a ‘debilitating childhood disease”.
The condition that Mr. Kenward was referring to was Dravets syndrome – a rare form of epilepsy that causes severe medication-resistant seizures that begin in the first year of life in an otherwise healthy and happy child. It has been known for many years that Cannabis can greatly help reduce seizures and help manage the most dangerous symptoms of Epilepsy.
British sugar announced on October 25th, 2016 that it had won a contract with the UK-based GW Pharmaceuticals and approval from the British Home Office under license to cultivate cannabis in its 18-hectare greenhouse facility at its Wissington factory in Norfolk.
The main chemical component of the cannabis plant are the Cannabinoids and it is specifically a combination of the Cannabinoids Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) and Cannabidiol (CBD) which seem to exhibit the most anti-epileptic, antispasmodic, and anti-inflammatory properties. When consumed regularly these Cannabinoids have been shown to reduce the rate of seizures in epileptic patients from hundreds a day to a few a week/month.
Since 2016, British Sugar has been completing three cannabis harvests a year, due to be extracted into the $32,500 a year patented drug Epidiolex – a CBD-based medication prescribed for the treatment of Dravet syndrome and Lennox-gastaut syndrome – two rare forms of epilepsy.
In 2018 GW Pharmaceuticals and its US subsidiary Greenwich Biosciences acquired official permission from the FDA to sell their cannabis medication ‘Epidiolex’ as a Schedule 5 prescription drug. This made them the only company in the world to have a patented FDA-approved cannabis-derived prescription medication.
We begin to see yet another unfair commercial monopoly partially created by the government and for the benefit of the producers and not the consumers begin to emerge.
This move all but guarantees further exploitation of the millions of people still facing the daily stigma, legal harassment, and very real threat of imprisonment for simply trying to treat their illnesses/chronic condition with cannabis-derived products – while pharmaceutical companies continue to make tens of millions of pounds in profit,
Don’t worry if you are a little confused as to how the British government is continuing to regurgitate the party line on Cannabis being a “dangerous street drug with no accepted medicinal value”, while at the same time they’re licensing private multinational corporations to grow hundreds of tons of it in the UK to be exported across the world.
As previously mentioned, Paul Kenward is the managing director at British sugar – although you may not have heard of him, you might be familiar with his wife – Victoria Atkins MP who was elected the sitting MP for Louth and Horncastle in May 2015 and was appointed minister at the home office in 2017 by the then-Prime Minister Theresa May.
The former barrister was appointed Parliamentary Under-Secretary of State Minister for Safeguarding by Mrs. May as she was a hard-line prohibitionist especially on Cannabis and that reflected her warped ideology perfectly.
While this is going on at the home office – in number 10 Downing Street Mrs. May’s husband Phillip May the investment relationship manager for the Capital group investment firm which manages a portfolio worth over $2 trillion – is acting as an unofficial adviser to the Prime Minister. Keep in mind that the Capital group is the same firm that is the majority shareholder in GW Pharmaceuticals – a glaring conflict of interest, no?
Mrs. Atkins had to voluntarily recuse herself in 2018 from speaking for the government on matters about cannabis and drug policy as she felt her husband operating a legal cannabis farm constituted a conflict of interest (another painful conflict of interests) She was quietly removed from being responsible for UK drug policy but remains in her post.
Although Mrs. Atkins was no longer “the voice of the government” when it came to drug policy she still had the power to veto the appointment of Niamh Eastwood to the Advisory Council on the Misuse of Drugs (ACMD) in June 2019 – after the home office advisory panel had previously approved her appointment.
The longtime drug policy reformist and executive director at Release had previously been critical of the government and challenged a lot of the antiquated notions that underpin the continuation of the drug prohibition. An appointment that could have been a real and direct threat to the conservative cannabis cartel.
So even with all of this being public knowledge and it is rather well documented by the mainstream media there have still been no real ramifications or legal consequences for the small cabal of Conservative ministers who have and continue to blatantly abused their positions to further the corporate agendas of their husband’s companies – further helping to set back cannabis law reform in the UK by years if not decades.
Ultimately, I believe that the best way to avoid the continuation of this kind of capitalistic, corporate, corruption, and cronyism is to completely and utterly decriminalize Cannabis Sativa L in all her natural forms for everyone to utilize as they see fit.
Western medicine has some good points, and is great in an emergency, but it’s high time people realized that today’s mainstream medicine (western medicine or allopathy), with its focus on drugs, drugs, radiation, drugs, surgery, drugs and more drugs, is at its foundation a money spinning Rockefeller creation.
People these days look at you like a weirdo if you talk about the healing properties of plants or any other holistic practices. Much like anything else, politics and money have been used to warp people’s minds and encourage them to embrace what is bad for them.
It all began with John D. Rockefeller (1839 – 1937) who was an oil magnate, a robber baron, America’s first billionaire, and a natural-born monopolist.
By the turn on the 20th century, he controlled 90% of all oil refineries in the U.S. through his oil company, Standard Oil, which was later on broken up to become Chevron, Exxon, Mobil etc.
World Affairs reports: At the same time, around 1900, scientists discovered “petrochemicals” and the ability to create all kinds of chemicals from oil. For example, the first plastic — called Bakelite — was made from oil in 1907. Scientists were discovering various vitamins and guessed that many pharmaceutical drugs could be made from oil.
This was a wonderful opportunity for Rockefeller who saw the ability to monopolize the oil, chemical and the medical industries at the same time!
The best thing about petrochemicals was that everything could be patented and sold for high profits.
But there was one problem with Rockefeller’s plan for the medical industry: natural/herbal medicines were very popular in America at that time. Almost half the doctors and medical colleges in the U.S. were practicing holistic medicine, using knowledge from Europe and Native Americans.
Rockefeller, the monopolist, had to figure out a way to get rid of his biggest competition. So he used the classic strategy of “problem-reaction-solution.” That is, create a problem and scare people, and then offer a (pre-planned) solution. (Similar to terrorism scare, followed by the “Patriot Act”).
He went to his buddy Andrew Carnegie – another plutocrat who made his money from monopolizing the steel industry – who devised a scheme. From the prestigious Carnegie Foundation, they sent a man named Abraham Flexner to travel around the country and report on the status of medical colleges and hospitals around the country.
This led to the Flexner Report, which gave birth to the modern medicine as we know it.
Needless to say, the report talked about the need for revamping and centralizing our medical institutions. Based on this report, more than half of all medical colleges were soon closed.
Homeopathy and natural medicines were mocked and demonized; and doctors were even jailed.
To help with the transition and change the minds of other doctors and scientists, Rockefeller gave more than $100 million to colleges, hospitals and founded a philanthropic front group called “General Education Board” (GEB). This is the classic carrot and stick approach.
In a very short time, medical colleges were all streamlined and homogenized. All the students were learning the same thing, and medicine was all about using patented drugs.
Scientists received huge grants to study how plants cured diseases, but their goal was to first identify which chemicals in the plant were effective, and then recreate a similar chemical – but not identical – in the lab that could be patented.
A pill for an ill became the mantra for modern medicine.
And you thought Koch brothers were evil?
So, now we are, 100 years later, churning out doctors who know nothing about the benefits of nutrition or herbs or any holistic practices. We have an entire society that is enslaved to corporations for its well-being.
America spends 15% of its GDP on healthcare, which should be really called “sick care.” It is focused not on cure, but only on symptoms, thus creating repeat customers. There is no cure for cancer, diabetes, autism, asthma, or even flu.
Why would there be real cures? This is a system founded by oligarchs and plutocrats, not by doctors.
As for cancer, oh yeah, the American Cancer Society was founded by none other than Rockefeller in 1913.
Originally published at: http://ehealthmagz.com/2018/08/17/how-rockefeller-founded-big-pharma-and-waged-war-on-natural-cures/
The contemporary version of argument can be traced to a 2012 Duke University study, which found that persistent, heavy marijuana use through adolescence and young adulthood was associated with declines in IQ.
Other researchers have since criticized that study’s methods. A follow-up study in the same journal found that the original research failed to account for a number of confounding factors that could also affect cognitive development, such as cigarette and alcohol use, mental illness and socioeconomic status.
Two new reports this month tackle the relationship between marijuana use and intelligence from two very different angles: One examines the life trajectories of 2,235 British teenagers between ages 8 and 16, and the other looks at the differences between American identicaltwin pairs in which one twin uses marijuana and the other does not.
Despite vastly different methods, the studies reach the same conclusion: They found no evidence that adolescent marijuana use leads to a decline in intelligence.
I wrote about the study of British teenagers before, when it was still a working paper. It has been peer-reviewed and accepted for publication, and its findings still stand: After adjusting for a range of confounding factors, such as maternal health, mental health and other substance use, the researchers found that “cannabis use by the age of 15 did not predict either lower teenage IQ scores or poorer educational performance. These findings therefore suggest that cannabis use at the modest levels used by this sample of teenagers is not by itself causally related to cognitive impairment.”
They did find, though, a distinct relationship between cigaretteuse and poor educational performance, which is in line with what other research has found. The researchers did not find a robust link between cigarette use and IQ.
The authors of this study stress that their results don’t necessarily invalidate the findings of the 2012 Duke University paper. That paper focused on persistent heavy use over a long period of time, while this study looked only at low to moderate levels of adolescent use. “While persistent cannabis dependence may be linked to declining IQ across a person’s lifetime,” the authors write, “teenage cannabis use alone does not appear to predict worse IQ outcomes in adolescents.”
But the researchers in the study of American twins tackle the Duke University findings head-on. Examining the life trajectories of twin pairs in which one uses marijuana while the other doesn’t, they found that those who used marijuana didn’t experience consistently greater cognitive deficits than the others.
Identicaltwin comparisons are a powerful tool for this kind of analysis, because their genetic makeup is nearly identical and their early home environment is consistent. This automatically controls for a lot of the confounding factors that can make sussing out causality difficult.
The twin data “fails to support the implication by Meier et. al. [the authors of the Duke study] that marijuana exposure in adolescence causes neurocognitive decline,” the study concludes. The numbers suggest, on the contrary, that “children who are predisposed to intellectual stagnation in middle school are on a trajectory for future marijuana use.” In other words, rather than marijuana making kids less intelligent, it may be that kids who are not as smart or who perform poorly in school are more inclined to try marijuana at some point in their lives.
Also, if marijuana use were responsible for cognitive decline, you might expect to find that the more marijuana a person smokes, the less intelligent they become. But this paper found that heavier marijuana use was not associated with greater decreases in IQ.
Originally published by: Christopher Ingraham on January 18, 2016 at: https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2016/01/18/scientists-have-found-that-smoking-weed-does-not-make-you-stupid-after-all/
Good news for people who’ve worried that smoking too much marijuana (cannabis) — especially as a teenager — might lead to some dramatic problems in the future, even schizophrenia.
New research from Harvard Medical School, in a comparison between families with a history of schizophrenia and those without, finds little support for marijuana use as a cause of schizophrenia.
“The results of the current study suggest that having an increased familial morbid risk for schizophrenia may be the underlying basis for schizophrenia in cannabis users and not cannabis use by itself,” note the researchers.
The new study is the first family study that, according to the researchers, “examines both non-psychotic cannabis users and non-cannabis user controls as two additional independent samples, enabling the examination of whether the risk for schizophrenia is increased in family members of cannabis users who develop schizophrenia compared with cannabis users who do not and also whether that morbid risk is similar or different from that in family members of schizophrenia patients who never used cannabis.”
Marijuana use is becoming increasingly commonplace as two U.S. states have already legalized its use next to alcohol for adults. Some previous studies have suggested that there may be a correlational link between teenage marijuana use and the increased likelihood of being diagnosed with schizophrenia in the future.
So researchers from Harvard Medical School and the VA Boston Healthcare system got together to determine whether family risk for schizophrenia is a crucial factor underlying the association between the development of schizophrenia in teens who smoke marijuana.
The researchers recruited 282 subjects from the New York and Boston metropolitan areas who were divided into four groups: controls with no lifetime history of psychotic illness, cannabis, or any other drug use; controls with no lifetime history of psychotic illness, and a history of heavy cannabis use during adolescence, but no other drug use; patients with no lifetime history of cannabis use or any other drug and less than 10 years of being ill; patients with a history of heavy cannabis use and no other drug use during adolescence and prior to the onset of psychosis.
Information about all first-, second-, and third-degree relatives was obtained, as well as information about any other relative who had a known psychiatric illness. This resulted in information on 1,168 first-degree relatives and a total of 4,291 relatives. The study gathered together information regarding cannabis use, and family history regarding schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, depression and drug abuse.
The researchers concluded that the results of the current study, “both when analyzed using morbid risk and family frequency calculations, suggest that having an increased familial risk for schizophrenia is the underlying basis for schizophrenia in these samples — not the cannabis use.
“While cannabis may have an effect on the age of onset of schizophrenia it is unlikely to be the cause of illness,” said the researchers, who were led by Ashley C. Proal from Harvard Medical School.
“In general, we found a tendency for depression and bipolar disorder to be increased in the relatives of cannabis users in both the patient and control samples. This might suggest that cannabis users are more prone to affective disorders than their non-using samples or vice versa.” Future research is needed to understand this relationship.
Drug abuse also appears to have an important genetic component.
“Drug abuse is present more frequently in family members of all 3 samples compared to those of non-cannabis abusing controls. This is in line with past research confirming a genetic predisposition for drug use.”
The research was published earlier this month in Schizophrenia Research.
Source: Schizophrenia Research
Originally Published by: John M. Grohol, Psy.D. in August 2018 at https://psychcentral.com/news/2013/12/10/harvard-marijuana-doesnt-cause-schizophrenia/63148.html?fbclid=IwAR38zTvmfLeXKZ8fS_Zt3e0pTZKzLzV6rYPHiTjSmXsu7-uqFwOWErWtyX4
An amazing study authored by professors D. Mark Anderson (University of Montana) and Daniel Rees (University of Colorado) shows that traffic deaths have been reduced in states where medical marijuana is legalized.
The study notes that this is equal to the effect raising the drinking age to 21 had on reducing traffic fatalities.
One key factor is the reduction in alcohol consumption. The study finds that there is a direct correlation between the use of marijuana and a reduction in beer sales, especially in the younger folks aged 20-29.
A drop in beer sales supports the theory that marijuana can act as a substitute for liquor.
The study also finds that marijuana has the inverse effect that alcohol does on drivers. Drivers under the influence of alcohol tend to make rash decisions and risky moves, whereas those under the influence of marijuana tend to slow down, make safer choices, and increase following distances.
Originally Published By: Travis Okulski on Dec. 19, 2011, 10:55 AM at https://www.businessinsider.com/it-turns-out-that-smoking-marijuana-may-actually-make-you-a-better-driver-2011-12?international=true&r=US&IR=T&fbclid=IwAR214UmrezPQFFh1cfbq0Xbhp4n9LLQewu2w-SrYTDse5o85EgAvt3R5sII
As more states legalize cannabis consumption, many more people will likely use medical marijuana as a supplement to or substitution for prescription drugs, says a University of Michigan researcher.
A new study by Daniel Kruger of the U-M Institute for Social Research found that 44 percent of medical cannabis users stopped taking a pharmaceutical drug, or used less of one, or both, in favor of cannabis.
Kruger and co-author Jessica Kruger, a clinical assistant professor at the University of Buffalo, conducted the study to assess attitudes and use of medical cannabis and the mainstream health care system—described as either a doctor or hospital—among marijuana users.
In general, people use medical cannabis to treat pain, back problems, depression and headaches. Nearly a third of the study’s participants (30 percent) said their mainstream health care provider did not know that they used medical cannabis, indicating gaps between the two treatment systems.
The researchers administered surveys to 450 adults who identified as current cannabis users at an annual public event advocating for marijuana law reform. The event occurred at U-M, in a state where medical cannabis use became legal in 2008.
———————————————————————————————–
Use of Medical Cannabis
in the mainstream health care system:
78%reported using cannabis to help treat a medical or health condition
Due to the medical use of cannabis,42%stopped taking a pharmaceutical drug
However, 30%said that their mainstream health care provider did not know that they used medical cannabis
Most people use cannabis to treat ailments such as pain, back problems, depression and headaches.
Also 38% used less of a pharmaceutical drug after using medical cannabis.
This has indicated gaps between the two treatment systems.
———————————————————————————————–
From the 392 usable responses, the majority (78 percent) reported using marijuana to help treat a medical or health condition. Users also had more trust in medical cannabis compared to mainstream health care, in part, because they rated marijuana better than pharmaceutical drugs on effectiveness, side effects, availability and cost.
“This study advances knowledge in the evidence-based approach to harm reduction and benefit promotion regarding medical cannabis,” said Daniel Kruger, a member of the U-M Institute for Healthcare Policy and Innovation. “Given the growing use of cannabis for medical purposes and the widespread use for recreation purposes despite criminalization, the current public health framework focusing primarily on cannabis abstinence appears obsolete.”
The findings appear in the current issue of Journal of Psychoactive Drugs.
Standard cancer treatment must be adapted to the type and location of tumor, whereas cannabis is an equal opportunity killer. Cannabis kills all types of cancer cells.
Curing cancer is the holy grail of medical research and it’s the most-coveted breakthrough of our time. If we could discover a way to prevent malignant cells from overrunning the human body, not only would we save millions of lives, we would end years of suffering. And, we could finally feel superior to sharks which are rumored to be cancer free (It turns out, they actually can be afflicted). Is cannabis the way? Studies, so far, show that cannabis kills all types of cancer cells.
One Treatment Doesn’t Fit All
While chemotherapy and radiation have certainly helped humanity’s battle against cancer, research into the recently discovered (1990s) endocannabinoid system keeps providing new information about how tumors form, spread and turn deadly.
But cancer isn’t just one thing. It’s an umbrella term for a collection of related illnesses. What unites these is the method of mayhem: cancer divides and spreads like ants at a picnic. And because it’s not just one kind of ant, we’ve developed slightly different ways to deal with each species.
Partially, that’s because when cancer infects the brain, we can’t necessarily handle it the way we would handle cancer in the foot. Even if the same treatments would effective at stopping the cancer, the collateral damage to brain cells is just too risky.
But when cannabis treats cancer, it does not cause the kind of harmful negative side effects that chemotherapy does.
